Time playing with your mind

Picture with chatgpt

There's this experience I know almost anyone has had before. The weird experience with time.

Do you remember that moment when time seems to be moving much slower than you would think it should? You're involved in an activity, you check the time thinking at least 30 minutes should have passion, and you realize it's only been 8 minutes.

Or conversely, like they say, time flies, especially when you're having fun. You check the time thinking it's just been 20 minutes and you notice it's over an hour gone.

So the question is, is time changing speed? The short answer, No. Long answer, it's actually your brain playing tricks unintentionally with you.

We use our brain for measurements of time, so what happens when the measuring tool gets deceived because it's stops paying attention or calculating.

Essentially your brain is a notetaker. When we do something that is new or exciting, your brain records more data and forms more memories, causing the experience to feel like it lasted longer. The same thing occurs when you feel fear or anxiety and your brain is engaged in active hunting mode and in these experiences it creates more memories and time seems to stretch. So no wonder time stretches for most children in class because a lot of them hate school and the strict teachers so all that anxiety stretches the time in your brain.

But here's something interesting. When you are doing the same things day in and day out, your brain does not form many new memories. So, it seems like time is passing much too quickly and you may feel like you are in some kind of a rut. When you are engaged in activities you become oblivious of the passing time until it is past and you ask where the time went.

As we get older time seems to speed up, I don't know if you've observed that. Perhaps it could be because you've got more responsibilities in the day and not enough time for all so time looks like it's going faster. You blink and it's night.

We are here for another year in every year we have lived, so every new year seems like it's less time. We're already in the second half of 2025 and I feel like we just got started.

To subjectively slow down time, especially when we are often left feeling overwhelmed as adults, we need to do new things. Learn something, go somewhere new or do something different than what we normally do. New moments give your brain more information to capture and recall and creates moments that help us feel experienced and enjoy that time we have.

What's the real secret? Time does not change, we do.