time...where does it go?

I'm 35 now and life just seems to go so fast these day...blimey, it's almost the end of september already...

an old mate had a theory that we had a clock like device in our brains that ticks faster as you get older, thus when you were a kid the summer holidays would seem to last forever, but I guess this is down to the fact that we get more experienced...

anyone else notice this..?

sorry, I'm just bored at work...sigh...

 

I too have noticed this. The years are going by faster.... partly due to being busier I think, and partly because as life goes on each day and each year becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of the life we have lived.

 

No I ma always thinking exactly that, it was 5 years ago since I started college, it dosn't seem 2 years ago and I have graduated from university in all that time.

I reckon in terms of percieved time when 20 is probably 1/3 of your life if you live to 80 rather than 60.

I can't believe its a year ago since my cousins engagement party, it seems like yesterday

Its actually very worrying and I think the only way to solve it is to spend your life in prison then it will seem like its gone slowly.

 

Pink Floyd wrote a great song about this. It's called "Time" (oddly enough):

Michael.

 

Thats the problem, at 23 I think I have the whole world ahead of me but I don't, once I get a job thats it until I am 70 (if I live that long) this was one of the reasons I am so glad I didn't just start a job full time at 16, I would have been bored to death now.

Just get a boring job then time will go by so slowly

 

Philosophy in action. Let's all become Taoist

 

who's first..? - I've got some needles and some ink...

 

Michael, to me the most amazing thing about this Pink Floyd "Time" song, is how young - and yet how mature and clairvoyant - they were when they wrote it. BTW, one of my favorite PF pieces, I too quote it all the time.

 

Bleak outlook AT. Life is full of surprises, some good and of course some bad.

 

yeah, you gotta enjoy life...I'm most definately at the stage where I work to live...and have been for a few years now...

 

Sir Galahad, I totally agree. It's just so true. Easily my favourite PF song, not just because I can relate so well to the lyrics but it's beautiful musically aswell.

What Isaac said can be summed up from a line in the song: "shorter of breath and one day closer to death"

Michael.

 

Perception of time speeding up is a well known effect of human conciousness and experiments have found that children experience time at about half the speed adults do - this appears to be related to brain structure and activity in the part of the brain that deals with those issues. I read an article on this topic in New Scientist a few years back.

 

So do children think twice as fast?

 

Not neccesarily... it is the perception of time not the time we take to think or act.

 

The theory goes that when we are young we are continually experiencing things that are new to us and meeting new challenges. When we are older we settle into a pattern where we experience the same things pretty much day-to-day and as a result we actually mentally 'edit out' the repetitive stuff, giving the imression of time moving faster than it actually does. How many of us travel the same route by car everyday and realise that we have arrived at a certain point having no idea of where the previous few miles went.

 

Me and my mate went camping the last two weekends, both trips involved driving down the East Lancs, the second time we did it the journey seemed twice as quick so that would make sense.

Unkown journeys always take a lot longer and most things are unkown when you're a kid.

 

Time - Just a relative measurement.

 

a few theories...
it's information density - everyone knows about time dilation and super dense matter but information may cause the same thing - what with broadband, the internet, cable / satelite tv, mobile phones etc. a similar phenomenon may be manifesting.

it's the government / terrorists (the difference anyone?) putting chemicals in the water supply,what they are actually doing is drugging us and stealing days so that we can labour in the mines of their alien masters.

the earth is slowly being eaten by a quantum black hole - this object oscillating through the core of the earth is causing erratic time fluctuations due to dilation effects.

or it may just be that our lives are so busy slaving away in order to have a 'lifestyle' that we don't have time to notice our lives going by.

sorry got to run - the men in white coats are at the front door.
cheers


julian.

 

Neurochemistry is responsible - scientific studies show that the brains activity in the region of the brain that that controls time perception actually changes as we get older. What you are describing is conscious attention, its not quite the same thing. To young children a minute may seem twice as long as it does to an adult. If you search the new scientist archive you may find the article. The reason for this may well be that it somehow allows for greater experience and learning in childhood as the brains internal clock is ticking faster - which is not necessary in later life.

 

I was hoping that someone would mention the subjective element. I believe that level of awareness is a factor in the subjective impression of time. Isn't it also well reported in 'near-death experiences' that the last moment can last for an age as your life flashes before you?

There's a book by Cooper & Erickson (the renown pioneer hypnotist and therapist) called "Time Distortion in Hypnosis". I've got it somewhere. Anyway, it recounts instances where people perform tasks under hypnosis - designing speakers might be a good example - where 3 hours could subjectively pass in an actual elapsed time of just a few minutes.

Must run, I've only got 3.5 seconds to finish designing the new range.

Time Distortion in Hypnosis: An Experimental and Clinical Investigation