My first blog post about Time Perception

Have you ever heard someone say:

“This year is going so slow?”

Maybe, but if I had to bet, you probably have heard the opposite over and over;

“This year is going by so fast”

“I cannot believe we already are in May”

Considering every year has the same amount of seconds, minutes, days, months (yeah, I know, leap years… whatever), why does every year seems to go faster than the one before? There are actually a lot of explanations.

A lot of people like to say that time perception changes based on your mood, or whether you are having a good time or not, basically if you are having fun or extremely bored. We’ve all read the famous Einstein quote:

“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.”

And, even though that idea is extremely relatable, it doesn’t explain why every year is faster (unless you believe you are having more and more fun each year, that could happen).

One of the best answers suggests that everything is just a matter of perspective.

When you are five years old, one year represents 20% of the time you’ve been alive. When you are ten, that same year only represent 10%, and when you are fifty, it goes to a merely 2%.

To help you understand better, if we consider that we measure time by comparing it by the time we have been alive, one year when we are sixty feels the same as one month when we are five.

This means that when a 100 year old looks back in his life, he won’t remember the half of his life in his 50s, he will think of the half of his life around his early 30s. It hurts, right? Of course this isn’t meant to make you feel bad, or old, or to hate yourself for spending the last 2 hours exploring the weird side of YouTube again, I just want to help you get your priorities straight.

One of my favorite blog posts is “The Tail End” from Tim Urban’s “Wait but Why”, where he breaks down the life of a 90 year old human into squares.

If you cross out every year you’ve lived, you’d still have a lot squares to go through. The problem comes when you put the squares considering time perception, in that case the image is a bit different.

Before I finish, I want to give you some good news! The image above is not 100% accurate, there are certain factors that change the perception of time.

For starters, we don’t have time perception or a lot of memories of our first years of life, so that huge square at the beginning is probably found spread around ages 5-8.

Second, altitude, it may sound like a joke but one of Einstein’s proven theories is that there’s a relation between gravity and time (more gravity means time goes slower), this is an excellent excuse to plan a trip to the beach (this theory is true, time does goes slower at sea level, but the difference is almost non existent, I just really like finding reasons to go to the beach).

Finally, the most important one, new experiences. Think about the first time you went somewhere new, the road was probably endless, the second time it was a bit faster, and the third time you drove there in autopilot. This is because our brain starts to storage every bit of information available, it absorbs everything around you, and little by little that new road becomes known, unsurprising, expected.

That’s why if you want time to go slower try breaking your routine, try something new, experiment with the unknown.

I’m not a big fan of Paulo Coelho but his quote:

“but to those who believe that adventures are dangerous,
I say, try routine: that kills you far more quickly”

really hits the spot. Go to that weird restaurant you always walk by on your way to work, climb or hike that mountain you find intimidating, plan that trip to scuba dive in the Caribbean (please be smart, if you are going up a mountain or scuba diving please hire a professional), whatever you want with the condition that it is something new. This can help you, at least in your perception, to live longer.

However, something much more important is missing:

Having priorities. Tim Urban in “The Tail End” makes an equation, he factors in his parent’s age, how many days he sees them every year and the average life span, and he realises that when you move out of your parents house, you’ve already spent 93% of the time you’ll ever be with them.

However he uses “real time” as a measurement, but if we use “time perception” as our tool to measure time, we already have spent more than 99% of the time we will ever spend with our parents. The same can be said of brothers, cousins or close friends that live abroad.

Obviously this isn’t so you’ll go crying with your parents, hug them and tell them goodbye, this is just a reminder that for some things you still have a lot of time, but for other, you have a lot less than you think, or at least less time than you perceive.

That’s why try to make time for them, don’t cancel or reschedule that dinner with your friend because “something came up”, don’t leave friendships on “I’ll call you later” or “let’s do this again”, don’t skip sunday brunch with your family because you’re hungover or because you have a lot of work.

And the most important thing, when you are with them, actually be with them, make the time you spend together be quality time, your phone, your Instagram feed and the rest of the world can wait.