I can attest to the years feeling as if they move faster as I advance through them! Beginning my 6th decade, I've started to actively look for and work toward more novelty and opportunities to learn. Subjectively, I'd say it could be causing time to feel more spacious but it's certainly more interesting!
The less active I become, and the more I am home, the more it seems like time is speeding up. For example, I have been out of grad school going on 8 years, and it feels like yesterday. The time in between then and now has been, outside of a few weeks, in the exact same setting. (Which isn't all bad, I like solitude.)
Thanks, Chris! This helps as a confirming vote for the hypothesis. I wonder if I can find research on physical space occupied by memories in the brain and the relationship of storage-size to scenery.
There's a (popular) book, "Making Time", Steve Taylor, with a lot of discussion on various theories of how time perception changes with age. He argues (IIRC) for novelty, absorption, and mindfulness as the primary factors: novelty and mindfulness slow down the perception of time, absorption speeds it up.
Thanks, Paul, as well! (And Stephanie for your musings here, in this post.)
In a perhaps somewhat similar vein ...
"The more our days are filled with new, unpredictable, and challenging experiences, the longer they will feel. And, conversely, the more one day is exactly like another, the faster it will pass by in a blur. Childhood ends up feeling so long because it is the cauldron of novelty; because its most ordinary days are packed with extraordinary discoveries and sensations. These can be as apparently minor yet as significant as the first time we explore the zip on a cardigan or hold our nose under water, the first time we look at the sun through the cotton of a beach towel or dig our fingers into the putty holding a window in its frame. Dense as it is with stimuli, the first decade can feel a thousand years long. ...
"It is sensible enough to try to live longer lives. But we are working with a false notion of what long really means. We might live to be a thousand years old and still complain that it had all rushed by too fast. We should be aiming to lead lives that feel long because we manage to imbue them with the right sort of open-hearted appreciation and unsnobbish receptivity, the kind that five-year-olds know naturally how to bring to bear. We need to pause and look at one another’s faces, study the sky, wonder at the eddies and colors of the river, and dare to ask the kinds of questions that open others’ souls. We don’t need to add years; we need to densify the time we have left by ensuring that every day is lived consciously—and we can do this via a maneuver as simple as it is momentous: by starting to notice all that we have as yet only seen."
"Densify the time we have left" - I love it! I also hope to add as many good years as naturally possible, but the levers of diet and exercise have a troubling element of randomness. No silver bullets, just stacking the deck in my favor as much as possible.
However, caveat: "compliance officer" is #2 on the "most relaxing" list - I'm not sure how that is possible. Makes me question some of the other items on the list. And where is "surgeon" on the most-stressful list? I found it on this list (along with compliance officer, which tracks more with my lived experience): https://money.usnews.com/careers/company-culture/slideshows/the-most-stressful-jobs
Great topic Stephanie! Loved the 5/70 vs 5/20. Kind of a restatement of Recency Bias perhaps? It is probably why last summer there were MANY people sure that Barbie and Oppenheimer were the greatest movies ever. Maybe this why people largely forget the snake they saw 50 years ago but are obsessed by reports of mountain lions in the neighborhood on the evening local news. On the other hand if you got bit by the snake, you probably still need Ambien for a good night sleep in the woods.
I found this part of your thinking very intriguing - "Part of it is that five years out of seventy is 5/70 = 1/14 (7%) of your life, whereas five years out of twenty is 5/20 = 1/4 (25%) of your life."
I can attest to the years feeling as if they move faster as I advance through them! Beginning my 6th decade, I've started to actively look for and work toward more novelty and opportunities to learn. Subjectively, I'd say it could be causing time to feel more spacious but it's certainly more interesting!
Thanks, Monette! More interesting and more spacious are good!
The less active I become, and the more I am home, the more it seems like time is speeding up. For example, I have been out of grad school going on 8 years, and it feels like yesterday. The time in between then and now has been, outside of a few weeks, in the exact same setting. (Which isn't all bad, I like solitude.)
Thanks, Chris! This helps as a confirming vote for the hypothesis. I wonder if I can find research on physical space occupied by memories in the brain and the relationship of storage-size to scenery.
There's a (popular) book, "Making Time", Steve Taylor, with a lot of discussion on various theories of how time perception changes with age. He argues (IIRC) for novelty, absorption, and mindfulness as the primary factors: novelty and mindfulness slow down the perception of time, absorption speeds it up.
Paul, I'm buying the book, much appreciated!
Thanks, Paul, as well! (And Stephanie for your musings here, in this post.)
In a perhaps somewhat similar vein ...
"The more our days are filled with new, unpredictable, and challenging experiences, the longer they will feel. And, conversely, the more one day is exactly like another, the faster it will pass by in a blur. Childhood ends up feeling so long because it is the cauldron of novelty; because its most ordinary days are packed with extraordinary discoveries and sensations. These can be as apparently minor yet as significant as the first time we explore the zip on a cardigan or hold our nose under water, the first time we look at the sun through the cotton of a beach towel or dig our fingers into the putty holding a window in its frame. Dense as it is with stimuli, the first decade can feel a thousand years long. ...
"It is sensible enough to try to live longer lives. But we are working with a false notion of what long really means. We might live to be a thousand years old and still complain that it had all rushed by too fast. We should be aiming to lead lives that feel long because we manage to imbue them with the right sort of open-hearted appreciation and unsnobbish receptivity, the kind that five-year-olds know naturally how to bring to bear. We need to pause and look at one another’s faces, study the sky, wonder at the eddies and colors of the river, and dare to ask the kinds of questions that open others’ souls. We don’t need to add years; we need to densify the time we have left by ensuring that every day is lived consciously—and we can do this via a maneuver as simple as it is momentous: by starting to notice all that we have as yet only seen."
An excerpt from Alain de Botton's "A Therapeutic Journey: Lessons from the School of Life," via Sara Botton's post on Oldster Magazine, https://oldster.substack.com/p/how-to-lengthen-your-life
"Densify the time we have left" - I love it! I also hope to add as many good years as naturally possible, but the levers of diet and exercise have a troubling element of randomness. No silver bullets, just stacking the deck in my favor as much as possible.
And here's a story of someone who exemplified that open-hearted appreciation and receptivity in her own life. (See the end of this post, especially!)
https://fragmentsintime.substack.com/p/the-tenth-island
What a wonderful post - I've bookmarked it and hope to return to read Diana's work.
As a side tangent, I found myself wondering about journalists' lifespans and found this list of most stressful professions: https://lifeexpectancycalculator.com/life-expectancy-by-profession/
However, caveat: "compliance officer" is #2 on the "most relaxing" list - I'm not sure how that is possible. Makes me question some of the other items on the list. And where is "surgeon" on the most-stressful list? I found it on this list (along with compliance officer, which tracks more with my lived experience): https://money.usnews.com/careers/company-culture/slideshows/the-most-stressful-jobs
Great topic Stephanie! Loved the 5/70 vs 5/20. Kind of a restatement of Recency Bias perhaps? It is probably why last summer there were MANY people sure that Barbie and Oppenheimer were the greatest movies ever. Maybe this why people largely forget the snake they saw 50 years ago but are obsessed by reports of mountain lions in the neighborhood on the evening local news. On the other hand if you got bit by the snake, you probably still need Ambien for a good night sleep in the woods.
I found this part of your thinking very intriguing - "Part of it is that five years out of seventy is 5/70 = 1/14 (7%) of your life, whereas five years out of twenty is 5/20 = 1/4 (25%) of your life."