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Why Time Flies By As You Get Older
Ant notes a piece up on WBUR Boston addressing theories to explain the universal human experience that time seems to pass faster as you get older. Here's the 9-minute audio (MP3). Several explanations are tried out: that brains lay down more information for novel experiences; that the "clock" for nerve impulses in aging brains runs slower; and that each interval of time represents a diminishing fraction of life as we age.
Michio Kaku did a great show about time for the BBC and at the end of one episode he asked young/old people to count 60 seconds. The older people consistently counted for much longer than the actual minute while younger people consistently counted much faster.
The immortal Bill Watterson described that effect best.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
If you are 1 year old, then 1 day represents about 1/365th of your life. If you are 10 years old, then 1 day represents about 1/3,650th of your life. Thus the older you are the faster time may appear to pass by. When you are 1 year old, 1 day may seem to last much longer than 1 day when you are 10 years old.
Time flies when having fun, and as one gets older, one is allowed to do more fun things. People also get more responsibility as they age, so more responibilities = less time. That's my thesis; I think it's pretty good!
Also, when you're 5 years old, the maximum amount of time that you need to spend doing something in order to feel like you've achieved something worthwhile is probably in the order of 5-10 minutes or so (drawing a picture, writing your name, building a sandcastle at the beach, making something with Lego).
When you get to middle-age, things take much longer (achieving success in your chosen field, raising children, paying off a mortgage etc).
My theory is that it's the lengthening of the distance in time between major milestones that makes time appear to move faster as you get older. It simply takes a lot longer to achieve anything of significance.
For what it's worth, I still disagree with the guy but there's got to be some advantage to your youth, if nothing else, think of all the abysmal 1980s technology you skipped right over!
Bugger that! Think of all the abysmal 1980s music you skipped over. (...)
Sometimes it feels I'm the only one who liked the 1980s...
Those were the times of Cindy Lauper, (young) Madonna, A-Ha and pop-things alike.
Those were the golden years of 8-bit computing. Machines like Amiga, Mac etc were created in that decade.
Those were the years of Gorbachev, Thatcher, Khomeini... The video of Genesis' "Land of Confusion" was hilarious.
The girls were colorful and with crazy hairs...
It was shamelessly stupid and joyful.
The 1970s OTOH, were overrated IMO (I'm glad I was too young to experience that).
Bell pants? Afro-power microphone-like hair? Beatles gone? Progressive rock? Hippies getting older?
Aarrrgh...
There was a show on the BBC recently that was a biography of John Mortimer, who died last year at 85. He was interviewed a lot in the show and one of the methods that he advocates to stay young is to keep changing and doing new things - career changes, move city, just keep doing something new. He said that think if people can do that, they can cram more new experiences into their later years, and get more out of life.
Seems kind of obvious, in a way, but it's amazing how many people become trapped in their own routine. Routine is what makes time pass quickly.