Time seems to be speeding up

I'm sixty seven, the older you get, the faster time seems to go by. Days and months seem to have been so long when I was young, now, garbage day seems to come every other day...Monday -Tuesday- Monday is what a week feels like.

I'm 40 and I'm still catching myself finding little things at the store that I briefly decide to pick up as last minute Christmas gifts for the kids. Then I remember Christmas was over a month ago and put it back while muttering to myself that they're 1 and 2 now, if they want that toy they can go get a job and stay the hell off my lawn.

That could also be put down to 6-7 day work weeks and the fact that Amazon had us working until 10:30 on Christmas Eve, then I slept through half of Christmas day, then got up at 6am on the 26th to go back to the evil empire.

I’m almost 53. I’m not sure if that makes me old in your eyes or not. Lol. I’ve been saying this very same thing for about 25 years , if not longer. I certainly cannot explain what could be the reason or cause behind this theory. I’m well aware how crazy this idea sounds but I believe it with everything in me. And it is not just me getting older or my kids growing up too fast. I even sought their opinions when they were young. And they agreed.
Not long after I devised my theory I received a catalog of books you could order that catered to conspiracy theories and paranormal stuff. There were at least 2 or 3 books in it on the this very subject. I have yet to read any of them, though. It was enough for me to just know that I wasn’t the only person experiencing this phenomena.

I read one of those Science-News articles about 8? years ago... sorry I can't find a link to it...
The article was about a Science study, where they were trying to measure if time really goes more slowly during traumatic events (ie; the 2 seconds between when your car starts skidding off the road into that oncoming tree that many people report feeling like several minutes). In the study, they put people into one of those carnival ride that drops you straight down from a 100 feet or so, and then had people concentrate on a digital clock counting seconds or some smaller unit. ... the takeaway from the study, was that time-flow did not change. What does change is the rate at which you form memories. During a traumatic event, the brain kicks into hyper-memory-forming mode, so when you look back at the event, there are many more discrete sequential memories, so you interpret this as seeming like it took longer than it did.

A corollary from the study, was to suggest Why time seems to go faster as one ages. Their inference was that we all end up living in a rut as we get older: do the same or similar things every day. Because of so much similarity, the brain does not make new memories (ie; to record the 2000th time you operated the coffeemaker in the morning, or the 3000th time you stood in front of the same front door to lock it.)

...1/2 mile down the road. "Did I lock the front door? Do I remember locking it today? Or am I just remembering one of the other 3000 times I've experienced that same sequence of events in front of the same door with the same key in my hand?"...

All this "in the rut" behaviour doesn't create new memories. So at the end of the year, you look back, and there are only 6 new memories for the whole year -- clearly this year must have gone by faster!

The conclusion was, in order to slow-down speeding-up time: make new memories. Get out of your (albeit comfortable) rut. Take a vacation/trip. Get out and do new things. Take in a show. Travel. Do something different! Your brain will respond to the novelty by forming many more memories, which in turn is interpreted (in retrospect) as time moving slower.

That, or get a job as a Walmart greeter, or any similarly thankless job -- guaranteed to make time slow to immobility.

a reply to: IAMTAT

Could be related.
Rotation of Earth’s inner core may have slowed, puzzling new discovery suggests

a reply to: trombleforth

This makes a lot of sense. Those times in the field seemed ultra slow, reserve weekends I dreaded.

The irony in this. I was just talking about this the other day with my friends and family, every single one of them commented on how they feel time is definitely speeding up. I kinda looked up a few ideas on the subject. One, was that we were having a thinning between dimensions. As in, getting closer to the other worlds per say, if you even believe in that sort of thing. But yes.... im on the same page with you, I feel like time is definitely speeding up. My thoughts are it simply has to do with being more consciously aware of all things, somehow.

a reply to: offensive

I think many of us have had feelings of losing it these last three years!

originally posted by: offensive
Does anyone else get that feeling ? Days, weeks, months , seems like they are going by way faster and faster. Like time has sped up.

I have nothing to back this up except damn Its already Sunday, that went fast. Maybe its just a getting older thing

I know the saying time fly's when you're having fun but I haven't been having any fun . So what gives?

maybe time is like a funnel and we are getting closer to the bottom

But I was just curious if anyone else feels it or am I just crazy ?

It is called aging...

(As I type this I notice the very first post had the same answer lol.)

originally posted by: IAMTAT
a reply to: offensive

I used to think how unfair it seemed that People have an average lifespan of 75-80 years...and the average dog has a maximum lifespan of 15 years.

Watch how time will fly when you turn 65 and realize that if you get a puppy...it will likely outlive you.

I own bulldogs. They live 8 to 10 max.

a reply to: offensive

Alex Jones weighing in on this topic…

ao-fc.tumblr.com...

And he actually makes sense. I’m not sure he’s right but it’s a fairly good theory.

I find myself speaking with people.and saying man is time flying by.
But then recently I got the feeling that's its speeding up.

Maybe the earth is rotating a mili second faster and speeding up.

originally posted by: Magnivea
I'm 40 and I'm still catching myself finding little things at the store that I briefly decide to pick up as last minute Christmas gifts for the kids. Then I remember Christmas was over a month ago and put it back while muttering to myself that they're 1 and 2 now, if they want that toy they can go get a job and stay the hell off my lawn.

That could also be put down to 6-7 day work weeks and the fact that Amazon had us working until 10:30 on Christmas Eve, then I slept through half of Christmas day, then got up at 6am on the 26th to go back to the evil empire.

Christmas comes and goes so fast these days...I had no time to absorb it all...

Could be that the simulation we live in, has a time dial where the observers can dial it up to see things move more quickly. Think of it as a fast forward button on a VCR, where you are skipping the boring parts of Independence Day, but watch the UFO blowing up buildings and landmarks. a reply to: offensive

originally posted by: offensive
Does anyone else get that feeling ? Days, weeks, months , seems like they are going by way faster and faster. Like time has sped up.

I have nothing to back this up except damn Its already Sunday, that went fast. Maybe its just a getting older thing

I know the saying time fly's when you're having fun but I haven't been having any fun . So what gives?

maybe time is like a funnel and we are getting closer to the bottom

But I was just curious if anyone else feels it or am I just crazy ?

If you think it's flying by now, don't ever start playing Elite Dangerous. I'll play that game for 30 minutes and notice that 5 hours have passed me by.

a reply to: offensive
When you're five years old, six months is 10% of your life.
When you're fifty years old, six months is 1% of your life.
That's why it seems shorter.

originally posted by: rickymouse
I'm sixty seven, the older you get, the faster time seems to go by. Days and months seem to have been so long when I was young, now, garbage day seems to come every other day...Monday -Tuesday- Monday is what a week feels like.

Are you retired yet? I've always chalked this up to working everyday or most days. I just turned 44 this month, been at the same company for 15 years and every year seems to come faster and faster. I figured by the time I retired and wasn't working my life away, time would slow down a little bit.

originally posted by: LSU2018

originally posted by: rickymouse
I'm sixty seven, the older you get, the faster time seems to go by. Days and months seem to have been so long when I was young, now, garbage day seems to come every other day...Monday -Tuesday- Monday is what a week feels like.

Are you retired yet? I've always chalked this up to working everyday or most days. I just turned 44 this month, been at the same company for 15 years and every year seems to come faster and faster. I figured by the time I retired and wasn't working my life away, time would slow down a little bit.

I think it is just because we are older and have more knowledge to weed through when we do things. So our thinking slows down because we have more to compare things to. Also, we make less mistakes and fixing a mistake makes everything seem like it takes way longer. Time is an illusion, I know people in their eighties with lots of life experience and they say months fly by faster and faster every year...especially after you hit seventy five.

I recently spent two days in the High Court listening to three KC's arguing about a Conveyance and Highway's law.

I can tell you that time passed real slow.

a reply to: offensive

I had this conversation with someone as an example during a discussion about disappearing insects. It is your perception. Time may seem to go faster when the brain is engaged in a certain way. For instance, inwas out at the annual Gasparilla parade with my daughter on Saturday. My four boys decided to stay home And play video games. It felt like we were out all day (6 hours) because technically we were. Half a million people crowded down along the longest uninterrupted sidewalk in North America for a parade of pirates throwing beads and booty. We had a blast. But we definetly were worn down and we felt like we were out forever.

By contrast, we got home around seven And the boys are like "oh that was quick". I'm like wtf you mean quick?? We were gone for six hours!!! They were on the screen playing video games the whole time. Now the big down the street likely stopped by for a bit and they likely were taking turns because I raised them right and they are good with turns. But the point is most of that time the brain was mostly engaged with a screen. And when that happens time perception gets altered.
I had the same conversation with disappearing bugs. Anecdotes from folks here would talk about there being less bugs. It was perception because they forgot that communities grow over time. When all the land gets paved and homes full of humans who pay to destroy bugs and keep them out of homes go up, bugs got nowhere to live, and seem to disappear. Of course they disappeared, we destroyed their homes just like the disappearing raccoons and possums.

So after picking some brains, the folks with that perception were found to be in fast growing urbanizing communities.

Stay in front of the screen all day one day. Then spend the next day out. Does not even have to be like outdooring. Just go shopping, visit a friend, visit the humane society, your favorite locally owned businesses (one of my personal favorites).

You will feel beat and it will feel like a long day. I am studying it more but I know it has to do with the way the brain interacts with electronic signals and projected photons. In both situations the same measurable quantity of time has passed, but one scenario leads to the perception of time going faster.

Not sure if that theory was presented as I did not read the pages just felt like replying because I have had this conversation recently with my teenager to stress the importance of experiences vs observations (screen time).