[HN Gopher] Why time seems to pass faster as we age
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Why time seems to pass faster as we age
Author : paraschopra
Score : 253 points
Date : 2024-02-27 10:02 UTC (12 hours ago)
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| rjh29 wrote:
| I'm also obsessed with this and have mostly countered it so far
| by moving house every few years, living and studying in several
| countries and trying new things. The negative being that I don't
| have any stability.
| plmpsu wrote:
| To each his own.
|
| I've been enjoying getting familiar with the sun's location and
| cyclic changes of nature as the seasons and years pass where I
| live.
| al_borland wrote:
| I did this for quite a while. I am able to tell roughly when
| something happened based on where I was living at the time.
| I've moved 26 times and finally got sick of it. While I'm not
| sure how I'll tell time now, I'll figure something out.
|
| A lot of people use their kids for this. "Bobby was in 2nd
| grade, must have been 2014."
| ourmandave wrote:
| How do you deal with no stability?
|
| Do you have any sort of home base you can always go back to?
| urda wrote:
| You learn to live with the instability. You come to terms
| with how short and limited life and life's experiences can
| be. It can be a lonely life, but it by far can be the most
| rewarding.
|
| I look back from having diverged from a world where I never
| escaped my home-town gravity well and I'm glad I took the
| leap. It made me a deeper, richer, and more interesting
| individual.
| dartos wrote:
| I think mediation and gratefulness is a good way around this too.
|
| If your take explicit time to recognize and examine the world
| around you, even in your backyard, time seems to stretch and you
| notice and retain more.
|
| I'm lucky enough to have lots of different colored birds show up
| in my backyard, so sometimes I sit out there and wait for them.
|
| It's not exciting, but every time I see one it's a new memory and
| those new memories make time feel more.
| bwestergard wrote:
| If you're not already aware, Cornell offers a bunch if
| resources to enhance your birding experience.
|
| https://www.allaboutbirds.org/
| johnmaguire wrote:
| I love Cornell's Merlin app for sound-based identification of
| birds.
| dartos wrote:
| I know literally nothing about birds lol.
|
| There are just some pretty ones around me.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| I heard someone on a podcast talk about the compression of new
| experiences during the pan / lockdown as a reason why time
| became meaningless. That seemed right, to me. I can hardly
| believe that it's been almost four years since that started.
|
| > If you have a stable job, you can pretty much mentally time
| travel a full year and find your days to be similar.
|
| > But if I ask you to imagine doing a PhD in Sanskrit at a
| foreign university, you would have no idea what your days are
| going to look like.
|
| This also feels right, to me. But also, I spent nine months
| learning new languages to try to build a service to launch with
| a friend and that didn't turn into a long memory of effort. In
| fact, I recall it as sandwiched. It was a blip.
|
| I think the real key is new experiences, not the aspect of
| study. Maybe that's the foreign university aspect: what happens
| when you aren't at study. The people you meet, the places you
| go, etc.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Around this? Assuming that it's something that needs to be
| gotten around.
| AltruisticGapHN wrote:
| Completely non scientific theory, although inspired by
| McGilchrist's "The Divided Brain" I'd wager that as we age the
| left hemisphere takes more and more of our awareness as we map
| the world internally and we tend to live more and more from
| "what is already known" as opposed to present experience.
|
| I too have hundreds of hours of meditation and I remember the
| feeling of time was very much affected. One night I remember
| out of sheer stubborness I sat for 5+ hours and I always
| remember the next week felt like it was a month.
|
| It doesn't have to do with having "new" experiences, or new
| memories, or doing anything "interesting". It has to do with
| how we attend to the world.
|
| And as Gilchrist pointed out this is being worsened as the
| devices we use day to day like smartphones, which aren't
| inherently bad, tend to stimulate mostly the left hemisphere
| unless you just listen to music. All the time you're going
| after buttons, notifications, looking at the icons, you're just
| continually sucked back into the world of the left hemisphere :
| icons, words, symbols, "things" to do or that could be done,
| things that could happen, emails, posts, likes, whatnot.
|
| Actually I think it was already shown through EEGs that long
| time meditators, buddhist monks, had some areas of the brain
| more developed.. which would seem to support my theory likely
| those areas are related to the right hemisphere (and hence the
| right hemisphere's qualities such as ability for compasssion,
| seeing the whole, seeing things in context, ... and therefore
| seeing one's life in context as well instead of an old tape
| repeating in your mind everyday).
|
| edit: also if you think logically, then it makes sense that the
| common intuition that having new experiences, or adding more
| variety in your life would make time feel like it goes by
| slower, but it is not because of "new" experiences, but as in
| my theory above, because those new experiences stimulate the
| right hemisphere, as you become more focused and attentive to
| what is happening NOW. In fact by definition any new experience
| will stimulate the right hemisphere. So if you dont have the
| $$$ to go out and enjoy the world, or take a vacation the good
| news is you'll probably enjoy the benefits of right hemisphere
| activation by doing... NOTHING! (ie. meditation, focused
| attention on the breath or any one of many techniques all
| revolving around developing concentration and attention) :)
| smokel wrote:
| I've meditated quite a lot, and I am now often able to "live in
| the moment" so much so, that I only experience the most recent
| bite that I'm taking out of a Snickers bar. It gives me the
| strange feeling that I might as well not have eaten the entire
| bar, just the last bit.
| raspyberr wrote:
| I've always rationalised it as:
|
| When you're one years old, 1 year is your whole life.
|
| When you're 100 years old, 1 year is 1/100th of your life.
| alberth wrote:
| This plus ...
|
| Time as you perceive it, is related to new memories you make.
|
| When you're young, everything is a new experience which in turn
| becomes a new memory.
|
| When your 100, to use your example, you've done everything
| there is to do. So no new memories & days blur together.
| planb wrote:
| That's the explanation I came up with for myself, too. As
| humans, we rate most things not in absolute but in relative
| terms to what we are used to (see studies about happiness or
| how rich people don't realise how wealthy they are when they
| don't leave their bubble). Why should we perceive time
| differently than in comparison to our timescale?
| mistermann wrote:
| It even distorts logical processing, things like what is true
| and what is possible are also according to what (is known to
| the individual observer, or the culture they're embedded in)
| currently exists.
| rrgok wrote:
| So, if I suddenly have amnesia and don't remember the past 99
| years, will my time slow down?
|
| It is just a thought experiment...
| ji_zai wrote:
| If you don't remember the past, slow down relative to what?
| rrgok wrote:
| That's exactly my question: is memory or timespan that
| regulate the speed of time-passing?
|
| Another thought experiment: suppose reincarnation exists
| and, as soon as I'm born, I remember my past lives, would
| time go faster or slower?
|
| I don't expect an answer, they are just thoughts that I
| have...
| holoduke wrote:
| The older you get the less you learn and the less new things
| you learn. Days are becoming repetitive. Looking back at last
| year contains the same information as 1 week when you were
| young.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| That the mind compresses oft-repeated experiences makes more
| sense than this math-as-psychology nonsense.
|
| Notice how when you have to wait for an hour, you're bored,
| time seems to pass slowly, yet for those last ten minutes time
| passes more quickly because there's only 1/6 hours le-- yeah
| exactly, no, that doesn't happen. The whole hour passes slowly
| because that whole fraction theory is bunk.
| stared wrote:
| There is already a body of research on the perception of time as
| a function of age, see
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception#Changes_with_a....
|
| It stems from a few things, and novelty is only one factor.
| (Also, it is not only that the world begins (to us) as full of
| novelty, but also most people gradually transition from
| exploration to exploitation.)
|
| In addition to remembering previous events, there is also how
| fast we process information (e.g. reaction times). It seems that
| as we are getting longer, we get fewer clock ticks per second.
| (On an interesting take on that, read a short story "Exhalation"
| by Ted Chiang.)
| cruano wrote:
| My anecdata is that my late-twenties felt way slower than my
| early-twenties, mostly because I switched from a 9-5 office job
| to a remote job that allowed me to slow travel. I spent a month
| in Rome and I remember most days and definitely remember all
| weekends, but I would have to really dig deep for a memory from
| 2019.
| dakial1 wrote:
| Yes, and one thing you can do is doing something/everything
| different everyday, but the downside of this is that you'll get
| fatigue out of keeping your brain on alert all the time.
|
| I observed this with people traveling, I used to call travel
| cognitive impairment, as usually functional human beings (like
| my close relatives) suddenly get very lost and helpless during
| travel (specially at airports).
|
| I then realized that this was because this was a unusual
| experience for them (once every year) and this would overload
| them with things out of their routing (even if they traveled
| before). That didnt happen to me (yet) because I was traveling
| a lot for work, so this was a routine for my brain.
| MyFirstSass wrote:
| The ticks per second thing is very interesting because of a
| something weird i encountered the other day - i suddenly
| realised seconds are WAY faster than they used to be.
|
| I play music so have a pretty good feel for rhythm and i
| distinctly remember the clock in a family members house ticking
| each second being way, way slower as a kid. Slept there the
| other day and it was fast as hell. So incredibly weird. I'm
| sure my memory of the BPM is much slower than the feeling from
| today.
|
| Sitting looking at the digital clock right now two seconds seem
| close to one as a kid.
| andai wrote:
| I had the same realization a few years ago and it horrified
| me. Is it gonna keep getting faster?
| MyFirstSass wrote:
| Extrapolating from my own case time seems to have doubled
| in speed from 5 to in my 30's, if that doubles when im 70,
| then when im 100 it's 8 times as fast, wow.
|
| I wonder what that would mean for life extension, imagine
| this exponential - then you'll get very little effect from
| living past 200 years:
|
| https://imgur.com/crLQUy6
|
| Pretty interesting thought experiment.
| red369 wrote:
| [delayed]
| Apreche wrote:
| This is one of those things that seems true, but is it? They've
| presented no evidence whatsoever. Even the question itself
| carries with it an assumption. Does time seem to pass faster as
| we age? I bet you could find some people for whom it does not.
| justanotherjoe wrote:
| yeah im 31 and i don't feel it. I do however, remember being 22
| and just marvelling that its been 5 years since (an event) at
| high school.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| What are you arguing against? This is an experiential thing. Or
| phenomenological. Evidence? This is just something that people
| often report. No one cares if there are counter-examples. That
| doesn't make it less true for those that experience it.
| dapearce wrote:
| I was always told it's because as you age a year becomes a
| smaller portion of your life. When you are 35 a year is 1/35th of
| your life, compared to 1/5th as a 5 year old.
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| Pain extends time. Pleasure decreases it. Do things that are
| painful. Find pleasure in the painful like discipline and stuff
| that is uncomfortable.
| nemo44x wrote:
| I'm not sure you're optimizing correctly here...
| arethuza wrote:
| That sounds like Dunbar in Catch-22:
|
| _" Dunbar loved shooting skeet because he hated every minute
| of it and the time passed so slowly. He had figured out that a
| single hour on the skeet-shooting range with people like
| Havermeyer and Appleby could be worth as much as eleven-times-
| seventeen years."_
| pjerem wrote:
| I'm not sure that a long and painful life is preferable to
| shorter and happier life but if that's your thing ...
| GuB-42 wrote:
| That's not my experience.
|
| Intense pain makes time feel longer, but it is the same for all
| intense experiences. And I am not even sure about that,
| endorphines can make time fly.
|
| And when I consider memories, pleasurable events tend to take
| more time in my mind, pain tend to get erased more than
| pleasure. For example, I don't remember much about sick days,
| though obviously uncomfortable, they don't take much subjective
| time, thankfully.
| nathias wrote:
| it's just simple math, when you're 1 year old 1 year is the
| totality of your experience, when you're 2 years, it's half, etc.
| mikedelfino wrote:
| Nice hypothesis. I've always thought that it had to do with the
| percentage of life already spent. When you're a teen, an
| afternoon counts as 0,004% of your whole life thus far. In your
| mid 30's, it gets down to 0,001%. So to me it's only fair that it
| feels to pass four times faster now. But this is just a random
| thought.
| 4RealFreedom wrote:
| This is what I've always thought - time is relative to how long
| you've lived.
| zoky wrote:
| 100% this. The older you get, the shorter a minute or an hour
| seems to be. When I was 12, an hour was an interminably long
| amount of time to spend in a classroom. Now that I'm 42, it's
| barely long enough to take a decent nap.
|
| Life is cruel that way. Can hardly wait for how quickly it
| passes when I'm in my 70s or 80s...
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I've been journalling for 10+ years. In addition to forcing me to
| actually write down what happened that day, reviewing old entries
| provides a feeling of history that makes life feel soooo long and
| so rich. I can review my now-wife's rocky courtship and feel
| grateful we made it. I looked back 3 years ago and found the day
| our children were conceived :D (we have twins). I can review the
| anxieties of my PhD years, etc etc.
|
| For some reason, feeling like my past life has not been short
| helps me to feel that there's so much life left to live. Looking
| back at the phenomenal changes of the last 5 years (or 10), shows
| me that I can do a lot with the next 5 years.
|
| Novelty and so on may help to "slow" time, but for me the
| perception of the shortness of life is best fought by reminding
| yourself that it is not short, and there is so much change coming
| - more than you could imagine.
|
| (and I'm horrible at doing it every day, maybe every week or so
| during slumps)
|
| We're at our computers all day every day. So I just lowered the
| barrier to entry with a few bash tricks. It's helped me keep the
| habit up.
|
| https://jodavaho.io/tags/bullet-journal.html
|
| Now, I review 1, 5, and 10 years ago every day, to re-live my
| life from those years, so to speak: # list
| dates from 10 years ago +/3 3 days # get years and day
| range from args echo "### $years years ago" for i
| in `seq -w -$days $days` do olddate=`date -d
| "$years years ago $i days" +%Y-%m-%d` longdate=`date
| -d "$years years ago $i days" +%A\ %B\ %d,\ %Y` echo
| "### $olddate.md ($longdate)" cat $olddate.md
| done
| paraschopra wrote:
| It's great to hear journaling helps you reflect on actual
| passed time.
|
| For me, I never get around to revisiting old entries regularly.
| How do you motivate yourself to do so?
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I just lower the barrier enough that it's trivial. I'm at my
| terminal all day, and one bash command spits out X years ago
| +/- 3 days.
|
| Right now, I'm really curious to see why I took a trip 10
| years ago to my hometown - all I see in my journal is my
| packing list, so someday the journal entry for that trip will
| pop up.
|
| That helps too.
| chasd00 wrote:
| that's really cool. I use to always have a small notebook with
| my at work to jot down notes and sketches. I had boxes and
| boxes of those notebooks saved over the years and would flip
| through old ones from time to time to see what i was up to back
| then. In a move I was very tired of carrying boxes so threw
| them all out instead of loading them up and transferring them
| to the next attic.. i really _really_ wish i hadn't.
| zubairq wrote:
| Great idea. i should try journaling more to make life feel
| longerr and richer too. Thanks
| jzm2k wrote:
| I'd like to recommend giving Daylio [1] a try if you want to
| start journaling. Someone on HN recommended this two years
| ago and I decided to try it because all past attempts at
| journaling had failed miserably after few weeks. I'm now on a
| 700+ day streak and I'm _really_ happy that I started doing
| this 2 years ago. So much has happened and it 's all
| documented. It takes so little effort to add an entry for the
| day and reading past entries is fun because what actually
| happened past year is not just a blur but a detailed record
| of activities, words and photos.
|
| [1] https://daylio.net/
| leokennis wrote:
| I am trying journaling as well but most days I don't know what
| to write...most days I'm not really doing special things, I
| have no special feelings.
|
| These days are enjoyable because I like my work and love my
| family, but I don't get further than "went to work, afterwards
| cooked <some meal> and played <some game> with <one of my
| kids>, in the evening <watched some movie / read some book>"...
|
| What are you journaling on a daily basis?
| zmgsabst wrote:
| I keep a daily journal, usually:
|
| - "I could have handled X better by doing Y."
|
| - "Seeing A made me curious about B; maybe look into that."
|
| - "I really tried at K, but oof didn't work out; let's try L
| tomorrow!"
|
| - "I did really good at P, Q, and R today -- I'll get a treat
| tomorrow and start on S."
|
| Mostly just internal monologue kinds of things, but there's
| three benefits I've noticed:
|
| - I don't think about frustrations as much if I write them
| down.
|
| - I am better at self-compassion when I externalize the
| monologue.
|
| - I slowly adjust my monologue to reflect how I word it in
| writing, eg how I choose to frame things or what kinds of
| things I notice.
| xahrepap wrote:
| Slightly different angle: I've been digitizing my
| grandparents' journals. Something I've appreciated is the
| mundane.
|
| "Had a headache. Went to bed early" seeing how often my
| grandpa was sick was very eye opening to me.
|
| "Got the X repaired/replaced. Cost me $Y and it took Z days
| to finish"
|
| "I sat and just visited with $Child. What a good kid. He's
| just a teen. He told me about his friends and school"
|
| Etc. I don't know. I guess reading a normal life makes me
| feel better. Growing up I thought they were perfect. Seeing
| they were people just like me with very similar struggles is
| actually fun.
| RaoulP wrote:
| So lovely to read this. My late father was, in his later
| years, often writing in his diaries at the kitchen table.
|
| I haven't taken the time to go though these diaries after
| he passed, but I did take a peek since I never really knew
| what he wrote.
|
| The little I saw was so surprisingly mundane, like you
| describe.
|
| I can't quote it now, being thousands of miles away, but I
| remember something about my mom making a tasty soup.
|
| I found it endearing but also forgiving, since I've
| struggled with journaling myself. Your post reminded me now
| that it's okay to note the mundane.
| jollyllama wrote:
| I have the opposite problem. I could write a page of literary
| prose about every day. Bulleting feels like it would be doing
| an injustice. So I do nothing.
| RaoulP wrote:
| > Bulleting feels like it would be doing an injustice. So I
| do nothing.
|
| I usually suffer from the same. Some periods I do bother
| bulleting, as reminders for thoughts to expand on later in
| the day. But I never do, and then only the bullets remain -
| as a kind of headstone for unwritten thoughts. Still, they
| are better than nothing.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Most of the time it's "I have to do this" or "I wish I had
| time to do this" or "Hey here's a random idea I had" or "My
| kids did this cute thing" or "We fought about this, here's
| what I think" or "oh here's my 3 favorite links from HN and
| what I thought about them or what they made me think about."
|
| It took time to realize that was worth writing down.
|
| Honestly I look back 10 years and see things like you
| describe. "I went to the gym for an hour, worked on this or
| that, blah blah", and I really love seeing that too. That's
| life man. Those memories fill your brain up with experiences
| and a sense of time if you let it. Just remembering how fit I
| used to be makes me happy and makes me want to do that again.
| ozzydave wrote:
| I journal ~daily since having kids. I feel the same way - it
| gives me peace knowing I can look back in time later and relive
| just a little what I was feeling today.
| stephen_g wrote:
| I don't have the motivation to journal, but I do get a fair bit
| of this kind of feeling scrolling back through my camera roll.
| I just take quick photos of all sorts of random stuff that
| happens or places I go, and it's amazing the rush of memories
| that come back looking over them.
| RaoulP wrote:
| This! For all my lack of journaling consistency, my habit of
| taking these kind of quick photos of anything noteworthy has
| given me lots of joy when looking back - although I do feel
| it can be slightly neurotic "in the moment".
| _thisdot wrote:
| It's amazing how quick we forget things we thought at the
| moment were so important. Not in the same vein as journaling,
| but I'd been keeping a list of Notion entries on things I found
| important enough to keep notes on at work for the past 2-3
| years.
|
| It's different from my JIRA work log or Todoist list of
| completed tasks in that these are not everything I did, but
| just the important items. The things where I ran the risk of
| getting stuck
|
| Come appraisal process, I'll have forgotten most things I
| worked on in the year. My imposter syndrome creeps in, but this
| Notion page keeps me sane!
|
| With this proof in hand, I've started journaling. I use the
| Apple Journal app. And it's doing a good job of prompting me!
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > reviewing old entries provides a feeling of history that
| makes life feel soooo long and so rich.
|
| I don't disagree. But I think the flavor of the richness
| depends on the quality of the days. It is my experience that
| decades can also be built from days that ought not be
| preserved.
|
| Or at least not without strong curation and editorial
| treatments.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I have semi-regular journal notes going back over a decade,
| and my experience was opposite to GP - instead of discovering
| how many things happened in that time, I discovered my mind
| has been spinning in circles, trying to find solutions to the
| same problems, and despite feeling otherwise day-to-day, _no
| actual progress has been made_. It was an important discovery
| for me, though not much came of it anyway.
| simpletone wrote:
| > reviewing old entries provides a feeling of history that
| makes life feel soooo long and so rich.
|
| This doesn't sound right at all. For me, and I suspect for most
| people, it has the opposite effect. It makes life feel short,
| fleeting and mundane. Looking back to 2014, I can't believe how
| quickly the past 10 years has gone. Heck just looking back 4
| years, the pandemic years seems to have flown by. It's like a
| distant memory now.
|
| > but for me the perception of the shortness of life is best
| fought by reminding yourself that it is not short
|
| So it isn't journaling at all. You are just rationalizing.
|
| Life is precious because it is short and fleeting. And it's why
| people keep a journal. To keep track of precious time. It's
| also why parents keep a scrapbook of their kids. Because in a
| blink of an eye, the kids grow up and leave the nest.
|
| If you truly thought life wasn't short, you wouldn't keep a
| journal. You'd just live and not keep track of time.
| theodric wrote:
| Life is long, provided you don't just waste your time with
| nonsense. Even eternity wouldn't be long enough for the
| compulsive procrasturbator.
| simpletone wrote:
| > Life is long, provided you don't just waste your time
| with nonsense.
|
| Life is short whether you waste it on nonsense or not. It's
| the nature of human life.
|
| > Even eternity wouldn't be long enough for the compulsive
| procrasturbator.
|
| Sure. But eternity isn't enough for the most accomplished
| either. There is a reason why the emperor of china
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/2000-year-old-
| text...
|
| and steve jobs
|
| https://archive.nytimes.com/well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/
| 2...
|
| both wanted to prolong their lives. I don't think anyone
| would characterize the emperor of china nor steve jobs as
| 'procrasturbators'.
|
| You make it sound like active people ( who don't waste
| their time ) feel that life is long when it's precisely the
| opposite. It's those who don't waste their time who want to
| live longer because they have so much more to do.
|
| Then again, 'wasting time' is a concern for many precisely
| because life is short.
| david-gpu wrote:
| _> Life is long, provided you don 't just waste your time
| with nonsense. Even eternity wouldn't be long enough for
| the compulsive procrasturbator._
|
| Is it possible you are projecting your own insecurities,
| given that you are commenting on HN during work hours on a
| weekday, of all things?
| fufufu123 wrote:
| Agree. When I look at my photo collection it can glance at my
| entire life since ~1998 to present in just a few moments. It
| feels extremely short.
| bowsamic wrote:
| > Heck just looking back 4 years, the pandemic years seems to
| have flown by. It's like a distant memory now.
|
| I'm confused, does it feel recent or very long ago? This
| seems to contradict your previous sentence. If 10 years has
| gone past quickly, how could the pandemic feel like a distant
| memory? In that case it should feel like yesterday
| overtomanu wrote:
| I think he has forgotten most of the memories related to
| pandemic, so it feels like distant memory, only bits and
| pieces left.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Okay but again that makes it sound like it feels very
| long ago, not recent
| balaji1 wrote:
| > It makes life feel short, fleeting and mundane
|
| I read somewhere else that time speeds up when we repeat a
| few boring/not-so-stressful things each day.
|
| > reviewing old entries provides a feeling of history that
| makes life feel soooo long and so rich
|
| I want to agree with it. The more I take on and do, however
| imperfectly and which involves a bit more stress, it starts
| to slow down time. At least in the sense that you look back
| at the previous year and think "wow that was a lot and it
| seems like so long ago" when it actually wasn't that long
| ago.
|
| > It makes life feel short, fleeting and mundane
|
| In fact, the key might be to journal more of the mundane
| things. Like how many times I had to get on a call with the
| background verification company to speed up my move to the
| new company.
|
| and from OP article,
|
| > Surprising information comes in droves every single day, so
| the brain simply paid a lot of attention
|
| how come all the new/surprising info from shorts/reels/tiktok
| not have a effect of slowing down time haha?
| bonoboTP wrote:
| > the pandemic years seems to have flown by. It's like a
| distant memory now.
|
| So does it feel distant or just like yesterday (i.e. time
| flew by)? The two seem contradictory.
| fufufu123 wrote:
| You're apparently in a good place so looking back is your path
| to your joyful present. I'm in a bad place so looking back is
| my seeing back when I was still hopeful for my various life
| goals. I'd meet someone and have someone to share my life with,
| do activities with, travel with, raise kids with, etc. I never
| met that person and now at 60+ that's nearly impossible so
| looking back hurts. It hurts a-lot. Seeing the opportunities I
| missed, the time I squandered, the naivete that "it will happen
| when it happens" etc.. I absolutely want to strangle
| Google/Apple/Facebook when they shove "memories" in my face. I
| didn't ask for it, piss off!
|
| As for the topic itself. The obvious reason time passes faster
| when we're older to me is that each day is less of my life. At
| 1 week old a day is 1/7th of my entire existence. At 60 one day
| would be 1/22000th of my life.
|
| I also feel it in terms of time left. When you have $1000 in
| your wallet, splurging on a $50 meal might seem fine. When
| you've got $75 in your wallet you're unlikely to blow $50 of it
| on a meal (unless you've got a supply elsewhere). In the same
| way, when I've have got 20yrs left in my life, some of them
| probably not in the best of health, then committing 10 of them
| to move to a foreign country to immerse myself in a new
| language feels very different than when I've got 60 years left
| (20yrs old). Seeing your life left clock go down 1/60th (1yr at
| 20yrs old) feels slower than seeing it go down 1/20th (1yr at
| 60yrs old). that's 3x faster.
| EEMac wrote:
| I hope things get better for you.
|
| If it helps: https://www.7cups.com/
| overtomanu wrote:
| Maybe you are better off than people in bad marriage's.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Sorry to hear that things did not turn out as expected for
| such a long time.
|
| If I may provide a suggestion... search for a serious website
| that is about dating (not tinder or something the like) in
| your area and connect to people and try to date (meet in
| person for at least an hour or so) at least one person once a
| week. Don't spend too much effort in people who just want to
| stick to online conversations or fooling around, just move
| on. If at the meetup there's no click, you have a good
| evening or at least you built up experience in dating.
|
| You will need to get probably seriously out of your comfort
| zone but it becomes easier each time! Practice makes perfect!
| popularonion wrote:
| Thank you for expressing what myself and so many others can't
| put into words.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I'm sorry to hear this has been difficult. I want you to know
| that I feel this way often as well. If you ever want to chat,
| my email is at the link in my post (GP to this comment). I'd
| be a very lucky man to hear your experiences and learn from
| you.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| My situation is different. I lost the love of my life and
| felt lost and alone. Even with the support of good friends
| and family.
|
| But that said, there's alot of philosophy and other things to
| help. Aeschylus said "Happiness is a choice that requires
| effort at times." Another relevant quote is that the best
| time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the next best is
| today.
|
| You won't get what you wanted, but live in the present and
| enjoy what you can have. I'd give anything to get my wife
| back, but that's not reality. The next best thing to live
| today and find joy.
| Hendrikto wrote:
| Sorry for you loss and thanks for the advice. I like the
| Aeschylus quote, it's a good one.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The past is the past, no sense in regretting it since you
| cannot change it.
|
| I'm not quite as old you but close, and I already feel what
| you're feeling about the time left. That there isn't a lot of
| it, or that it will be gone quickly. Everyone has things they
| will not get a chance to try or experience. No lifetime
| offers everything, and every path taken means many, many
| others will be never explored.
|
| Like money, you can't take memories with you. So try not to
| dwell on things you didn't do or that didn't work out the way
| you imagined. Half or more of people who get married end up
| divorced. Probably many more are less than happy. Kids can be
| a joy but they can also be a heartache. Every criminal is
| somebody's kid. Nothing comes with any guarantees.
|
| Make life interesting today, as today is the only thing you
| really experience.
| koyote wrote:
| > then committing 10 of them to move to a foreign country to
| immerse myself in a new language feels very different than
| when I've got 60 years left
|
| Could you elaborate on that? As someone who is younger I have
| noticed that many (but by no means all) people over 60 often
| do not want to commit to these kind of 'life-changing'
| escapades, despite now having the time (kids out of the house
| and/or retired). I assumed it was more around lack of
| (youthful) energy/health and the fact that you're so used to
| how you've lived for decades that change is far more
| difficult or feels more daunting.
|
| You're saying that having a relatively shorter amount of
| 'time left' makes such a move different, wouldn't that fact
| make it easier? (YOLO and so on...)
| overtomanu wrote:
| similar to google photos memories notifications.
| 6B wrote:
| Thank you for the inspiration. I'll start journaling again. And
| I miss it too.
| barbs wrote:
| Just wanted to post a quick comment - I really appreciate your
| simple and elegant journalling solution. I think I want to
| implement something similar. Thanks!
| insonable wrote:
| I do something similar, but with photos. I have a 4k display on
| the wall with a rpi/python script that picks photos from today
| +/- 15 days for all years, then makes collages to display, 1
| per minute. So the photos are from the same time of year, but
| for years past, and every day new photos cycle in and out.
| Another neat way to stir up memories of old, if you have a pile
| of photos around.
| justanotherjoe wrote:
| it might be because schools are just more interesting than adult
| existence. Everyone comes from all walks of life and all you seem
| to think is to have fun (and other wholesome things)
| anonzzzies wrote:
| I have been able to avoid this by just immediately switching to
| something else when I feel things are getting too comfy. Doing
| things that are not comfortable seem to stretch time for me. It
| works so well that for me (at 50) time is moving incredibly
| slowly and I like it that way.
| paraschopra wrote:
| I also do the same. Spent a bunch of time scaling a B2B
| company, and now I'm doing a consumer app intentionally for an
| intentionally different challenge.
| Shawnecy wrote:
| The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows calls it 'Zenosyne' [0], or the
| sense that time keeps going faster. I quite like it and have
| found myself coming back to rewatch it every couple years.
|
| [0] = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNgyEmYyQF4
| hiddencost wrote:
| LSD can put you in a childlike state, increasing neuroplasticity.
| randomdata wrote:
| Watching my children, they appear to have more time. I expect it
| is not so much that time seems to pass faster, but that as you
| age you move into loftier goals that take longer.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| 1. Time is, literally, relative. We have nothing to compare
| things to when we are young, so everything takes for-ev-eeeeer.
|
| 2. The brain optimizes for storage. Our day to day is very
| consistent; we have routines. Those routines blur because why
| remember details if the details are very similar.
|
| Combine the two and as you age, things just feel like they fly
| by.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| (1) is nonsense (and literally not needed to explain this
| phenomenon) but (2) is true.
| velcrovan wrote:
| I think this blog post of mine from 2007 gives a better (or at
| least more succinct) answer to this question:
| https://thelocalyarn.com/article/this-is-your-life
| avgcorrection wrote:
| That's just some made up math-as-psychology that makes sense to
| nerds for some reason. Just conflating two completely different
| concepts.
|
| Any explanation that doesn't say anything about the mind is
| just baloney. Time here is an experiential phenomenon. It's not
| fractions. Insert your pet theory in a context where adults
| have the same mindset as children and retain memories perfectly
| and have no reason to discard/compress memories them--you see
| that it's totally irrelevant whether your life is 2/3 or 1/8
| over. It has everything to do with how the mind works, not how
| numbers work.
|
| Bonus points for the "unscientific representation of your
| potential cumulative effect"... which is very self-aware-
| useless.
| naasking wrote:
| The explanation is probably simple in the end: children are
| mentally more present and mindful, and thus bored, and as adults
| we become increasingly distracted by higher order thoughts and
| projections and plans so we're considerably less mindful of the
| present.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I've learned that the passage of time is extremely relative. My
| college years were extremely full of new experiences and they
| feel like ages. Once I started working, my life was very rote and
| consisted mainly of driving from home to work and back again. I
| worked a lot of hours and vacations and weekend trips were
| infrequent. Time flew by.
|
| Then I ditched settled life and started traveling year round with
| a couple of bases i spend more time in between traveling. I've
| learned that the change in environment keeps putting the mind
| back into a more neuroplastic state where we are more open to the
| experiences around us, can change our habits more easily and just
| generally turn off autopilot for awhile.
|
| I've been doing this for about 9 years. It's been like a century.
| I feel like a very different person then when I started. I have
| some friends who still live in the same city at the same job that
| I left originally and it absolutely blows my mind that they stood
| still while it feels like I went to Mars and back.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Yeah I can't believe more people don't just travel for a
| decade.
| rcbdev wrote:
| It's not as unreasonable as you think - even in lower income
| / high tax burden countries like Austria an avg. net salary
| is enough to keep on travelling to all kinds of places.
|
| I know people who work for the state government who keep
| appearing in India, Thailand, Brazil etc. when we're in
| meetings - usually they're billed as external consultants to
| avoid tax liability issues.
|
| The true crux is that most people don't actually want the
| digital nomad lifestyle, humans naturally seek out some form
| of stability.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Exactly this. But I disagree that settled is natural.
| Humans evolved in nomadic tribes that followed the herds.
| Stability is a social technology that was developed
| alongside agriculture. Stability feels unnatural to me and
| I get the itch after too many months in one place. My two
| bases are near family and I have developed friendships with
| other traveling people. I'll meet up this weekend in Miami
| with a Swede that I met in Portugal and last saw in New
| York.
| smokel wrote:
| I think this argument is a bit of a stretch. Nomadic
| tribes did not travel by plane, and they certainly did
| not have friends in strange places.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Fair enough! The tribe has changed for sure and so have
| the antelope.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Certainly many people on this website could if it were their
| priority. Some money is required, but not very much. I'm sure
| I make less money than many here because I take jobs that
| prioritize remote work and flexibility.
|
| So what's really the blocker for many is a choice of
| priorities. I won't have children. I don't have a strong need
| to play homemaker or gardener. My lifestyle is pretty similar
| to a lot of retirees who have second homes and travel between
| them. I talk to quite a few in one of my home bases and we
| have a lot of the same travel plans as well as it's common
| for them to try to spend a month or two a year traveling to
| new places.
| dingnuts wrote:
| working and travelling on occasion -- "on an average net
| salary" implies not actually quitting your job -- is not
| what the GP described.
|
| The GP described quitting their job and going traveling for
| an entire decade, which is an incredible luxury over an
| enormous timespan that only the luckiest will ever be able
| to enjoy. The fact that the GP then chooses to treat this
| gift as though it makes him better than his colleagues who
| had to stay and work for that decade is.. frankly just
| gross. "They stood still" no bud, they had a life
| experience that 99% of the world population has no choice
| but to experience. Maybe instead of being pretentious about
| your experiences, try gratefulness?
|
| I say this as a "privileged" tech worker, with "only" a six
| figure salary. I could quit my job and go traveling, maybe
| for a year, and then be broke and set far back on my
| retirement goals, and my hopes of ever retiring. And I
| could only do that if I was tremendously selfish, like you:
| choosing to have no kids, choosing to allow the elders in
| my family to face poverty instead of proper end of life
| care, etc.
|
| If you have the ability to not work and travel for a DECADE
| of your life, I suggest you have an immense gratitude
| towards everyone else keeping society running while you
| luxuriate, instead of pretending as though the fact that
| you've had this opportunity somehow makes you superior to
| those who had to work
| bscphil wrote:
| > The GP described quitting their job and going traveling
| for an entire decade
|
| You replied to the person who wrote the GP. I don't see
| anything in their post that confirms not working - they
| just work remotely, as the post you are replying to
| confirms.
|
| > And I could only do that if I was tremendously selfish,
| like you: choosing to have no kids, choosing to allow the
| elders in my family to face poverty instead of proper end
| of life care, etc.
|
| This is _deeply_ unfair. Choosing not to have kids is not
| selfish at all. By some metrics it 's even laudable, but
| you don't have to go that far to simply not condemn
| people who make that choice. And you have no idea how
| much they make or whether their parents are "facing
| poverty". Perhaps their parents died younger. Perhaps
| they have excellent retirement savings. Perhaps OP is one
| of seven children who contribute equally to their
| parents' care. You don't know.
|
| I'm in full agreement with you that traveling like this
| is a privilege of the wealthy. But I think the way you
| condemn it falls pretty flat.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all
| together;)
|
| I did make a choice, and it didn't involve all that much
| luck beyond what everyone here has, a lucky break in a
| good career and a high income birth country. Actually
| there was bad luck, my partner and I were laid off at the
| same time. Sometimes the good comes from the bad.
|
| I don't think I am better or worse, but I do push myself
| always to experience new things. It's hard to imagine my
| life any other way, but then lots of people are deeply
| passionate about things that I'm not going to understand
| and vice versa.
|
| I think it's interesting that you call not having
| children a selfish act. Having biological children always
| struck me as very egocentric. For me I have no choice. I
| am gay and our families live in places where one day in
| the not too distant future LGBTQ couples could have their
| children taken away. Maybe that would have been a good
| road to walk down, but it was not my road to take.
|
| It's also interesting what you project onto me around
| elder care. What I see is that most people I know live
| far from their parents and families. They spend their
| whole professional lives in major cities and visit home
| maybe 2 weeks a year. That pattern of life doesn't make
| sense to me. I love my family and want the flexibility to
| see them often. If they needed money or needed care, I
| would give it to them, but they have no need. Besides
| spending some of the year near them, I know that I
| inspired them to travel more and take bigger risks in
| their retirement. I know I have helped enrich their
| lives. We will go on a few trips together this year and I
| never have to decline an invite because of not enough
| PTO.
|
| If there's something about your life you feel trapped in
| and unhappy with, try to change it!
| globular-toast wrote:
| Definitely. My brother works in a trade, works for a year
| or two then quits and travels for 6+ months at a time. He
| also has very few possessions and no liabilities or
| commitments. I prefer a slightly different balance with a
| few more possessions but still travel for about a month a
| year. Like you say, it's all about priorities. We all work
| way longer/harder than we need to for basic sustenance.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| I had a whole rant queued up until I realized you were being
| sarcastic.
|
| /me with my 15 days of vacation a year
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| I'm sure from their perspective you are the one that stood
| still lol
| dougmwne wrote:
| They are probably thinking that life starts to pass by fast
| and wondering where the last 10 years went.
|
| I had some friends living interesting lives when I was
| settled. Sailing the globe, doing seasonal work in the arctic
| and backcountry skiing mountains with no name. Doing field
| work in the African bush. I kept thinking about them and
| wondering how I could be them, like the little scratch on the
| roof of your mouth that would heal if only you could stop
| tonguing it.
| librish wrote:
| I think the intellectually honest counterpoint is more
| about relationships. As someone who has been a digital
| nomad, it's hard to form deeper relationships when people
| are always leaving.
|
| It's also hard to have hobbies that rely on the same group
| of people meeting in person over a long period of time.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I don't think there's any one size fits all way to
| digital nomad. I go back to the same places year after
| year. My friends and family are in those places. They are
| not in New York and San Francisco, I have no family
| there.
|
| My partner and I enjoy our hobbies with groups of people
| when we are there. It's not that different than being a
| snowbird. The main difference is that in addition to home
| base time, we also spend 4 months a year traveling,
| sometimes on our own, sometimes with our people.
| tetha wrote:
| For me, it's been throwing myself into a complex hobby - music.
|
| like, as much as I like where I work, and as much as work
| throws new and weird challenges at me, but .. it's just
| computer maintenance. Entire years are kinda the same rote of
| work-shopping-sleep-work. I don't even have many memories of
| these years, honestly.
|
| Now that I've left my comfort zone with my instruments, do
| stuff with the instruments, go to a lot more concerts... life
| is kinda revolving around concerts and every day has some thing
| to approach with the instruments I'm not happy with. Suddenly
| that week is when I picked up TES BOS to make the bass sound
| better, that week was with a few friends, that week was a
| frozen crown concert, that week was when I got a really cool
| intro in a riff challenge, that week my teeth confused the fuck
| out of my dentist and their tool tray ended up as a diorama of
| a medieval battlefield, ...
| avgcorrection wrote:
| I think with these things it helps to reflect. If you reflect you
| can either glean the truth about it or make up some intuition
| that is instrumentally useful. I think a lot of use manage to
| reach some wisdom milestones completely independently by just
| reflecting.
|
| And if you are _concerned_ about this feeling of time going by
| faster: being less of a tunnel-visioned adult who is mostly
| focused on the extrinsic can maybe counteract this feeling.
| kamaal wrote:
| Nah
|
| Actually we do have very little time, its just that the upswing
| and downswing have different feels to it. You might have noticed
| this even when you are driving for a vacation. Drive to the
| picnic spot feels like an eternity, drive back home feels quick.
|
| There are ~52 weeks a year. Which makes a week 2% of a year.
| That's already a fast enough tick. Weeks do go by fast. An year
| is like 10% of a decade. Once you are past the age of 40. You
| indeed have little time left.
|
| Human life is short if you are doing remotely well in life. It
| can be a suffering if you are not doing great.
| jalk wrote:
| My dad (who is in his late seventies) told me that while years
| seems to pass faster and faster with age, the future is still as
| far away, as it has always been.
| jmathai wrote:
| > Take on projects that you have no idea about.
|
| The idea of high correlation between predictability and time
| flying is interesting.
|
| I'm working on patenting an idea and have filed the provisional.
| This gives me exactly 1 year to file the full application.
| There's so many unknowns between now and then which has me very
| aware of time and actively wanting to slow it down.
|
| I'm not certain it always applies though. I've definitely had
| periods of high unpredictability where I enjoyed what I was doing
| and it didn't seem to go by slow at all.
| whoomp12341 wrote:
| I assumed it was just short term memory loss perceived as a
| framerate
| olav wrote:
| I wonder if the way the author describes it, ie. new memories are
| just diffs against older experiences, is scientifically grounded.
|
| I came up with another explanation: My thought processes have
| slowed, so the world has sped up, relative to myself.
|
| Is there scientific evidence for either explanation?
| standardUser wrote:
| I try to balance my life between new and exciting experiences and
| more routine and mundane experiences. The routine and mundane are
| important. They are how I maintain my important relationships and
| pay the bills. But when it all becomes routine, time will fly by
| regardless of age (at least for adults). But my sense of time
| reliably slows to a crawl if I have enough new stimulus. And the
| older I have gotten (40's currently) the more I have gone out of
| my way to purposefully generate experiences that slows things
| down.
|
| I lived abroad for 2 months a few years back and it felt like 6
| months. I moved states not long after and once again, massive
| slowdown. That first year in a new city felt like three. New
| relationships can do the same thing. As can new jobs or, even
| more so, a career change. And let's not forget drugs.
|
| But those are all things a person can completely avoid if they
| don't make a conscious effort not to. My default for many years
| was to sit snuggly at a boring job, travel only intermittently
| and otherwise immerse myself in repetitive media. I refer to
| those as the lost years (mid-to-late 20's).
| tacone wrote:
| I have a memory from my childhood that still makes me smile.
|
| At six years old I have been told that old people tend do sleep
| less.
|
| So I went to my father and asked: "Daddy, why do old people sleep
| so little?"
|
| He looked at me and said: "Because in a way they always sleep".
| gnatman wrote:
| "My grandfather used to say: 'Life is astonishingly short. As I
| look back over it, life seems so foreshortened to me that I can
| hardly understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to
| ride over to the next village without being afraid that, quite
| apart from accidents, even the span of a normal life that passes
| happily may be totally insufficient for such a ride.'"
|
| - Franz Kafka, The Next Village
| irrational wrote:
| I wonder if people who daily reflect on their day and write in a
| journal experience time passing more slowly?
|
| I've heard that time seems to pass faster because it is such a
| smaller percentage of our life. For a 2 year old, 1 year is 50%
| of their life. For a 100 year old, 1 year is 1% of their life.
| xenodium wrote:
| If anyone's keen to journal on iOS, I'm looking for beta testers!
| No login, social, tracking, etc. Saves to plain text.
|
| https://xenodium.com/an-ios-journaling-app-powered-by-org-pl...
| throw0101c wrote:
| See also Greek _chronos_ versus _kairos_ :
|
| > _It is one of two words that the ancient Greeks had for 'time';
| the other being chronos (khronos). Whereas the latter refers to
| chronological or sequential time,[2] kairos signifies a good or
| proper time for action. In this sense, while chronos is
| quantitative, kairos has a qualitative, permanent nature.[3]_
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kairos
|
| > _The ancient Greeks recognized the difference between
| chronological time (chronos) and subjective time (kairos)._
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception
| adawg4 wrote:
| The vsauce video on time reminds me of this thread
| nutate wrote:
| My thought has always been that the ratio of lifetime to any
| given sublifetime unit of time is always increasing, leading to a
| change in relative experience. But if you focus on the fact that
| a second is constant, you always have the same amount of time
| right now.
| bradley13 wrote:
| I think it is much simpler. When you are 4 years old, a year us a
| _quarter_ of your life. When you ate 40, it is a mere 2.5%.
|
| Comparatively, that difference is huge: a year is far more
| significant to the child than to the adult.
| smokel wrote:
| This sounds like a reasonable argument, but I don't think it
| is. A day for a 4 year old still takes the same 24 hours as a
| day for a 40 year old.
|
| The argument presupposes that you experience the length of an
| event relative to the sum length of all experiences you've
| lived through. That seems pretty much related to the premise of
| the article we are discussing. So it's not much simpler.
| bachmeier wrote:
| I don't agree that it does. Something I've noticed as I've gotten
| older is that it feels like time is passing more slowly. My late
| 30s is when time felt like it passed the fastest.
|
| On the other hand, if you're talking about "that happened two
| years ago, but it feels like it was yesterday" I agree. I don't
| think that's what the post is talking about.
| smokel wrote:
| You might be an interesting specimen for scientific research.
| What food do you eat? Do you travel the world year round? Do
| you moisturize?
|
| Seriously, I'd probably give a year of my life to experience it
| being two years longer.
| bachmeier wrote:
| When my kid was young, it felt like time was evaporating.
| Days would fly by without any possibility of doing the things
| I needed to do, much less do the things I wanted to do. My
| life was defined by my time shortages. That's no longer the
| case. Not that I'm less busy (this is the busiest I've ever
| been) but I seem to have things better under control. So I
| think it's more about being better at time management.
| lumb63 wrote:
| Yesterday I watched a video that described a two-dimensional grid
| where the x and y axes were "skill" and "challenge" respectively.
| A range surrounding y=x was the flow state. Below it was boredom
| (skills exceed demands) and above it was anxiety (demands exceed
| skills). Flow arises when our skills align to what we must do;
| not something easy, not something hard. The presenter also noted
| that amount of time in flow correlated with life satisfaction,
| and that it's also when people do their best work, and time moves
| the fastest.
|
| That's the sweet spot to be. Where life is challenging, so you
| aren't bored, but not so challenging to where you are
| overwhelmed. It seems the author urges people to flip from the
| boredom side of the flow state to the anxiety side because both
| of those are where time feels like an eternity (which anyone who
| has been in either of those states can attest to). I think a
| better idea is to question if what the author is proposing,
| trying to make time feel slower, is a good idea. Personally, I
| think the exact opposite is the case; all the best moments I've
| had are ones that went by "too quick", and we can't have our cake
| and eat it too. Time going by slowly is likely a canary in the
| coal mine for something being wrong.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I feel that as children your experience is lot more variable...
| Every year of school or even university is slightly different,
| but once you get to work life many years can mostly be same or at
| least weeks and months...
|
| On other hand I am sure there is some difference with perception
| of time when you get older and you will handle boredom better or
| can take something nap like just easier...
| glimshe wrote:
| I think that's the reason of the trope "As days becomes months,
| and months becomes years". The days eventually become very much
| alike.
| larve wrote:
| One thing I love about the speedup of time is that picking a
| compounding habit (say, doing something for 10 minutes each day)
| feels like having an almost instant pay-off.
|
| "Oh wow 3 years already passed" -> "Oh wow I got pretty good at
| this thing I picked up just yesterday"
|
| I picked up biking during the pandemic, and 3 years later I have
| legs of steel, 10k miles under my belt, and people know me as
| "the bike guy", when I think of myself as "ok this biking thing
| is kind of fun".
| Madmallard wrote:
| It kinda sucks that you learn much slower when you're older
| though. I've been practicing piano an hour or two a day for 7
| months and I don't really feel like I've improved at all. I was
| intermediate when I started and I am taking professional
| lessons. Mid 30s here.
| boredemployee wrote:
| learning curve of the piano is crazy. and if you stop playing
| you go back to zero really really fast
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| What instruments are relatively easier to play?
| marktucker wrote:
| I could recommend taiko (Japanese) drums as an adult
| hobby. You very quickly get off the ground in terms of
| making wonderful music together with a group.
| boredemployee wrote:
| sorry, in fact i think its hard to play any instrument,
| but my experience is with piano only. i studied hard for
| 18 months in my mid 30s and could play many pieces of
| Erik Satie and some other musicians.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| That's very much _not_ been my experience. I learned to
| play when I was in grade school, took most of a decade off
| during college and early 20s, then picked it back up.
|
| I also had an enforced multi-year hiatus when I broke my
| arm at age 35.
|
| I might need to do some extra drills and practice to get
| back to where I had been, but the fundamentals never left.
| Like riding a bike - might be out of shape, but I still
| know how everything works.
| hosh wrote:
| That's not been my experience with the piano. I
| definitely forgot a lot. Maybe I never got the
| fundamentals set enough. It wasn't my lifelong passion
| either.
|
| You don't forget how to ride a bike because the bike is
| doing most of the work. Because of physics, a bike stays
| better balanced when it is moving.
|
| Compare that to say, pro racers, mountain bikers, trick
| riders, etc. there are significantly more skill involved
| in those than casually riding around.
| risenshinetech wrote:
| Weird that with no other information you just immediately
| attribute this to your (not-very-old) age
| navane wrote:
| You might need a teacher. Biking is all endurance, piano
| involves a bit more.
| Solvency wrote:
| Cycling, maybe. Mountain biking anything of merit takes
| extreme skill.
| hosh wrote:
| I don't pick things up nearly as fast now (early 40s) as I
| was when I was younger (pre-tten, teen, 20s, and 30s).
| However, I also pick things up in a very different way that
| in some ways, are more effective than when I was young.
|
| For example, it takes me longer to gain the intuition of
| something, but on the other hand, when I do, it plugs into a
| vaster web of knowledge. I am certainly more disciplined in
| both mind and body compared to when I was younger. I'm
| capable of clearer visualization and simulations now than
| before. I've got a lot more math under my belt.
|
| I learned piano as a kid, picked it up pretty fast, and
| forgot a lot of it. I am not practiced in sight reading any
| more. On the other hand, when I poked around learning again,
| it's tapping much deeper into music theory, composition. For
| example, I learned Petzold's Minute in G Major (formerly
| attributed to Bach) as a kid and as an adult. I still can't
| quite get both hands working together as an adult ... but I
| was cracking up as I kept seeing how beautiful the chords are
| composed together in a way I never noticed as a kid.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC-8P-sapHw
|
| This guy has a lot of really great videos on how to practice
| smarter and has a lot of answers to dumb questions that you
| don't really wanna ask. I hope it helps.
| larve wrote:
| I'm not sure how it applies to learning, but for any activity
| based on consistency and quantity, I find it wild how quickly
| time seems to shrink and "writing 500 words a day" seems to
| overnight turn into "I wrote 100k words in the last 3 years".
| My goal at this point in life (42) is not really to get
| better at stuff, but just focus on doing what I like and want
| to be doing, while leading a stable life.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| You probably improved alot. Is there an objective test. If
| that test can be rescaled by a function to linear based on
| average person's time even better.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Reading this after a workout! Agree. Seems like yesterday I
| started going.
| nox101 wrote:
| This is the part I found most interesting about the first few
| episodes of "Frieren: Beyond Journey's End" anime. The main
| character is an elf. In this world elves are rare so she hasn't
| see another in 100s of years. Time for her passes differently
| than humans. She's got 1000s of years so for her, spending 10yrs
| in some library researching a hobby topic is not a big
| commitment. For her human friends it would be a large portion of
| their life. She commits to multi-year projects easily (10 years
| of a 5000 year life is 1/500th of your life vs a human where it's
| more like 1/8th). And, she watches her human friends pass away.
| Societies form and collapse. Etc...
| beaugunderson wrote:
| Another explanation: https://www.kafalas.com/Logtime.html
| Alifatisk wrote:
| You all should checkout
| https://www.maximiliankiener.com/digitalprojects/time
|
| It explains and illustrates why time flies so well, love that
| site.
| rajeshp1986 wrote:
| Modern society and work makes people have less free time to form
| memories. Certainly, people felt time is running fast even in
| older times but I doubt if time ran faster at the same rate for
| people from say 50s as much as it is for us today?
| jenoer wrote:
| I think that the older you get, the less new milestones/events
| you have (that impress you and remember in detail). This results
| in having less moments to refer to when looking back in time,
| (skipping uneventful timespans). This makes things seem closer to
| the current time than they really are as everything in between is
| empty noise.
| debo_ wrote:
| I had some very long periods of intense suffering over the last
| decade. After... a lot, I'm in a much better place now.
|
| I made some minor lifestyle changes to make things a bit easier
| on myself, but nothing earth-shattering. Most of my days are
| largely the same.
|
| However, life moves much more slowly now. When I get to the end
| of a week, Monday seems quite a long time ago.
|
| I'm not sure about the predictability thesis. The way I think
| about it is that I have no expectations from life anymore; I take
| what I can get, give what I can, and focus on one day at a time.
| I think this more than anything has contributed to a feeling of
| my life slowing way down.
| locallost wrote:
| I always thought of it as each unit of time being relatively
| shorter in relation to your life on earth. A year is 20% of the
| time a 5-year old is aware of, but only 2% of a 50-year olds
| life. But the boredom argument is pretty strong. I remember
| vividly the time when I moved to another country and those first
| three months still feel like they lasted longer than the last
| three years.
| s0teri0s wrote:
| It is a progression:
|
| year 1 = 100% of your life year 2 = 50% of your life year 3 = 33%
| of your life ... year 10 = 10% of your life ... year 50 = 2% of
| your life
|
| etc.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| > Processing speeds start decreasing well before age forty (which
| may be why mathematicians and physicists commonly do their best
| work in their youth).
|
| Atul Gawande, _Being Mortal_
| javier_e06 wrote:
| My way to slow down time is using git to write a diary with every
| day is a commit.
|
| I try to be careful not fall on the fallacy that "I get it" and
| draw assumptions about things.
|
| If not, after your pass your 50s time turns into blurring mashup
| of deja-vu's and the feeling that you are Fred Flinstone rolling
| in my Flintmobile while the background scenery, the houses, the
| palm trees and buildings repeat every 3 seconds.
| rstuart4133 wrote:
| I have a simpler theory. The apparent speed of the passage of
| time is inversely proportion the number of memories being
| accumulated.
|
| I don't remember what it was like to be a toddler. All I can tell
| you is "they are sponges" is a common description. It blows me
| away they can learn how to recognise faces, walk, speak a
| language in the space of a few years.
|
| As a kid I recall getting bored very easily. I needed a constant
| stream of stimulation to feed my brain.
|
| As a young adult I recall a friend asking me to look up a
| telephone book to find the a persons address. I got back to the
| car and told them the address. "Oh", they said "I must have the
| spelling wrong, try ...". No problem, I remembered every name and
| address on the page I've just seen.
|
| But as I grew older, remembering stuff came less easily. Now at
| over 60, if I put in a situation where I'm forced to remember a
| while pile of new stuff I feel distinctly uncomfortable, whereas
| before I was better at it than most.
|
| And during all that time, the passage of time has sped up. Ergo,
| my theory is I gauge the amount of time that has passed between
| events X and Y by the number of memories accumulated in the
| period.
| m0llusk wrote:
| This sounds highly rational and also comes across to me as
| completely wrong.
|
| I have maintained a fairly tight circle of friends and
| acquaintances for more than three decades. One of the patterns
| that stands out very strongly is the high variability in the
| perception of time. Those who have settled into a routine such as
| a relationship that endures and work that remains highly similar
| even if the company and title change tend to experience this time
| flying by effect strongly. Others who have had major
| complications to deal with like relationships coming and going,
| medical problems, big changes to location, fundamental changes in
| work situation and so on end to have a critical time slowing
| effect. Coming to grips with big changes and getting settled
| again requires a lot of attention and work and does not allow for
| a relaxed grip on life events. Try getting mugged, dumped, fired,
| sick, and then moving somewhere unfamiliar and you might find
| this time passing faster effect disappears, if only until
| adjustments are made.
|
| This implies the whole effect may be about how humans must focus
| when pushed but then tend to zoom out and ease up when ongoing
| attempts to steady themselves are successful. Reminds me of the
| book Tempo by Venkatesh Rao (https://www.ribbonfarm.com/tempo/).
| user90131313 wrote:
| No mention of energy? I think energy plays a big role because
| your movement and energy literally becomes less and less each
| year. At 80 you don't have much energy, forget about any other
| thing
| davis wrote:
| We've known this for over a decade at least
| https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-03/how-time-flie...
| karaterobot wrote:
| It would be interesting to know when the subjective midpoint of
| your life is. I mean, if you lived to 80, and time seemed to
| speed up as you get older, is the subjective middle of your
| lifespan more like age 35, or more like age 25? I recognize it's
| impossible to answer this question from inside a life, but I have
| wondered it many times.
| airocker wrote:
| According to this book: https://valsec.barnesandnoble.com/w/slow-
| down-time-the-power... , it basically happens because the number
| of snapshots you encode per second goes down. Snapshots are
| visual cues that we encode. The best example is that if we are
| watching a fan start, after a certain speed, we cannot tell how
| many wings are there on the fan. We are not snapshotting fast
| enough. Younger people can probably tell the number of wings on a
| faster fan :). Various things slow down this snapshotting in our
| brain, and the best antidote is to get in the zone and do things
| with immense attention.
| nerder92 wrote:
| One very simple explanation I've read is that time perception (as
| time itself) is relative. Time goes slower when you are a child
| because your perception of time is relative to the totality of
| time you've experienced.
|
| So for instance, when you go from 1 to 2yrs old, it's double the
| amount of your entire life, but from 80 to 81 it's just a small
| fraction.
|
| Not sure if this has been proven or is even possible to prove.
| awb wrote:
| That makes sense to me.
|
| Also, if you think about memory recall, it takes a second to
| recall a memory.
|
| So you have the ability to traverse time at a rate of (Your
| Current Age - Age of Your Earliest Memory) / 1 second
|
| So maybe it's also the feeling that looking back in time feels
| faster (more time has elapsed relative to the speed of memory
| recall) as you get older.
| LorenDB wrote:
| I also tend to view it this way.
| osmsucks wrote:
| Came here to write the same thing :)
| eep_social wrote:
| On top of this, the totality of your experience also grows with
| time. To a four year old, many day-to-day experiences are fresh
| and new. By the time they're thirty, there are far fewer such
| events on any given day.
| themagician wrote:
| "Life is short and life is long, but not in that order."
|
| https://youtu.be/SNgyEmYyQF4
| bibliotekka wrote:
| I thought I watched a Vsauce video that debunked this idea.
| Instead they suggested it was the fact that adults have fewer
| novel experiences than children. In other words, have lots of
| new experiences and time seems to extend. Something about the
| brain storing "same" in some kind of compressed time memory
| slot.
|
| Oh yeah, found it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHL9GP_B30E
| nerevarthelame wrote:
| This is a lot of speculation about the brain and how memories are
| recorded, by someone with no apparent training on the subject,
| and with no sources cited.
|
| Maybe they're right. But I'd prefer more reliable sources, which
| other commenters here have provided.
| hosh wrote:
| In my early and mid 30s, as a result of visionary experiences, my
| experience of "lived time" changed. In general, moments lasts a
| lot longer.
|
| This doesn't really have to do with the brain becoming a better
| prediction machine so much as how mindful and present you are in
| the moment. While it is true that doing the same things over and
| over creates habits (ruts) of the mind, the practice of
| mindfulness reverses this.
|
| These days (in my early 40s), when I spar with swords, time
| stretches out by a lot. Especially during tournaments.
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