Support NeoGAF

[Acorn]

What I mean by this is as I've aged (I'm 29, 30 next month ) things that happened like 5-10 years ago seem like yesterday.

There have been increasing amount of instances where I'm stating something that happened like 6 years ago was only a year ago.

Has anyone else my near my age or older noticed this? Time just fast forwards the moment you hit 18.

 

[adamy]

your perception of time is relative to the amount of time you've been alive

we are constantly comparing time intervals with the total amount of time we've already lived

when you are 5 yrs old, 1 yr is 20% of your life. when you are 50 yrs old, 1 yr is only 2% of your life

 

[Derwind]

Turning 28 in a few months and it feels like time is going fast forward.

Everyone I grew up with already have families and taking their kids to school.

At the same instance I don't think me reminiscing about college is the reason though.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

I mean, when I was 10 there was less life to be confused by. I still do have problems placing events in my childhood unless there's a really obvious market somewhere in there. A lot of memories where I'm like "Was I 8, or 12?" But you also have other advantages, because most of your early life is strictly signposted and was shaken up my massive changes that are easy to track. Memories about school are super duper easy to place because every year of school was highly unique, different classes, teachers, and friends. Memories of playing over summer are much harder to differentiate. As an adult I like to regularly update my mental database of years that movies, games, historical events etc took place in or came out in, because it helps me signpost for my own memories.

 

[JordanN]

I'm 23 now and days are feeling like seconds.

To think when I was in highschool, waiting for the 3 pm bell to send us home felt like an eternity.

 

[JimmyRustler]

your perception of time is relative to the amount of time you've been alive

we are constantly comparing time intervals with the total amount of time we’ve already lived

when you are 5 yrs old, 1 yr is 20% of your life. when you are 50 yrs old, 1 yr is only 2% of your life

This.

Also, times are generally short lived today due to the abundance of entertainment. I mean, growing up it wasn't unusual for me to get bored often. Today I'm literally never bored. Always have something to pass the time with, be it videogames, internet or social media. So time constantly flies.

 

[PARANO1A]

your perception of time is relative to the amount of time you've been alive

we are constantly comparing time intervals with the total amount of time we’ve already lived

when you are 5 yrs old, 1 yr is 20% of your life. when you are 50 yrs old, 1 yr is only 2% of your life

First post is always correct. Nice summary.

 

[NekoFever]

I'm 31. The last 8-10 years are just an indistinct blur to me. I used to be really good about judging time, easily able to recall what year a life event happened, or when a particular game or movie came out, but now I have no idea. The 90s and early 2000s are still really defined in my head but god knows when, say, Game of Thrones started or The Avengers came out.

 

[Sub_Level]

Videogames are a good way to track time imo. They look gradually different as the years go by with increases in graphical fidelity and presumably people on this forum follow the big releases. So you can just use them as a point of reference to any year. If you actually played them it will also help you further contextualize the time beyond the date by bringing up memories of when you were playing it. Like where were you living, how fat or skinny were you, what job or school did you have, e.t.c.

 

[danowat]

What I mean by this is as I've aged (I'm 29, 30 next month ) things that happened like 5-10 years ago seem like yesterday.

There have been increasing amount of instances where I'm stating something that happened like 6 years ago was only a year ago.

Has anyone else my near my age or older noticed this? Time just fast forwards the moment you hit 18.

It gets worse as you get older

I'm 43 this week, and it feels like my fast forward button is stuck down.

 

[Flousn]

I base my perception of the passage of time on resident evil 4 re-releases....

 

[GrizzleBoy]

Maybe because it's because I don't hate my job and because I have a wife and son that keep my brain going all the time, but.....sunday I'm wishing the weekend was longer, but at the same time Monday to Friday at work just breezes by to the point where I'm like "what did I even do this week? Where did all that time just go?"

 

[lastplayed]

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

The working week doesn't help. You race through the week looking forward to the weekend then you suddenly realise it's 10 years later.

 

[Dio]

There are people born in the year 2000 that are fucking 17 years old.

People with XxX_BootYSLaYer98_xXx usernames are no longer literal children.

 

[Acorn]

There are people born in the year 2000 that are fucking 17 years old.

People with XxX_BootYSLaYer98_xXx usernames are no longer literal children.

Dude I went back to university, I'm friends with people born in 2000 and 1999. I remember those years! I repeatedly have wtf freakout moments.

There shouldn't be people at legal drinking age born in 1999.

 

[BocoDragon]

Oh yeah. Apparently the feeling that time speeds up as you age is a universal, cross-cultural fact of life.

I'm 32. Just today I was musing on how the events of the last 5 years not only feel recent.... but they feel non-sequential. Like no memory of any event necessarily feels like it's before or after any other event. It's a jumble.

The weird thing is talking to younger people for whom 2009, 2012, or even 2015 is like this distant era long ago. That's like 5 minutes ago for me!

 

[Dishwalla]

These days I just never know what day it is, due to my work schedule. Every once in a while I'll hear something like "Ocean Avenue" on the radio or something and question myself about the passage of time, but then I'll realize that the age of the song seems right after I think about it for a few seconds.

Although one that messed with me recently was hearing No Doubt's "Just a Girl" on a so-called oldies station. I remember when that song was all over MTV, and now it's considered an oldie? Oh God no...

 

[BocoDragon]

These days I just never know what day it is, due to my work schedule. Every once in a while I'll hear something like "Ocean Avenue" on the radio or something and question myself about the passage of time, but then I'll realize that the age of the song seems right after I think about it for a few seconds.

Although one that messed with me recently was hearing No Doubt's "Just a Girl" on a so-called oldies station. I remember when that song was all over MTV, and now it's considered an oldie? Oh God no...

On the plus side, I saw Gwen Stefani on the cover of a magazine today, and I was amazed by how youthful she looked.... there's something about fellow travelers on this planet never changing that staves off the passage of time.

 

[DonMigs85]

Yeah I agree, time seemed to pass much slower as a kid. But now at 32, 10 years ago doesn't seem all that long. I think it also gets worse if you settle into a predictable routine/job for a long time.

 

[Baron Doggystyle von Woof]

The reason is because you are more busy in your head.

As a kid the only thing you worry about is school, girls/boys and enjoying life.

Now you are thinking about work, money, perhaps children, relationship, world problems, politics maybe. And the list goes on.

Before you know it, years go by and it feels like you did nothing. The real reason is you did too much.

 

[Sadsic]

its really easy to remember integral memories e.g. the first time you do something, the last time you do something, when something extremely significant happens etc

the older you get, the less you have of new 'integral' memories - when you are younger, you are constantly doing new things all the time, and things are constantly changing

as you grow older, this begins to fade away and life has more constancy

modern first world society also forces you to run in near identical routines day after day after day, which means you are basically have the same day over and over again much of your adult life, so there's really nothing new to remember

example: im sure many of you can remember the first time you drove/traveled to your current job, but do you remember the next 1000 identical car trips? probably not

this is also fundamental in brain chemistry, it's really hard to change/adapt the older you get, which makes you 'crave' comfort more and more, which leads to less and less 'integral' memories

you might as well be asleep for most your life

 

[Acorn]

These days I just never know what day it is, due to my work schedule. Every once in a while I'll hear something like "Ocean Avenue" on the radio or something and question myself about the passage of time, but then I'll realize that the age of the song seems right after I think about it for a few seconds.

Although one that messed with me recently was hearing No Doubt's "Just a Girl" on a so-called oldies station. I remember when that song was all over MTV, and now it's considered an oldie? Oh God no...

Yep, I noticed that music from when I was young is creeping onto BBC Radio 2 instead of Radio 1.

It's scary. Although last week I had a 18 year old amazed at the fact I was listening to Kendrick Lamar even though he's the same age as me.

Pop music is dominated by people near my age but it's aimed at the younger generation.

 

[besada]

And it just moves faster. Like a freight train of time, bearing down on you. Days flow like water behind you, and if you blink you miss lifetimes.

Don't blink.

 

[Einchy]

A year used to be soooo long, like almost a lifetime happened between January and December. Now there are times where I think something happened 3 or 4 months ago but it was actually last year.

 

[Acorn]

And it just moves faster. Like a freight train of time, bearing down on you. Days flow like water behind you, and if you blink you miss lifetimes.

Don't blink.

It's such a hard thing to fight against. You really have to actively force yourself to meet your goals instead of just 'blinking' and whoops 2 years have passed.

 

[DonMigs85]

I guess taking more vacations or doing crazy things like skydiving is one way to combat this and make new integral memories.

 

[MGrant]

I think working life speeds it up, too. I actually love my job, but every weekday is generally the same. Go to work, work, go home, fuck around, sleep. Most of the living I do happens on the weekends, and as a result, those are where most of my memories come from. What did I do two weeks ago on Tuesday? No fucking clue.

 

[CoolOff]

I'm 25, and this thankfully hasn't hit me yet. Went on a trip exactly a year ago and it feels like a lifetime has passed since then.

Edit: Just entering working life, so that might be what does it honestly as MGrant says.

 

[Nabbis]

My time problem has less to do with age and more to do with this shitty mold of routine that im forced to take to have any material wealth in society. The less unique things you are able to experience the less memorable your life becomes.

 

[Anarion07]

I once read a theory I found quite nice, be it true or not.

When you're younger, let's say you have a "Perception-Frequency" of 1000.
So every second you get a 1000 times of input (audio, visual etc.)

As you get older, that frequency lowers/you learn to block unimportant stimuli. So let's assume 500 Hz.

Unconsciously, one day feels like 2 child-days.

So those numbers are of course just for illustration purposes and I have no idea whether or not there is any truth to this.

 

[Pooya]

Life routine is what does it to me. I used to travel a lot but now that I don't my days go by very quickly. I think I'm missing out on life at times.

I think learning new things everyday and training your mind helps too. When you're still going to school, time goes by slowly. Out of school and it's fast forward, remember how fast summer break feel compared to school? yeah. So I'm looking to teach myself new things every day. It's very hard because I feel lazy about it and I don't know exactly what I should learn. Definitely something that has nothing to do with work because that's routine, I like my work but it's still routine most of the time. I like to make my own game some day, I think that will help me. These days I've been trying cooking, I love it a lot.

 

[Myriadis]

I do mixtapes/compilations almost every month for myself and family and note down the month and year on the disc or folder.
It helps me a lot with that, and there are actually a lot of songs where I felt that I knew that song for ages when actually I just discovered it last year

 

[Acorn]

I do mixtapes/compilations almost every month for myself and family and note down the month and year on the disc or folder.
It helps me a lot with that, and there are actually a lot of songs where I felt that I knew that song for ages when actually I just discovered it last year

Thats interesting to me. Since we tend to attach memories and emotion to songs that signpost a certain important event or milestone.

What you're doing sounds like an effective way to help your perception of time.

 

[itwasTuesday]

It's all percentages man. I mean, when I was 8, 4 years ago was half my entire existence. At 32 I have 16 years to try and keep track of for the same 50%.

That and everything isn't new filled of ohhs and ahhs.

 

[KarneeKarnay]

I read somewhere that your perception of time is directly linked to learning new things. As a kid every day you learn something new, as an adult you are exposed to less new things and as a result your brain saves space by removing stuff non-essential. That's why days, weeks or months merge together some times.

 

[Acorn]

I read somewhere that your perception of time is directly linked to learning new things. As a kid every day you learn something new, as an adult you are exposed to less new things and as a result your brain saves space by removing stuff non-essential. That's why days, weeks or months merge together some times.

Makes sense. I'm curious if we have a study to prove this.

 

[Android18a]

Yeah I'm 34 and it often feels like I should wake up and still be 24. I lie there and think that, physically at least, I don't really feel any different. Where did ten years even go?

I'm trying to do more Firsts this year, to shake things up a bit. Live a bit.

 

[GarthVaderUK]

I'm in my early 30s now and the past 10 years have felt like a bit of a samey blur. I should probably start trying new things.

 

[ChimpBottle]

Maybe because it's because I don't hate my job and because I have a wife and son that keep my brain going all the time, but.....sunday I'm wishing the weekend was longer, but at the same time Monday to Friday at work just breezes by to the point where I'm like "what did I even do this week? Where did all that time just go?"

Oh yeah, that's why I quit my 9 to 5.

Every Monday morning I was thinking to myself, "Wasn't I literally just here?" and then as soon as I know it, it's Friday

 

[Drinkel]

My grandmother told me on my 25th birthday: "Now your at that age when time speeds up, next thing you know you'll blink and your the same age as me." She was 95 at the time.

It was the most terrifying thing I had heard.

I also remembering listening to some psychology podcast that said that the brain likes to lump together memories that are similar. So if you live in the same place or do the same thing for too long the brain will treat those memories as if they where a single memory. Don't know how true that is but it seems plausible.

 

[MGrant]

There is a positive side to all of this I think. Long-term progress is not an impossible thing like it seemed when I was younger. I make little decisions and see them add up over time. I study and practice Chinese every day, and although looking back it's been about 3 years and I'm still not fully conversational, it still feels like steady progress and I enjoy getting better. I see myself getting better at my job, my bank account growing, my cooking skills improving, lots of things. It's nice to see things add up without it feeling like an eternity between milestones.

 

[Oni Jazar]

The monotony of work exacerbates the issue.

 

[VendettaRed07]

Time has sped up ever since I watched all three LOTR extended additions in one day. Nothing feels slow in comparison

 

[Yu Narukami]

Oh yeah, that's why I quit my 9 to 5.

Every Monday morning I was thinking to myself, "Wasn't I literally just here?" and then as soon as I know it, it's Friday

Funny because a few days ago I felt the same way. When I think about which day it is today it's always Monday or Friday.

 

[Alienfan]

I watched a TED talk that said trying something new as often as possible helps with this. Whether that's wearing a pair of odd socks to work sometime, picking up a new coding language, taking a different route to work, anything that challenges your daily routine can in turn improve your memory and overall enjoyment of life.

 

[Blablurn]

I watched a TED talk that said doing trying something new as often as possible helps with this. Whether that's wearing a pair of odd socks to work sometime, picking up a new coding language, taking a different route to work, anything that challenges your daily routine can in turn improve your memory and overall enjoyment of life.

Sounds interesting. Will keep this in mind.

 

[Acorn]

I watched a TED talk that said trying something new as often as possible helps with this. Whether that's wearing a pair of odd socks to work sometime, picking up a new coding language, taking a different route to work, anything that challenges your daily routine can in turn improve your memory and overall enjoyment of life.

Sounds interesting. Will keep this in mind.

Yeah, do you recall the person who did the talk?

 

[fuzzylogic]

The older you become, the less novel experiences you have. Your brain doesn't have to work as hard when it only encounters things its used to and done many times before. Time seems slower when your brain has to put in more effort. To slow down time as an adult, you'd have to dive head first in to a new hobby in a new arena of interest like every few years or something, I don't know.

 

[NoblesseOblige]

As we travel deeper into this blackhole time accelerates as light only has one direction to travel. This is why time seems to go faster as we age, because it actually is.

Spoiler

Making stuff up is fun.

 

[Acorn]

The older you become, the less novel experiences you have. Your brain doesn't have to work as hard when it only encounters things its used to and done many times before. Time seems slower when your brain has to put in more effort. To slow down time as an adult, you'd have to dive head first in to a new hobby in a new arena of interest like every few years or something, I don't know.

It's weird, I went back to Uni this year and quit my 9-5. So I've met new people, learned new things but my perception of time is still out of whack.