Do you get the feeling that time goes by so fast? “The days are long, but the years are short” I’ve heard said. It’s a common enough phenomenon. The essay Where All the Time Went has some insights on this that I felt were very note-worthy. Though it was written more in the context of the pandemic and lockdowns, the points do stand universally I believe. Here are my highlights:
People have always remarked that time seems to speed up as you age, which I’ve written about before. The sense of time accelerating is usually explained away with the idea of proportionality — a year to a one-year old is a lifetime, while to a centenarian it’s 1% of a lifetime.
I don’t buy that explanation. Time’s apparent “speed” changes with conditions, as we’ve all experienced. A week spent in a foreign city feels much longer than a routine week spent at home. In an unfamiliar place everything is novel, so it has to be engaged with more care and attention. In order just to manage everyday tasks, such as buying lunch or crossing the street, your mind has to do a lot more than it does at home. More details must be noticed, evaluated, and marked by memory for later. Less of what you experience can be navigated by habit or reflex, so you can’t spend much of your day preoccupied with your familiar and repetitive thoughts. Such a week simply can’t pass by unnoticed and unremembered.
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The reason time seems to speed up over the years is that novelty naturally declines as we age. Life’s elements become increasingly familiar and routinized. You take fewer risks, become less adventurous, move house less often, change jobs less, meet fewer people, stay home more, and so on.