Slowing the March of Time
Why is it that time seems to speed up as we get older ?
Remember how endless summer evenings felt as a child, each minute stretched out like warm honey? Yet nowadays, January feels like a blink, and birthdays arrive faster than ever. This isn’t just your imagination: the perception of time really does accelerate as we age. Understanding why can help us slow the mental clock and savor each moment more fully.
At the heart of this phenomenon lies the “proportional theory.” When you’re five years old, one year represents a full 20 percent of your entire life. By the time you reach fifty, a single year amounts to just two percent. In relative terms, each new stretch of time occupies a shrinking slice of your personal timeline. As that slice grows thinner, our minds register it less distinctly. Days and months begin to blur, and large chunks of time feel as if they passed in an instant.
But the proportional theory doesn’t tell the whole story. Our memory and novelty play an equally crucial role. In childhood and early adulthood, nearly everything is new—first steps, first loves, first jobs. Novel experiences require your brain to forge fresh neural pathways and encode detailed memories. Because these memories are rich and abundant, looking back feels like those periods lasted longer. As we settle into routines—commutes, workdays, weekend rituals—fewer novel moments demand deep encoding. With fewer “memory stamps” to mark the passage of time, weeks and years slip by with little mental resistance.
Neuroscience offers another piece of the puzzle. The neurotransmitter dopamine shapes both our sense of reward and our internal sense of time. Younger brains typically maintain higher baseline levels of dopamine, which heightens attention, curiosity, and the sense that time is crawling along. As dopamine production gradually declines with age, attention wanes and external events register with less intensity. Tasks that once consumed us now glide by, leaving fewer emotional peaks to anchor our perception of duration.
Changes in our biological rhythms further accelerate time’s march. Metabolism naturally slows with age, and so does our basic physiological tempo. Many researchers believe that a slower internal clock speeds up the subjective passage of external time. In other words, if your heartbeat and breathing rate are more leisurely, the world outside appears to move more quickly in comparison.
Yet this accelerating feeling isn’t inevitable. By introducing novelty into our days—learning a new language, exploring unfamiliar neighborhoods, or trying a different hobby—we force our brains to create fresh memories and recapture that sense of expanded time. Even small variations, like taking a new route to work or rearranging your living space, can break the cycle of routine and stretch your perception of days.
Mindfulness practices offer another powerful tool. When you fully immerse yourself in the present moment—focusing on the taste of your morning coffee or the rhythm of your breath—you slow down the mental clock. Studies show that regular meditation can sharpen time perception by increasing the density of experiential snapshots your brain records, making life feel more spacious and vivid.
Ultimately, recognising why time seems to pick up speed is a call to action. It reminds us that each stage of life brings its own rewards—and that we hold the power to shape how we experience our days. By cultivating curiosity, embracing novelty, and practicing mindful presence, we can reclaim the richness of our earliest memories and make even the busiest years feel delightfully long.
So the next time you feel weeks whizzing by, pause. Seek out something new. Tune into your surroundings. In doing so, you’ll trick your brain into slowing time down, transforming fleeting moments into lasting memories—and finding more hours hidden in every day.
