How Fast Does Your Time Go?
How fast does time seem to go by for you? Does it seem slow, like you're unable to get to that point in the future that you just can't wait to be at? Or does it seem to zip by like an express train? Does it seem to move at a consistent pace for you or does it seem to fluctuate wildly? Does it move at the same pace now as it did at other times in your life? Does it seem to move at the same pace for you as for other people you know? I think these are very interesting questions that deserve attentions from psychologists and philosophers.
Philip Yaffe, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, has a very thought provoking article in which he asks the question, how come time seems to go faster and faster as we get older? Philip's conclusion is that the reason for this widely reported phenomenon is that anticipation slows down the perception of time while retrospection makes time seem to go more quickly. While we are young we spend a good deal of time anticipating our future and while we are older we spend a much greater percentage of time in retrospection about our pasts.
I'm more convinced by Philip's idea that anticipation can slow the perception of time. After all, every American remembers how long Christmas Eve night seemed when they were 5 years old. I'm less convinced though that retrospection accelerates the perception of time. That doesn't seem to fit my own phenomenology as well as the former idea. I'd rather parsimoniously claim that it's simply less time spent in anticipation that results in the perception of time going more quickly in older age. This seems to be an inadequately explored area. Given the importance of time to us mortal humans, the psychology of how we think about time is very important and deserves a lot more work.
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I like the idea you mention about anticipation versus retrospection. It is very thought-provoking, and seems related to something I've been pondering for quite some time. If you think about it, each minute is a slightly smaller percentage of our life than the previous minute, and thus everything feels faster, relatively speaking.
Or there's also Ford Prefect's famous quote: "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." Nobody seems to understand what I mean when I quote this, but I keep quoting it anyways, because I'm pretty sure even Douglas Adams wasn't quite sure what Ford meant when he had Ford say that...
I can't get my head around the "Lunchtime doubly so." part of that Ford Prefect quote. That makes no sense to me... I'm missing it.
I love your notion that each minute is different than the minute before. I think you are exactly right. But maybe you are stating it a little differently than I would. Isn't it really that each minute is a slightly bigger percentage of our remaining life than the minute before? So as we age each minute is more precious and therefore seems all the shorter?
That's awesome to think about. And also profoundly depressing. Now I'm in a funk.
-Sean
Yikes, I guess that IS rather depressing! And each minute being more precious, because of it being a bigger percentage of our remaining life --- wow, that DOES make it seem even more potent! It seems both sides of the coin are equally intriguing, and useful to contemplate.
As for Ford Prefect's words, I think that lunchtime is doubly difficult to define, both in when it will be, and how long it will be. Both aspects are illusory, because they are both related to time, which is an illusion. It's also possible he meant that lunchtime is illusory simply because it isn't a good indicator of whether it's time to start drinking or not... ;)