Remember waiting an hour for your favorite cartoon as a kid? It felt like forever. But now, a year goes by in a blink. “Didn’t January just happen?” is a sentiment that echoes across generations. Whether you’re 35 or 65, the feeling is universal: life speeds up as we get older. But is this just an illusion, or is there real science behind the phenomenon?
Turns out, it’s not just your imagination—there are deep neurological, psychological, and experiential reasons for why time seems to race ahead in adulthood.
The shrinking proportion theory
One of the simplest explanations for why time feels faster with age is known as the proportionality theory. It suggests that each year you live becomes a smaller percentage of your life so far. To a 10-year-old, one year is 10% of their lived experience; to a 50-year-old, it’s just 2%.
This model is compelling, especially when visualized on a graph, where the perceived length of time appears to decline exponentially with age. However, critics argue this theory alone doesn’t fully explain how we experience time on a moment-to-moment basis. If it did, then we’d feel life speeding up much more dramatically as early as age six.
The slowdown of the brain’s internal clock
A more neurological explanation involves what scientists call our neural conduction velocity—essentially, the speed at which our brain processes information. Research shows this speed gradually declines as we age, meaning our brains fire fewer “time markers” per second.
Think of your brain as a camera capturing the world in frames per second. Children process more sensory information—more “frames”—per unit of time. Adults, on the other hand, experience fewer neural impulses, which results in a blurrier, faster-feeling experience of time. It’s not time speeding up; it’s your mental stopwatch slowing down.
Novelty and memory: The real-time distorters
Time perception isn’t just about how we feel in the moment. It’s also influenced by how we remember those moments. And that’s where novelty plays a starring role.
In childhood, the world is new—first pets, first bike rides, first heartbreaks. These novel experiences demand more mental energy, which in turn creates denser, longer-lasting memories. As adults, many of our days blur together due to repetition and routine. We simply don’t store as many new “chapters” in the story of our life.
Interestingly, studies show that your brain’s energy use peaks around age five, with up to 66% of a child’s resting energy consumed by the brain. It makes sense—everything is new, and everything is being recorded.
Flow state and focus: The illusion of fast time
Another culprit? Flow state. When we’re completely immersed in an activity—whether it’s coding, painting, or binge-watching a show—time seems to vanish. Adults are more likely to enter flow states in work or hobbies, which compresses our in-the-moment sense of time.
This is compounded by modern life’s distractions. The more fragmented your attention, the fewer mental “snapshots” your brain stores, resulting in a faster-feeling passage of time.
Boredom and fear: How to slow it all down
Ironically, some of the most unpleasant experiences—fear and boredom—actually slow our sense of time. Studies have shown that people with arachnophobia staring at spiders, or skydivers in freefall, report the experience as lasting much longer than it actually did.
When you’re bored, every second seems to crawl. When you’re scared, your brain goes into high-alert mode, capturing more detail, which creates the impression of stretched time. That’s why traumatic or shocking events often feel “long” in memory.
The paradox of perception vs memory
Here’s the twist: how we perceive time while it’s happening often doesn’t match how we remember it after it’s passed. Vacations, for example, feel like they go by quickly, but when recalled later, they seem long because they’re filled with novel experiences and new memories.
This paradox explains why the same day can feel both long and short depending on how you’re looking at it. Psychologists call this split “prospective” vs “retrospective” time perception.
Can we slow down time?
While we can’t literally slow time, we can slow our experience of it. Here’s how:
- Introduce novelty: Travel, try new hobbies, and meet new people. Novel experiences build memory and stretch time perception.
- Be mindful: Practicing mindfulness enhances attention, making each moment feel more vivid and elongated.
- Break the routine: Routine compresses time. Disrupt it with spontaneous activities, different routes to work, or new challenges.
- Journal or take photos: Capturing daily experiences can help build a richer tapestry of memory.
In 2025, many use tools like flow journaling apps, AR-based memory mapping, or even AI-curated novelty calendars to consciously insert variation into their lives.
Time flies, but memories anchor it
To live a life that feels full and satisfying, you don’t need to stop time—you just need to fill it. A life that feels fast in the moment, but long in the memory, may be the ultimate sweet spot. After all, as Einstein famously quipped, “Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it feels like a minute. Sit on a hot stove for a minute, and it feels like an hour.”
So, what will you do today that your future self will remember?
