Does time speed up when you get older and if so how to slow it?

[NinjaGoSaysNo]

Just that really! I'm in my mid 30s and the past 5 years or so have gone SO fast.

I was thinking the other day about how many key life events happened in my 20s versus only two in my 30s (birth of my youngest when I was 30 & a significant bereavement last year) and maybe that has something to do with it? (See also en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reminiscence_bump ) I've tried to keep doing some new things every year but with young children it's really just been things like going in holiday to new locations, not the big events like getting married, graduating university or buying a house!

Is this as fast as it's going to feel, or does it keep getting faster and faster and I'm already further through life (as it feels to live it, if not in years) than I realised? 😨

And of course the link didn't work!

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reminiscence_bump

Yes it does speed up - and, no, you can't slow it!!

Life is like a toilet roll - the further through it you are the faster it goes.

That's funny, I was thinking the same thing recently.

My life from say 13-23 seemed very long but 27-37 had flown past.

It does feel like it goes faster.

One of the reasons time goes fast as you age is routine and lack of novelty. When you are young, so much is a new experience and you also spend a lot of time waiting for things, this extends the sense of time passing slowly.

Now I am old, I have to learn new things and plan for new experiences to try and avoid that sense of life just flashing past.

I think that we subconsciously measure time as proportion of the time that we have experienced. So for a 10 year old 5 years is half a lifetime away, but for a 50 year old 5 years is only 10% of a lifetime. That does, unfortunately, mean that time will continue to pass at an increasing speed. All you can do is try to focus on living in the moment when the moment is good.

Of course it feels faster when you are older as a year is a smaller proportion of your life.

So when you were 10 a year was 10% of your life but at 50 it is only 2%.

You can't slow it down but you can keep fit and try to do lots of interesting things.

My old friend says that individual days pass slowly because he hasn’t enough to do, yet weekends come round every few days.

Yes it goes much quicker. Recommendations for slowing it down is to sit on the M25 in rush hour.

Yea when your 2 a year is half your life span, so seems huge. When your 30 a year is one of 30, the older you get the shorter the effect of a year

When you have children the days are long but the years are short.

You need to read Catch-22 for ideas, OP. There is a character in it (Dunbar, iirc) who is trying to make his life last longer by being as bored as possible at all times.

I disagree. Time isn't any faster now (age 51) than when I was 21. But now is immediate & lots to think about, while I only remember fragments of when I was 21. I have no clue how I filled my time then

Am so much happier at 51 than when I was 21. Either everyone else is completely sorted at 21 or actually, 51 is pretty darn brilliant.

I tried to slow it down by semi retiring and living life at an easier pace. It didn’t work - and I’m now nearly full time again anyway...

Time does not move at an even rate. It moves quicker at weekends and in the summer.