Have you noticed that during school years, summer breaks felt like an entire lifetime, but at a more mature age, years fly by like a single month? This isn’t just aging grumbling, but a genuinely confirmed psychological phenomenon. It has a scientific explanation, and not just one.
The first reason is mathematical, the so-called “proportionality theory of time perception.” For a five-year-old child, one year is 20% of their entire life. That’s a huge chunk of experience. But for a 50-year-old person, one year is merely 2% of lived time.
Since individuals gauge time relative to what they have already lived, each subsequent year seems like an increasingly brief and minor segment. But this isn’t the sole element.
The second reason lies in the brain’s function. In childhood, you learned something new every day: you learned to swim, went on your first hike, met new friends. The brain actively records these occurrences, generating numerous vivid memories.
As one ages, life becomes routine: work, home, the same route, familiar tasks. To conserve energy, the brain stops recording repetitive events in detail. It essentially says, “I have seen this before, let’s not use storage space.”
Consequently, looking back, you find fewer “hooks” and events in your memory. A period of time appears compressed because it contained little new information. Days merge into one Groundhog Day.
The positive news is that this process can be slowed down. To “stretch” time, you must “feed” the brain with novelty. Travel, new hobbies, altering your route to work—all of this compels the brain to reactivate the active recording mode, and the subjective passage of time slows down.
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