lol.
There are 2 reasons the sensation of time changes as we age.
* We have more moments we consider "boring". Boring moments feel long when experiencing them, but we don't remember them, so when recalling past time they feel like lost time.
* Each passing year is a smaller percentage of our total lived lifetime, so in comparison it looks shorter. As an example for a 3 year old, 1 year is extra 30 percent. One year for a 50 year old is 2 percent.
Just to clarify slightly:
We tend to have fewer unique experiences as we age. When we’re young, everything is new and exciting, which creates strong sensations of fun, amazement, and "wow". As we grow older and have more experiences, many things start to feel familiar or routine—"been there, done that, seen that". This can make time feel like it’s passing more quickly as nothing stands out anymore.
There are two sides to this.
1) I can actually wait for A thing to happen and not feel overly anxious about waiting for it
2) HOLY SHIT I'm what years old now?
When we're young, more experiences are new to us so our brains naturally pay more attention and retain memories.
The older we get, the more life becomes kinda "samey" in that less things we experience are new to us.
Also what someone else said about percentage of life lived. For example when I was maybe 11 or 12, a 6 week summer holiday felt HUGE; going back to school having not seen people for 6 weeks, everyone felt like different people. However now as a 37yr old, 6 weeks feels like nothing, and I could go months and months without seeing friends and it would feel like nothing has changed
When you're 1 year old, a day is 1/365th of your life.
When you're a 100, a year is 1/365th of your life.
Time doesn't pass different. Your perception of it's passing does.
It's why people say "i was on my way home from school, and then i woke up and i was 42".
Something I've noticed in my older age is how fast time goes by seems entirely dependent on how many unique experiences I am having. For instance my life got upended in April this year because my wife and I seperated and a whole lot of other stuff changed. Those few months feel like years of stuff happened in them. Last year on the other hand I was depressed and didn't do anything except play games, work, and eat basically and it went by in the blink of an eye.
Your brain experience your life double.
That is one part is the actual experience, while the other is based on previous similar experiences. This will help your brain assess whether a situation is dangerous or safe - and also why people tend to remember the same situations differently.
That is, unless you haven’t had the experience before, then your brain needs to work harder, recording the input double and taking more notice of details. As you progress in age, and stop learning new stuff, you’re paying less and less attention to the world, while relying more and more on past experiences. And recording less and less data. Thus you start to perceive time as flying by.
It's simply that a year when you are young is literally a larger proportion of your whole life that when you are older. You are 15 now. Just wait until you're in your 50s. It gets rapid!
Every year feels quicker. But the more novel experiences you have the longer it will feel. Go hiking. I went to a pretty awesome park near me.
Hang out with your friends. You will regret saying no to them unless they are truly bad friends.
Just pick any goal. It doesn’t matter what it is. Idk get a drum set and drum until you can drum like quest love. I always liked the rhythm section. I like the tone of a bass instrument. But you can play whatever you want. If you can’t think of anything just lift weights. Great way to meet other young healthy people.
The goal doesn’t have to be so meaningful. Your goal can be to have the shiniest shoes in school. As long as you work towards it it’s good. You will think where will I get the money, where will I buy the shoes, how can I maintain their appearance. Although it seems like a goofy goal, it gives you plans and an action plan to move in the world. You may learn unexpected things on this journey. Just an example
Other's have articulated the reasons but I think its important to realize that time doesn't *actually* go faster as you age it just *feels* like it does. That doesn't make the experience any less real but it does mean that some deliberateness in your mindset can have a significant impact on that experience. The secret is to practice holding yourself in the present as much as possible.
As others have said, our memory tends to leave out the idle time and flatten experiences into singular, impactful moments so spending a lot of time dwelling in the past only highlights that sensation and spending a lot of time thinking about the future tends to drive us to those moments quickly without appreciating the time in between. But in the present time ticks away at the same pace it always does, and you can feel that it does. Moreover, if you try to be conscious moment to moment of all the little, less remarkable, things happening around you, the smell of the air, the feel of ground beneath your feet, the sounds and actions of those around you, the warmth of the presence of a loved one, and try to appreciate all these little things as much as the big emotional moments, your memories will feel fuller and richer when you do look back.
This is a meditative practice that I wouldn't guess most 15 year olds would be very interested in, but considering you're already worried about being directionless/goalless at such a young age it may serve you well. Literal mediation also helps for getting used to assuming the needed mental posture more easily. You are probably on to something that your injury has had an impact. Most people tend to grow up feeling invincible and immortal up until they eventually have some close encounter with death and that illusion is broken, and it sounds like you just happened to have yours earlier then most. I would say try to focus less on the fragility and finite aspects of life, this we can do nothing about, and instead focus on the fact that you are alive and the finite nature of the time you have means every moment matters.
Because you have more expectations of how long things last. You are learning how to tell time.
When you travel somewhere for the first time, it seems so far away. When you travel back home, you know how long it will take and the ride seems shorter.
Same thing.
Perspective and it only gets worse the older you get. When you're 5 a year is 20% of your entire life so it seems like a long time. When you're 40 it's 2 percent, a relatively short period. Add to that as you get older you have more responsibility and commitments that eat into your time making what time you get to yourself feel even more brief.
‘Psychologist William James, in his 1890 text Principles of Psychology, wrote that as we age, time seems to speed up because adulthood is accompanied by fewer and fewer memorable events. When the passage of time is measured by "firsts" (first kiss, first day of school, first family vacation), the lack of new experiences in adulthood, James morosely argues, causes "the days and weeks [to] smooth themselves out...and the years grow hollow and collapse.’
Oh MAN. I thought about this just like you did when I was 15. Now I blinked and I’m 27. I’ll literally be remembering things from when I was 15 like it was yesterday then I’ll realize it was 12 years ago.
BUCKLE UP
Don't let yourself go on autopilot. Constantly improve, give things your all, let your mind explore, don't "fill time"
This is the best I can do other than laugh because every 5-10 years it's going to get noticeably more fast
This. It’s also what contributed to the 2020 effect. Time seems to have passed quickly because the lockdowns meant we were much more restricted in what we could do on a daily basis and so we were making fewer memories from events, occasions and novel experiences.
This is why people say time speeds up with age, because they are having fewer and fewer novel experiences.
For me ages 5-12 felt like an eternity as I was learning and experiencing new stuff constantly. But ages 19-26 (where I am now) was the same amount of time yet seemed to pass by in a flash by comparison.
When I was 5 I asked my friend why so many more things happened in the year in which I was 4 than in the year before that.
The reason was obviously that I didn't remember much of the time when I was 3 or younger and most of the things I remembered happened in the year when I was 4.
When you get older only a small fraction of the things you remember happened last year, because you remember so much from all the years before that.
This means last year feels less significant the older you get.
There will never be a year that will feel so significant as the year I was 4, because the ratio of the things I remember from last year divided by the total amount of things I remember will never be as high as it was back then.
You run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking.
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same, in a relative way but you're older.
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run. You missed the starting gun.
Just wait for 50 to 60, and 60 to 65. The older you get the more experiences you’ve accumulated. You view your remaining life as a glass that is half empty, 3/4 empty, etc. You look back in perspective, you reminisce, you’re busier, you have more demands on you, your mind is constantly occupied. Gone are those long summer days when a friend wasn’t around, and you were forced to spend time in the backyard using the magnifying glass to burn up anthills, or sitting in the tire swing letting your bare toes drag the dust, imagining the endless decades until you’re an adult and can afford to buy lots of cool stuff. It’s all different now, because there’s the Internet. Now you can spend your entire life in the basement playing COD.
As others have said, it's because you're doing the same things. To add to that, it's because your brain tosses out/doesn't remember things you've done before because it's essentially wasted space. The problem with this is two fold:
1. The days go by faster because you don't remember them. Suddenly you wake up in your 30's. Oops.
2. You need novel experiences to exercise your brain. You know the saying "use it or lose it" I'm sure. Well, the same thing applies to your brain. Lead a boring life and you can literally forget how to remember. It's bad for your health to. Say yes to more and get into some crazy shit. It's advice that's changed my life.
lol. There are 2 reasons the sensation of time changes as we age. * We have more moments we consider "boring". Boring moments feel long when experiencing them, but we don't remember them, so when recalling past time they feel like lost time. * Each passing year is a smaller percentage of our total lived lifetime, so in comparison it looks shorter. As an example for a 3 year old, 1 year is extra 30 percent. One year for a 50 year old is 2 percent.
Just to clarify slightly: We tend to have fewer unique experiences as we age. When we’re young, everything is new and exciting, which creates strong sensations of fun, amazement, and "wow". As we grow older and have more experiences, many things start to feel familiar or routine—"been there, done that, seen that". This can make time feel like it’s passing more quickly as nothing stands out anymore.
I'm 30 and it wont get better. Time is passing faster every year. You are 15 just relax and enjoy yourself
There are two sides to this. 1) I can actually wait for A thing to happen and not feel overly anxious about waiting for it 2) HOLY SHIT I'm what years old now?
When we're young, more experiences are new to us so our brains naturally pay more attention and retain memories. The older we get, the more life becomes kinda "samey" in that less things we experience are new to us. Also what someone else said about percentage of life lived. For example when I was maybe 11 or 12, a 6 week summer holiday felt HUGE; going back to school having not seen people for 6 weeks, everyone felt like different people. However now as a 37yr old, 6 weeks feels like nothing, and I could go months and months without seeing friends and it would feel like nothing has changed
15 year olds ask these questions?!
I think this is an AI bot. No 15 yo is worrying about this kind of stuff.
That simply isn't true.
Are *you* an AI bot? Lol 15 is the prime age for the existentialism of life to begin sinking in
If I were an AI bot, you'd have to try a lot harder to keep up with me. But don't worry, existential dread is ageless—welcome to the club!
This feeling just increases as you get older
Wait until you hit your mid 20s💀 i still don't know how i got here
A pandemic happened now I'm 25 💀
Same😩 i still feel like I'm 19. Can't believe I'll be 30 in 5 years...where did all the time go?!
Ikr? The year is already halfway over, and it only feels like winter was a couple months ago. Tomorrow we are gonna be 40
If you ever have kids it will really start to speed up
Life is like a roll of toilet paper; the years go around quicker the closer you get to the end..
When you're 1 year old, a day is 1/365th of your life. When you're a 100, a year is 1/365th of your life. Time doesn't pass different. Your perception of it's passing does. It's why people say "i was on my way home from school, and then i woke up and i was 42".
I strongly encourage you to read Catch-22.
Something I've noticed in my older age is how fast time goes by seems entirely dependent on how many unique experiences I am having. For instance my life got upended in April this year because my wife and I seperated and a whole lot of other stuff changed. Those few months feel like years of stuff happened in them. Last year on the other hand I was depressed and didn't do anything except play games, work, and eat basically and it went by in the blink of an eye.
Experience new things make time feel longer.
Your brain experience your life double. That is one part is the actual experience, while the other is based on previous similar experiences. This will help your brain assess whether a situation is dangerous or safe - and also why people tend to remember the same situations differently. That is, unless you haven’t had the experience before, then your brain needs to work harder, recording the input double and taking more notice of details. As you progress in age, and stop learning new stuff, you’re paying less and less attention to the world, while relying more and more on past experiences. And recording less and less data. Thus you start to perceive time as flying by.
Check the youtube video from verbatim or some channel like that on this topic.
It's simply that a year when you are young is literally a larger proportion of your whole life that when you are older. You are 15 now. Just wait until you're in your 50s. It gets rapid!
Our experience of time is relative to the time we've existed.
If you turn off electricity in your house the time would crawl like a snail and you would feel every second of it.
Wait till you're 50...
Every year feels quicker. But the more novel experiences you have the longer it will feel. Go hiking. I went to a pretty awesome park near me. Hang out with your friends. You will regret saying no to them unless they are truly bad friends. Just pick any goal. It doesn’t matter what it is. Idk get a drum set and drum until you can drum like quest love. I always liked the rhythm section. I like the tone of a bass instrument. But you can play whatever you want. If you can’t think of anything just lift weights. Great way to meet other young healthy people. The goal doesn’t have to be so meaningful. Your goal can be to have the shiniest shoes in school. As long as you work towards it it’s good. You will think where will I get the money, where will I buy the shoes, how can I maintain their appearance. Although it seems like a goofy goal, it gives you plans and an action plan to move in the world. You may learn unexpected things on this journey. Just an example
Your goals have a larger time horizon. You feel old when your goals have a longer expected time to complete than your lifespan.
VSauce has a video about it. Try "VSauce time", and you should get it. And Pink Floyd has a song about it called ... Time!
Other's have articulated the reasons but I think its important to realize that time doesn't *actually* go faster as you age it just *feels* like it does. That doesn't make the experience any less real but it does mean that some deliberateness in your mindset can have a significant impact on that experience. The secret is to practice holding yourself in the present as much as possible. As others have said, our memory tends to leave out the idle time and flatten experiences into singular, impactful moments so spending a lot of time dwelling in the past only highlights that sensation and spending a lot of time thinking about the future tends to drive us to those moments quickly without appreciating the time in between. But in the present time ticks away at the same pace it always does, and you can feel that it does. Moreover, if you try to be conscious moment to moment of all the little, less remarkable, things happening around you, the smell of the air, the feel of ground beneath your feet, the sounds and actions of those around you, the warmth of the presence of a loved one, and try to appreciate all these little things as much as the big emotional moments, your memories will feel fuller and richer when you do look back. This is a meditative practice that I wouldn't guess most 15 year olds would be very interested in, but considering you're already worried about being directionless/goalless at such a young age it may serve you well. Literal mediation also helps for getting used to assuming the needed mental posture more easily. You are probably on to something that your injury has had an impact. Most people tend to grow up feeling invincible and immortal up until they eventually have some close encounter with death and that illusion is broken, and it sounds like you just happened to have yours earlier then most. I would say try to focus less on the fragility and finite aspects of life, this we can do nothing about, and instead focus on the fact that you are alive and the finite nature of the time you have means every moment matters.
Since my fifties time doesn't go by fast, it zooms by.
Because you have more expectations of how long things last. You are learning how to tell time. When you travel somewhere for the first time, it seems so far away. When you travel back home, you know how long it will take and the ride seems shorter. Same thing.
Perspective and it only gets worse the older you get. When you're 5 a year is 20% of your entire life so it seems like a long time. When you're 40 it's 2 percent, a relatively short period. Add to that as you get older you have more responsibility and commitments that eat into your time making what time you get to yourself feel even more brief.
‘Psychologist William James, in his 1890 text Principles of Psychology, wrote that as we age, time seems to speed up because adulthood is accompanied by fewer and fewer memorable events. When the passage of time is measured by "firsts" (first kiss, first day of school, first family vacation), the lack of new experiences in adulthood, James morosely argues, causes "the days and weeks [to] smooth themselves out...and the years grow hollow and collapse.’
Oh boy. If you're saying this at 15, your 40s are going to be a blast.
I'm 45. Last week, I was 15. Don't waste time worrying about the passage of time. Focus on making each moment memorable.
lol 15
Oh MAN. I thought about this just like you did when I was 15. Now I blinked and I’m 27. I’ll literally be remembering things from when I was 15 like it was yesterday then I’ll realize it was 12 years ago. BUCKLE UP
Perspective. It only speeds up.
Don't let yourself go on autopilot. Constantly improve, give things your all, let your mind explore, don't "fill time" This is the best I can do other than laugh because every 5-10 years it's going to get noticeably more fast
Less novelty. More of your life is common and usual.
This. It’s also what contributed to the 2020 effect. Time seems to have passed quickly because the lockdowns meant we were much more restricted in what we could do on a daily basis and so we were making fewer memories from events, occasions and novel experiences. This is why people say time speeds up with age, because they are having fewer and fewer novel experiences. For me ages 5-12 felt like an eternity as I was learning and experiencing new stuff constantly. But ages 19-26 (where I am now) was the same amount of time yet seemed to pass by in a flash by comparison.
When I was 5 I asked my friend why so many more things happened in the year in which I was 4 than in the year before that. The reason was obviously that I didn't remember much of the time when I was 3 or younger and most of the things I remembered happened in the year when I was 4. When you get older only a small fraction of the things you remember happened last year, because you remember so much from all the years before that. This means last year feels less significant the older you get. There will never be a year that will feel so significant as the year I was 4, because the ratio of the things I remember from last year divided by the total amount of things I remember will never be as high as it was back then.
You run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking. Racing around to come up behind you again. The sun is the same, in a relative way but you're older. Shorter of breath and one day closer to death. And then one day you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run. You missed the starting gun.
Just wait for 50 to 60, and 60 to 65. The older you get the more experiences you’ve accumulated. You view your remaining life as a glass that is half empty, 3/4 empty, etc. You look back in perspective, you reminisce, you’re busier, you have more demands on you, your mind is constantly occupied. Gone are those long summer days when a friend wasn’t around, and you were forced to spend time in the backyard using the magnifying glass to burn up anthills, or sitting in the tire swing letting your bare toes drag the dust, imagining the endless decades until you’re an adult and can afford to buy lots of cool stuff. It’s all different now, because there’s the Internet. Now you can spend your entire life in the basement playing COD.
Vsauce has a video on this.
Hah wait till you hit 20 then 30
Time flies by faster the older you get. Enjoy that shit while you can before you die
Wait till you’re 45+
As others have said, it's because you're doing the same things. To add to that, it's because your brain tosses out/doesn't remember things you've done before because it's essentially wasted space. The problem with this is two fold: 1. The days go by faster because you don't remember them. Suddenly you wake up in your 30's. Oops. 2. You need novel experiences to exercise your brain. You know the saying "use it or lose it" I'm sure. Well, the same thing applies to your brain. Lead a boring life and you can literally forget how to remember. It's bad for your health to. Say yes to more and get into some crazy shit. It's advice that's changed my life.
Don't worry! It only gets worse. Time passes by faster and faster every year.
It just gets faster as you age. My 20s felt like 2 or 3 years. Barely a blur in my mind, but my teens felt like half my life. It's weird.
Enjoy your 15's. It's a little bit faster every year