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by wazzer 1204 days ago
When we are 3 years old, we perceive 1 year as a pretty long time, it’s a third of our life after all.

When we get older the same year is becoming a smaller and smaller fraction of our lifetime, thus the time feels to go by much quicker.

At least that was always my personal conclusion.

2 comments

I like a metaphor that it's about connections, combinations and permutations. As we mature the number of opportunities, changes, permutations lowers. Perhaps those older people who dont experience life going quickly are also able to see opportunities and variablity more?

Possibly also the times when you get stuck in something and think "oh wow this is dragging on" decreases as you age. But it's not the number of times a situation happens (e.g. traffic is getting worse over time) but that reaction to it happens less. Perhaps we get more patient with time and let it pass over quicker.

Veritasium has a video about this subject:

https://youtu.be/aIx2N-viNwY

It turns out that when we're older time passes more quickly even on the scale of minutes.

> when we're older time passes more quickly even on the scale of minutes.

And understatement for anyone who has kids.