Time, fast and slow

Time keeps on slippin’ slippin’ slippin’/ Into the future.

Yeah, what’s that about?

Why does time seem to speed up the older we get? Why did 8 weeks at summer camp when I was 12 seem like a lifetime, and last year – a full year – go by so quickly I barely registered its passing.

Time is weird, right? We have long striven to measure it with exactitude (from sundials to atomic clocks), but we all know the folly of objective time. Time is not objective. It is subjective. Time is experienced. Time is perceived.

And it turns out we experience and perceive it at a faster clip the older we get. Why? And what can we do to slow it down?

Our friends the neuroscientists have answers to both questions.

Our perception of time, how we experience (and remember) time, is dictated by how much information our brains need to process. When we feed the brain more information and expose it to more stimuli, the moment (the day, the summer) seems to last longer. We perceive it as passing more slowly. It is when we are bombarded with new experiences, and our brains are flooded with stimuli (that is, when we are younger, when every day presents a new experience), that we perceive time as moving slowly.

But, as neuroscientist David Engleman says (in a New Yorker profile): The more familiar the world becomes, the less information your brain writes down, and the more quickly time seems to pass. Or look at it this way: A mundane activity, a routine, gives us no new interesting stimuli to process. So when we look back on that moment (year), we can’t remember it distinctly, and we perceive it as zipping by.

You see where this is going, right? I have written so much about taking on new challenges, raising the bar on your own life, pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. It turns out that all this is not just a fun, exciting and productive way to live life, it also slows time. You are feeding your brain more new stimuli to process. Doing something new means your brain has to pay attention. When it pays attention, your perception of time is altered.

Time does not keep on slippin slippin slippin away.