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[Fallout-NL]

It's not so much about age, it's about having the time to do what you want. That can be in your youth or it can be during retirement. Breaking away from the monotony of work life can be more liberating than anytime during your life.

Shit, I really need to find a way to do this as early as possible.

Resetting Windows accounts at work, need D.O.B to confirm for IT security reasons -
Customer: "My DOB is X.X.1999"
Me: "What the fuck?! But you're just a kid!" *Realise that it's actually 2017 and this "kid" is old enough to work...I feel so old now.*

Can we please slow down time Max Payne style, please. Only feels like yesterday that I was last in education, now been in work for almost 8 years. Also feels like the 90s were just ten years ago and the early 2000s were a few years ago. It's not fair.

That customer was 2 when Max Payne was released.

 

[chromatic9]

Getting to late 30s and seeing how fast the last 10-20 years has been, especially the last 10. It's quite daunting to think I'll be late 40s and late 50s within two quick chunk of ten years.

I was speaking to my dads friend who is 83 and she said it gets even quicker. She can't believe how fast she went from 70 to 80.

Browsing the internet can be its own little time warp. You can get a lot done outside or at work in 3-5 hours yet those hours browsing can pass by in what seems like 45 mins to an hour.

 

[BraXzy]

Fifty years have passed, but I do not age.
Time has lost it's effect on me

I'm only in my early twenties myself but I can already feel this and have for awhile.

I just upgraded my phone and had a quick look through old photos to back them up from my old one... photos I took 2 years ago the day I got it could've easily been a few months back.

I personally started 9-5 last year and that definitely hasn't helped. Routine does definitely have an impact. But it feels like I rush through the week wishing it to end and then at the weekend I'm rushing through stuff because I want to do as much in that small window of time so in the end I barely make the most of it.

I definitely need to do more to keep things fresh and experience new things.

A terrible sleeping pattern doesn't help, not with my meories at least. Mine is terrible.

 

[poppabk]

34 here, once you have a kid time hits warp speed.

True, and kind of flies in the face if the doing new things idea, because raising kids is a constant learning experience, baby - toddler - school - teenager etc. The main issue I have is that I still feel the same as I did in my late teens/early twenties or at least think that I do. At that age, my mental image of being an adult was completely different from the reality I am now in. I am now at an age (40) that I remember my parents being, and it is kinda scary to think they might have felt like I do now.

 

[digdug2k]

34 here, once you have a kid time hits warp speed.

Kids do weird things to time. The days are long, the years are short they say. But I think they've helped me signpost time a bit again. Late 20s just disappeared on me. Now at least I feel like I was got more meaningful memories to look back on.

 

[SolVanderlyn]

Not true. Retirement is like a rebirth. To be financially stable and once again having the time to do what you want is wonderful. They might not want to do the same things they did in their youth, but they can now do the things they've always wanted to do. People reminisce about their youth but that doesn't mean "their time is up". Retirement is their new time.

It's not so much about age, it's about having the time to do what you want. That can be in your youth or it can be during retirement. Breaking away from the monotony of work life can be more liberating than anytime during your life.

I feel like it's easier to be involved with a similar group of people and really define a generation when you're young. I'll get back to you when I can retire though.

 

[Pankratous]

I can't believe how quickly time seems to go in after you leave school. School felt like the longest experience ever. Like it would never end.

Now that was 7 years ago and it feels like a year ago, max.

 

[Nokterian]

I realised how old i felt when a coworker told me he is 18. At that time in 1999 i was playing games or watching movies like The Matrix or The Green Mile.

Time goes way to fast i am 35 now still young though but still i am amazed how much has changed in 18 years time. Just like my parents how they see the world around change but also in terms of technology gives a different perspective on life itself on how far we have come in those times.

 

[JimmyRustler]

Does anyone feel the opposite to this?

Yes, here.

It helps once you realize that the fact the time seemed to drag where you were a kid came with a price --> a lot of stress anxiety in school/ in general. People just forget. Guess that's how our brains work though. You know, blending out the bad stuff in the past and focusing more on the good times you had.

 

[Forerunner]

It's funny, your school years (which might either be the best years of your life, or the worst) seem to last an eternity.

Everything after that is more rapid, and is either better, or worse, but you don't forget those formative years which seemed to last a lifetime on their own!

Yeah, my school years seemed to drag on forever.

I did six year in the military out of high school and that just fucking flew by. Sometimes I can’t believe I even did six years because of how fast it went. Like all of my early 20s just gone in an instant. After that I went to college and it just dragged on. I even finished in three years due to taking more than the recommend courses and also going during the summer. I’ve been at my first job for over six months now and time is flying again. It’s like wtf I almost been here a year already.

 

[One Eyed Willy]

I think as kids you always were looking forward to times on the year you wouldn't be in school or holidays. For instance, kids can't wait for summer, or Christmas, or other holidays etc.. So there is this perception of time being slower actually while young, coupled with the idea that you're going to live forever.

As you get older and get into working year round, I think it's less that time goes by faster but more that time doesn't go by slower as it did when you were younger. I mean, it's perceived more normally, not faster. As an adult, you work, you dont get summers off but you might get holidays etc.. and have other vacation time as well but its just not nearly the same as being a child and looking forward and desiring those future dates as much.

Now many of you here are later 20s or early 30s talking about this. Let me just say, once you guys have kids everything seems to go by even faster. As your children age, you are reminded every day in person how time passes by the changes in your children. Gone are the days of being 25-29, or 31-34 and just remembering randomly that time is passing. With children, you will be constantly reminded of this every few months and you start to see how your children only have such a short period of time to actually be small.

In short, it gets worse lol

 

[PhantomZone]

Happens to me a lot. Some songs come on the radio that I think were semi recent..... were from 6 years ago. Likewise remembering things from my youth as being from the early 90s, were in fact late 80s.

 

[GaimeGuy]

The problem is that there is no escape from the routine. I wish I could just go wherever, do whatever, whenever. I wake up, go to work while still groggy, come home and it's dark out. Time to unwind.

 

[Future]

I think as kids you always were looking forward to times on the year you wouldn't be in school or holidays. For instance, kids can't wait for summer, or Christmas, or other holidays etc.. So there is this perception of time being slower actually while young, coupled with the idea that you're going to live forever.

As you get older and get into working year round, I think it's less that time goes by faster but more that time doesn't go by slower as it did when you were younger. I mean, it's perceived more normally, not faster. As an adult, you work, you dont get summers off but you might get holidays etc.. and have other vacation time as well but its just not nearly the same as being a child and looking forward and desiring those future dates as much.

Now many of you here are later 20s or early 30s talking about this. Let me just say, once you guys have kids everything seems to go by even faster. As your children age, you are reminded every day in person how time passes by the changes in your children. Gone are the days of being 25-29, or 31-34 and just remembering randomly that time is passing. With children, you will be constantly reminded of this every few months and you start to see how your children only have such a short period of time to actually be small.

In short, it gets worse lol

Yup. Especially when kids are first born. Every year is a HUGE change in them, from size to capability. 25-28 without kids was a blur in my memory now. Now every year is more distinct, and goes by in seconds

As an adult you have way more responsibility. As a kid I couldn't wait for Christmas for gifts and the wait was a slog since I had nothing else important going on. Now....I gotta get damn gifts for everyone for everything all the damn time. So every damn month there is a birthday, or Easter, or Mother's Day, or Valentine's Day, or now we gotta make thanksgiving dinner, to holy crap it's Christmas again. Your life becomes more deadline centric, with things you gotta do every week, month, cuz of work or simply being the adult now in a larger family.

 

[Weevilone]

It gets worse as you get older

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

Yeah I'm 40s too and it's rough. I think about college friends and it feels like I could ring them up and go grab a beer. Then I think about the fact that I literally haven't seen some of them in a couple decades and it makes my head spin.

The worst is that it's easy to wish your life away. Looking forward to the weekend.. Counting the days till the next family vacation.. Being anxious for the kids to become more independent, yet not wanting to lose their childhood. Heck even looking forward to retirement at this point is scary. It's a light at the end of the tunnel, but it's also near the end of the tunnel altogether.

 

[Farooq]

This thread is amazing.

 

[SolVanderlyn]

As a general counter to this, I find that challenging yourself to step outside your comfort zone in a small way every day helps you live in the moment, because it breaks the monotony of routine a bit. Skip out on a cup of coffee, work out 10 minutes longer than usual, do a different sort of workout, make an effort to talk to or hang out with someone you haven't seen in a while, force yourself to a movie after work for a change of pace, etc.

It can get exhausting, but it keeps life feeling fresh. I feel like it's really easy to latch onto a sense of comfort as you get older, and "safe and content" seems like a superior alternative to "effort and risk." As a kid, and teenager especially, taking risks is a part of everyday life because everything is still new-ish. Once you learn what kind of things you like and what makes you happy, you make a beeline for it and fall into the trap that is routine. Part of the reason everything seems to be a blur as you age is because of this safe zone (as many have mentioned already in this thread). Taking risks or trying new and different things helps you feel alive.

 

[pixelation]

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

Is this a scientific explanation?, i like it and it makes sense... but i'm just wondering why i've never heard it explained (like that).

 

[astroturfing]

i did a freaky thing 15 years ago one summer evening, i looked out the window at some grass and thought "i wonder if i'll remember this boring moment when i'm older, if i really try". it literally still feels like the moment was mere days ago, it's one of my most vivid memories... a moment when fucking NOTHING happened. it feels super super weird.

i really don't recommend self-inflicted mindfucks like this.. it's almost as if younger me sent a message to future older me, saying "ha ha, you're old now". fuck.

 

[AlimNassor]

Time goes by so fast on my days off but, when I'm at work it feels like fucking ever.

 

[mrkgoo]

As well as perspective from time as a proportion of your age, there's also time as a function of how busy you are and how different and changeable instances in your life are, along with how ones personal preferences with routine are.

Try having a kid. Time flies by as you're kept extremely busy on top of them changing constantly.

But st the same time, your life before a child even if it was only a couple months ago, feels like another life. Because it really is such a lifestyle change, it feels like a lifetime ago.

 

[Lothar]

Is this feeling that time is speeding up something that was always the case? When I was a teen in the 90s, I don't remember adults talking about that. I was posting on forums in the 90s with lots of people in their 40s and 50s. No one was talking about it.

I wonder if it could be the internet doing it or making it a lot worse. (Internet being much bigger than it was in the 90s) Time moves fast on the internet. Sometimes I get on youtube, wikipedia, or here and 5 hours pass just like nothing.

 

[SolVanderlyn]

Is this feeling that time is speeding up something that was always the case? When I was a teen in the 90s, I don't remember adults talking about that. I was posting on forums in the 90s with lots of people in their 40s and 50s. No one was talking about it.

I wonder if it could be the internet doing it or making it a lot worse. (Internet being much bigger than it was in the 90s) Time moves fast on the internet. Sometimes I get on youtube, wikipedia, or here and 5 hours pass just like nothing.

I've spoken with older people about it (example: parents) and they say it's something they started noticing in their early adulthood, too. It's not just some people, either; almost all the older adults I've asked about it have confirmed they experience it to some extent.

 

[TaterTots]

After my mid to late twenties, time has been going really fast from my view.

 

[theCalamity]

Maybe you'll be interested in The Speed of Life from Veritasium

Basically, as we get older, time seems to move faster because we've already experienced most of the stimuli we encounter. When you were younger, everything was novel and that altered your sense of time when your brain processed new information. Paradoxically, we can do things that seem fast in the moment, like vacation, but when we look back on it, it seems longer.

 

[mrkgoo]

Is this feeling that time is speeding up something that was always the case? When I was a teen in the 90s, I don't remember adults talking about that. I was posting on forums in the 90s with lots of people in their 40s and 50s. No one was talking about it.

I wonder if it could be the internet doing it or making it a lot worse. (Internet being much bigger than it was in the 90s) Time moves fast on the internet. Sometimes I get on youtube, wikipedia, or here and 5 hours pass just like nothing.

It's more that when you're a kid you don't pay attention to stuff except your immediate present surroundings. It's like you ask if there is more bad in the world now than when you were a kid but usually it's just that you didn't understand or paid it much mind.

 

[GPsych]

Based on this thread, I spoke about this to some of my elementary age clients (5th graders). Now, take this with a grain of salt as these are kids with mild disabilities (specific learning disabilities), but still some insight:

They reported that time feels really slow to them because they're always looking forward to the next thing. In 3rd grade, it's 4th grade. In 5th grade, it's middle school (this is the U.S. BTW). They're always excited about the next thing so they always feel like they're waiting. Thought it was interesting...

 

[Hale-XF11]

I'm in my 40s and I can already tell that the next two decades are going to go by in a flash, assuming I live that long.

The last 10 years was nothing.

 

[Weevilone]

Based on this thread, I spoke about this to some of my elementary age clients (5th graders). Now, take this with a grain of salt as these are kids with mild disabilities (specific learning disabilities), but still some insight:

They reported that time feels really slow to them because they're always looking forward to the next thing. In 3rd grade, it's 4th grade. In 5th grade, it's middle school (this is the U.S. BTW). They're always excited about the next thing so they always feel like they're waiting. Thought it was interesting...

It's good insight. Think about kids on car rides too.. they aren't enjoying the ride, the scenery, the song on the radio, etc. They are waiting to get there.

I'm in my 40s and I can already tell that the next two decades are going to go by in a flash, assuming I live that long.

The last 10 years was nothing.

Before my 40s this concept was present but just sorta interesting. In my 40s is when it became legit scary.

 

[Extra Sauce]

I feel like that chick in the movie Warlock.

Anyone?