Why is it when you get older time seems to shrink????

I don't understand this...

I've noticed something very bizzare. Like I'm a bit older. Im in my middle years so to speak. I've noticed that there's never enough time anymore to get anything done, or to do the things you want to do. It's totally and completely insane. I don't get it. And my schedule is actually pretty open yet I don't have enough time to get everything done, and yet still have enough time to have any kind of a social life, and try and get some fitness in, and or pursue any hobbies etc. Plus try and juggle just daily living tasks and choars.

I don't get it because when I was younger, it seemed like I had endless time. I had time to do EVERYTHING I wanted, even in the course of a day a lot got done. And it wasn't exhausting or anything. But now, it's like time has shrank.

What's going on????

Other than perception and you had less going on when you are younger...

It's death calling us, it's time to go home.

But yeah, it flies by the older you get. My Mum told me that life flies by after you turn 21. She wasn't wrong, but it's been fun so far.

a reply to: lavatrance
I've always thought that we perceive time in proportion to the time we've already experienced.
When you're five years old, six months is 10% of your life.
When you're fifty years old, six months is 1% of your life.
One is a huge expanse of time, the other is gone in a flash.

a reply to: lavatrance
I agree with abeverage...less responsibilities when you were younger..life is flying by for me too

a reply to: lavatrance

It's a really good question that's pondered here quite often.
It's as tho the world is spinning faster, in the houses of the holy.

a reply to: lavatrance

Probably because the rose coloured glasses fall off and you begin to see crap for what it actually is, crap. Time appears to speed up because your subconscious mind is attempting to release you from the grip of the illusion.

Reality is an Illusion, albeit a persistent one. Albert Einstein.

Why is it when you get older time seems to shrink?

relativety.

I heard a theory a while ago that time was actually the expansion of space since the big bang. Thus before it, there was no time. There is also a theory that space, as it expands, is flying away from itself at faster and faster speeds. So with those two things in mind, if space is going faster, then so is time . So as you grow older, time really does speed up. Or that may be a bunch of hogwash....

There's a theory about the expanding universe.

When you are born, you start at a specific "speed" through time.

There are noticeable changes as you age year by year.

Like a big bang theory.

People get "out of sync" with each other because of age differences.

because it does: think about it, when you're 10, one year is a tenth of your life, but when you're 50, one year is a fiftieth of your life.

totally agree, 20s it was living the life and time seemed to just float by,now 40 and years are flashing by as quick as i blink,it is crazy.not saying scary cause the end comes to us all.

When you get older you spend less and less time "Exploring and learning" about the world around us which is what we did when younger, we weren't born knowing everything about our environment which takes up time and as we get older "Knowing" what something is or what it does, we then don't give it another thought.

As we work ourselves to death so we can afford to do something new and unique in order to recapture the feeling of time passing by slower.

That's my theory and I'm sticking with it.

All a matter of perception.

The daily rat race is probably why it feels like it just zooms by. Also kids are always developing mentally and physically, and experiencin day to day life, absorbing whatever till tthe end of their growth which is why childhood and teen years feel so long.

Exactly. Your memory tends to record things that are fresh and novel to you. As you get older and trudge to the same old job day after day, year after year, there's less that sticks in your memory and makes you perceive time as "speeding up."

a reply to: lavatrance

Maybe I'm crazy!
I'm sure of it but, when I was younger everything I did revolved around just me...
Sort of selfish, really, but I didn't have kids or a family to speak of back then...

As I am older, a lot of my time is spent taking care of them and "things"...

For example, ATS is something that I do just for me...unless someone, usually, is looking over my shoulder going "hey wait! slow down! I'm still reading that!"...
Sometimes when I am on the internet I am also paying bills, working on something I was unable to complete at work, helping with homework (Math! UGH!)...I think we feel like there isn't enough time because there isn't...to do "our" stuff...

With Thanksgiving...no shave November was rough!

a reply to: lavatrance

Time is not shrinking, but your perceptions of it might be. Anyone who tells you they are as fast, fit, agile and spritely at age thirty, as they were at age eighteen, must have either been one lazy bastard when they were eighteen, or lying to themselves at age thirty. And the same can be said for any fifty year old who tells you they are as solid and speedy as they were when they were thirty.

From what I understand, having read accounts of, and listened to people who have attained middle age, it is probably a combination of a gradual decrease in neurokinetic speed, and the slow accumulation of damage to the motive joints in the body, and attendant muscles and tendons, slowing you down imperceptibly, and yet taking more of your time away from you in making it impossible for you to complete tasks at the same speed as you used to.

Your mind is used to one pace being exactly x distance, and taking x milliseconds to complete, and the same can be said for moving groceries, taking a shower, putting on clothes, and all the things a human being does during a day without thinking about them. But as much as your mind might be used to the speed at which you remember doing things before, your body, for all that it might be in great shape, just will not be moving at the same speed it did. Again, it would only have to be a small change in task completion speed to throw you off.

It is said that a step on a set of stairs only needs to be two millimetres different from the others, to make a person stumble. I would have thought this is a similar situation. Your mind is currently faster than your body, and has arranged its day according to your old task completion rate, and you are not getting done in a day what you think you should, because your mind has not accounted for the small difference in the amount of time that one action takes. Those differences add up during a day.

So now, the crucial thing is this:

Make a plan. Plan around it. So, you will not be doing groceries, work, fitness, and socialising all in the same day. Who cares? Make a plan to devote one day a week to each thing, or at least limit the number of things you try to do during a day, to cut out the part you fail to complete? Either way, make a plan which takes into account the facts. Time is constant, but perception is far from it.

Also (and I say this from experience)...as you age things take longer to do. Sometimes imperceptibly...but still. Our bodies are wearing out and even the most mundane of tasks take longer - physically and mentally.

There are certain drugs available in some states that significantly inhibit the activity of short term memory, which results in the sensation of each moment stretching out and time slowing down.

The paradox, though, is that if you're really busy and engaged in a lot of activity day-to-day, it shrinks the perception of longer passages of time. So people who have busy jobs and have to concentrate on things moment to moment are the first to complain that the work day never seems to end, but also be surprised that "the year went by so fast!"

The difference in the way we process short-term and long-term memories has a lot to do with our impression of the passage of time both moment to moment and over the span of years.

There's always the Quickening Theory thread and Youtube Video "The Quickening"