In recent months, my 13-year-old has been voicing an interesting lament: that time has been moving too quickly for him. I think we can all relate to this experience. Before we know it, the weekend has passed us by, and it is already time to go back to school or work. For our older readers, it has been said that the years spin faster as we age. I decided to look into this phenomenon and have a few suggestions. While we cannot stop the passage of time, perhaps we can promote psychological factors that help it appear to slow.

Perception of Time

Obviously, the clock ticks at the same rate every day, year after year. It is not time that speeds up or slows down but, rather, our perception of it. The pandemic was a threat to many aspects of our usual life, with time being another casualty. In a study in the United Kingdom, 80 percent of participants reported that their perception of time shifted during the earlier stages of the pandemic (Ogden, 2020). It is possible that we are all still adjusting to this collective trauma.

As We Age

While many of us have the sense that the years pass more quickly as we age, psychologists have been able to prove that this is actually the case. More specifically, our subjective sense of time speeds up. There are a few theories for this, including a well-regarded one by Duke Professor Adrian Bejan based on neural signal processing. It turns out that, as we age, the rate at which we process visual information slows down, contributing to our experience of time speeding up. In other words, time does not go faster, we just go slower, cognitively speaking.

What Can Be Done

Physically slowing down the clocks of our lives can be ruled out, unfortunately, but there are some strategies that might help us change our subjective experience of time. Consider the following:

• Keep a journal: Reflecting on each day can greatly reinforce solid memories of the experiences therein. Plus, it is useful to have a long-term record of the rich and varied thoughts, feelings, and activities that would otherwise have been forgotten from month to month. For instance, when my son asks, “What did we do in April?” I actually have an answer for him.
• Do something new (or different) every day: Routines can be useful in many ways. However, marking the passage of time is not one of them. Instead, try mixing it up. This requires our brains to process additional information, which can expand our subjective experience of time in a given moment. We tried this the other day, when we spontaneously stopped at a nearby park for a 15-minute hike on the way back from swimming. That day was different and, therefore, special.
• Linger: This is the “stop to smell the roses” concept. Whether it is spending time in nature (check out Spring Valley Park) or relaxing at Compass Coffee, time seems to slow down when we slow down. It is a busy, hectic world and sometimes the best way to experience an intentional life is to do next to nothing at all for a time.