I Don’t Know Where the Time Goes!

I can always remember my parents saying, “I don’t know where the time goes." As a naive twelve-year-old, I thought that was just stupid. Time goes as fast as the clock says it does, and that is it.

As I have gotten older, it seems that months go almost as fast as weeks. Here we are in September, and Christmas will be here soon.

In the last few months, I seem to have had a conversation about how time seems to go quicker as you get older. A physical impossibility, you say.

Turns out there is actually some scientific basis to that statement. Strange but true!

Same Old Same Old

In the 1890s, William James, a philosopher and psychologist, observed that time seems to pass faster as we get older. He suggested that the brain gains more from new experiences than from everyday ones. The brain knows what these are (read ‘the thrill has gone’) so it spends less energy dealing with them.

You can remember new experiences well, but you might forget what you had for lunch last Wednesday.

As children, many things are new and exciting. They stimulate the brain more.  The brain is always preoccupied, so time seems to go slowly. As children, going on a trip in a car didn't seem that way; you always harass your parents – “How much longer is it going to be? Aren’t we there yet?”

To make time feel like it’s moving slower, psychologists say you should try something new.  Doing something different has the effect of creating new brain cells

Novelty also causes neurogenesis in the brain, the birth of brand-new brain cells. Neurogenesis helps counteract daily brain cell loss by creating new structures for memories.

Log Time

French philosopher Paul Janet proposed another theory about why time seems to speed up as we age in 1897. As we age, a year becomes a smaller fraction of our entire lives up to that point. This theory is called “Log time.”

If you are five, a year is 20% of your life so far. When you are 50, a year is 2% of your life so far.  When you get to be eighty, one year is only 1% of your life so far.  It is about 16 times faster than it was when you were five.

As we get older, we are less likely to do as many new things. The more we have experienced in our lives, the fewer “new things” there are to experience. As we age, we often get stuck in our routines. Doing the same tasks week after week makes our brains overlook new and exciting experiences.

This certainly rings true for me. My days now that I am retired and I live by myself are like “Groundhog Day." I am borderline obsessive-compulsive. O.K. I am totally OCD. You could set a clock by the pattern of my days. I have tested this out. I can pretty much predict the time of day within 10-15 minutes because they are all the same.

As we age, time seems to speed up. This happens because our lives become more routine. Each year feels shorter as we grow older. This is because a year is a smaller part of your total life experience. Older brains process visual information differently. This is because of changes in neural networks. This alters how fast we perceive external events unfolding.

The solution we are told to slow down time as we get older is to try new things in order to create new memories. Psychologists will also say not to multitask so your brain is focused. (All the female readers will immediately say this is easy for men to achieve!)

As we get older, our days fill up with "normal" activities. These moments often go unnoticed or, even more, are forgotten. As we look back on the past few weeks or months, we have far fewer "memorable" moments. This makes that period seem to have taken less time and therefore to have happened more quickly.

If we keep our brains active by trying new and exciting things as we age, time won’t feel like it passes so quickly. At least that is what science says.

Maybe it’s time to take that challenge and go diving with the great white sharks off South Australia. Then, I should try that sky jump I have always wanted to do. If it all goes wrong, I won't have to worry about time going faster, will I?

Till next time,

Calvin