Time

[nailit]

why does time seem to go faster as you get older?

[Psybbo]

Because time is no longer on our side?

[nailit]

Seems that way psybbo (at times...)

[VHG]

I always think of the lyrics in the Pink Floyd song Time:

You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

As I am now in my sixties I find that it is not the years that go by but the decades.

When you watch Jurassic Park on TV, think it is a fairly new film, and find it was made in 1993, over 20 years ago.

Frightening.

[ll_billym]

One explanation I have heard to explain this is that as you get older, slices of 'now' account for lower percentages of your total time in existence.

For instance, when you are 10, a year accounts for 1/10 (10%) of your total experience however when you are 50 a year is only 1/50 (2%) of your total existence, 5 times less - maybe a year appears to elapse 5 times as quickly...

I'm sure there are other factors but it's an interesting concept.

[Buenchico]

Worth a read, perhaps?
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120709-does-life-speed-up-as-you-age
(Check out the 'Claudia's website' link)

[VHG]

The other thing that seems to show the quick passing of the years is when young footballers break into their football team, then the next thing you know they are retiring.

I can remember Beckham, Scholes, Butt, Giggs, the Nevilles all starting out at Man Utd and now they have all retired.

In fact even worse is when you are old enough to remember young players starting out, then retiring as footballers, but then becoming managers, and then retiring as managers, like Kevin Keegan for example.

Time definitely seems to go faster the older you get.

[seadogg]

Remember when it seemed ages between Christmases. Now the beggars roll round so quickly its hardly worth taking the decorations down.

[Old_Geezer]

It doesn't really. Each minute lasts a minute as it passes, But looking back, if all days are similar then nothing stands out, it all seems the same and an age seems the same day, more or less. One needs novelty, new experiences.

[douglas9401]

Because it's all downhill after a certain point? :-)

[mibn2cweus]

The passage of time is relative to the observer. The older you get . . . the sooner you die.

[bookbinder]

I am old, so perhaps my theory may be relevant. For an old person, it is less easy than it used to be to do anything physical, such as household chores, odd jobs, etc. An old person therefore moves more slowly than they used to when they were young. This means that the said household chores, etc. take longer to do for an old person. The old person tends not to notice too much that they are doing things slower than they did, but all of a sudden they realise that their list of daily activities is nowhere near being completed by the end of the day. The old person exclaims, "Where does the time go?" It's a logical, convenient explanation of why things don't get done as quickly as the old person expects. It's not the person who is going slower, it's the time that's going faster.

[jomifl]

Time only seems to pass slowly when you are young and bored witless. When you are old there are so many things that you want to do whilst you are still able that time whizzes past.

[AlwaysConfused]

Because there are more and more things to do in such little time it speeds by. On holiday, lying on a beach with no time commitments, the days are long and beautifully slow.

[nailit]

All good answers, thanks guys.

[Elina]

Isn't it that as we get older .. we branch out in experiences ... friends .. relationships ... family .. more commitments .. responsibilities ... & so time seems to go so much quicker?

[Woetra]

Math. If you are one year old then another year is twice as long as you have lived; a long time relative to your experience. If you are 99 then 1 more year is very little vs your accumalated experience of time endured. Since the bulk of what you experience in realtime is measured against what you've experienced in the past, a year really does seem shorter as you get older.