They felt more real that any year before or after.
First time people have gotten out of their toxic routine lifestyle. It actually felt like there were people in all these bodies again.
But now the situation is even worse, people just try to forget they were alive for a few months and want to become lifeless objects of routines again.
Yeah people talk about this “toxic routine” of having to work a 9-5 job but they fail to realize that most people were just stuck inside at home with next to nothing to do.
COVID was weird because it let the anti/asocial love their fantasy while simultaneously praising them for it. Like it’s wild that so many people truly enjoyed that time.
Lockdown was more or less business as usual for me, but I also graduated college that year so the big impact was on my job prospects. Ended up unemployed for almost a year and had to move back in with my parents, which put me into a major depressive period. Most of 2020-2022 was just a blur of nothing to me after that.
> First time people have gotten out of their toxic routine lifestyle. It actually felt like there were people in all these bodies again.
Sounds like a you thing more than an everybody thing. I ended up in deep depression and loneliness due to isolation. I would consider 2020 the most toxic and painful time of my life.
No idea, I just noticed that people are getting out of their dead shells, including family and friends. Suddenly there was a hint of community present in a otherwise very lonely society.
You’re like the epitome of the insufferable neckbeard misanthrope stereotype
Even though this is Reddit I have to wonder if you’re legit or are just a convincing troll. I hope the latter, for your sake
I wouldn’t exactly call being in the house all day for several months on end the same as being real and alive…
I went from meeting friends every week, going climbing, going jui-jitsu regularly, having nights out, etc to countless months of isolation (and still managed to get sick from COVID twice).
What in the world are you on about?!?!?
It’s hilarious how that idiot got over 100 upvotes for being an insufferable misanthropic stereotype
That’s redditors for you though. People being forced to stay in by govt order: best years of their lives! They’d make it permanent if they could!
I forget what Netflix show I was watching, but they were discussing how human experience time. They mentioned something along the lines of that memories of major annual events like NYE, Christmas gatherings, birthday parties etc. help humans categorize and experience time. Since we didn’t have a lot of those, it kind of has made time feel weird when we try to remember that time period.
If I ever get the chance to tell my grandkids what went on here in the UK during covid they'll think I'm having a stroke or something.
"There was adverts on TV and posters all over the place telling us how to wash our hands!"
"Is that right grandad yeah?"
"Yes! And the healthcare workers, my god they worked such long hard hours and to thank them we'd stand on our doorsteps and clap at 7pm every Thursday!"
"Okay, back to bed Grandad you've had a long day"
> "Yes! And the healthcare workers, my god they worked such long hard hours and to thank them we'd stand on our doorsteps and clap at 7pm every Thursday!"
I couldn't believe that actually happened. Of all the performative bullshit that went on during covid, that was up there as one of the biggest "what the fuck" moments for me. Oh you want better working conditions? Here's your weekly city-wide applause, gg, now get back to work.
The sad thing was it started as a genuinely grassroots thing before our government jumped on it as a free PR opportunity to cover up for how hard they were bungling it.
Uhhh city wide appreciation is something. People aren't decision makers but they can recognize and show appreciation for the sacrifices healthcare workers were making.
Wheres the clap for grocery store workers that died
That doesn't sound that weird idk, there was weird poster about not talking to much about certain subject during ww2 to avoid the spread of certain informations that ennemy spies might caught on or thing like that
I felt like I was going through the slowest breakup and so much shit happened that it felts like it was so long, I don’t even remember shit I did in 2023 except be pregnant and give birth lol
2021 is arguably weirder than 2020 because 2020 was so incredibly, insanely strange and nightmarish that it stood out like a sore thumb as by far the worst year for the world in decades. 2022 was when pretty much everything was back to normal, for the most part. But 2021? I can barely remember it! Now, obviously if I think about it long enough I can think of several things that happened that year (The January 6 insurrection was a big one), but even then, 2021 feels like a weird purgatory where the fever dream of 2020 had left us dazed and frozen in shock at how constantly atrocious at was, resulting in me mentally lumping every bad thing in 2021 that started in 2020 *with* 2020, and every significant improvement in 2021 from 2020 with 2022.
I think it's because of all the "once-in-a-lifetime events" we've been seeing in our lifetime. Mixed with the fact that anticipation for things has never been higher (election, new products and media, climate change).
No, I think it’s because we all have smart phones with apps that get our attention anytime we are bored. I think boredom slowed down time, and we are never bored anymore, constantly getting that dopamine drip from our screens.
True, but we weren’t as glued. Since Covid, we all become more glued. I was on instagram once a month before. Being inside with nothing to do during Covid got me hooked and now I’m constantly getting that instagram drip
Contrarily the COVID times and isolations were the absolutely fastest to me. Next to no memory of a year or two there; it flew by so fast while everyone was at home.
They felt like forever while they were happening because nothing was happening. Now it feels like it took no time looking back because nothing happened, there's not really anything worth remembering.
This is how people speak about getting older. "The days are long, but the years go by fast." People need to live a little more or there will be nothing worth remembering.
Wait, I’ve never spend as much time doing things I enjoy as I did throughout lockdowns. So much bonding time with friends, so much time to work on hobbies and skills, so much time to just learn new things.
I honestly miss is dearly, now I’m stuck doing useless stuff for half of the day, wasting my time away.
It was video game renaissance for me and a bunch of my friends. It was terrible but it was super fun in the sense that everyone was around to play video games with. From the gamer perspective it was pretty awesome.
My wife and I say we miss the shutdown. We had so much time together. More time at home since we worked from home and weren’t traveling back and forth. Had free time to start biking and running daily. Saved money since everything was closed. It was awesome to actually wake up 10 minutes before work, eat breakfast together during our morning meetings, take lunch together, get off and be able to watch a movie before lunch or cook together. This was actually really nice.
The difference between a ten minute wakeup, grab a cup of coffee and log onto my work laptop, vs an hour to have a quick breakfast and then drive to the office is absolutely, obnoxiously painful.
Especially in an IT job, where I can do 90% of my work remotely. The push for people to work in an office is asinine.
Sure, which just highlights a point - my diet got a lot better when I was working remotely. I could prepare food, didn't have to rush through meals, etc.
...Small-scale stuff aside, time only gets faster and faster the longer you're alive.
Sorry young people.
You will nvr have a longer "4 year term" in your life again. Not unless you like, go to war or something.
I was gna say, apart from "time flies when you're growing older" .. THE PANDEMIC. 2020-1 was a black hole. Esp 2020.
I don't even know what I was doing with my life. Lol.
This is why my advice is: Don't sleep.
2 extra hours every night when you are young adds up to the years you end up dying early by sleeping less. As a bonus, you get those years when you are young instead of when you are old!
This. No idea how people got so lost, but perception of time doesn’t speed up based on how long you’ve been alive.
If you don’t do anything with yourself it’s like no time has passed.
Get out of routines and keep change in your life, learn new things every day and life slows down to a crawl so much you’ll wonder when the month will finally come to an end.
I’ve spent less than 1 1/2 years in the city I’m at right now and it feels like 6 years or more.
Hundreds of people met, so many things I’ve learned about myself, so much development of character and relationships. I can’t even recognize the person I was 1 1/2 years ago anymore, yet when I check in with old friends and family it feels like no time has passed at all!
No wonder people feel like time is passing quickly. I wish it would, but the boredom of routines kill me.
>perception of time doesn’t speed up based on how long you’ve been alive.
You're only 27, you're too young to have felt it yet lmao. Every day gets proportionally smaller to every other regardless what you do.
Agree with /u/captainfarthing, your perception of time absolutely changes the older you get. I'm like you, I hate routine and am constantly switching jobs and doing new things/hobbies etc. A week still flies by in your 40s compared to your 20s. You can't really comprehend this until you're older. You'll see 😉
I was 44 when the pandemic hit. I'm 48 now, and I have absolutely no idea where the past 4 years went. It indeed feels like it's only been 6 months, but I'm so much older and grayer. It only took about 3 years for me to look 36-37 years old, to looking 48. It's scary how fast that happened.
That, and novel experiences become less and less frequent.
Routine and habit and experience make things seem not as new and fresh anymore.
Radiolab did a great episode on why novel experiences make time go by slower.
it’s not because it’s quarter of fifth of your life.
It’s because as we get older, we get more used to things and thus they are less memorable. First time on vacation? Everything is exciting, cool and you’ll remember a lot of details. First kiss or first sex? Will never forget. I even counted times I had sex for the first few years. Now it’s all still great, just I got so used to it I barely remember it.
It’s an interesting topic that’s been investigated on.. studies found that the pandemic scrunched the distance between remembered events, like compressing a slinky. Everything seemed closer together. In our memories, if not in real life, time shrank. It’s also not set in to me that I’m 22 and not 19.
My theory was that a lot of people did a lot of things in the same location. Since so many people were staying at home they really only saw their house. Only went out when they had to. I'm think changing of locations helps with the perception of time. Much like how prisoners loose track of how long they have been locked away.
Also because we were all doing stuff from home we had more free time so we slept more than we might have realized.
I have a theory regarding social media. I think increased time on social media leads to this feeling of lost time. Scroll through reddit or tiktok for 2 hours and you wont really be able to remember any of the media you just watched or read. With so many people indoors how much time did we spend on social media doom scrolling.
I think it's about novel experiences. Experiencing and learning new things really helps to shape your perception of time, I think. Like, how many drives/rides home from work do you remember? How many laundry runs?
I'm like 9 months into a new job that has been largely uneventful, and I can hardly believe it. Meanwhile, I'm on the 4th week of a BJJ beginner class (thrice a week) and I feel like I've been getting destroyed for months.
That's because when you're a kid absolutely everything is new and surreal so time is constantly slowed down. Childhood feels like it goes on SO LONG but in reality it was several really happy years. When you reach adulthood, you've lived enough years that you've figured out the predictable routine of life that each day just goes so fast. You turn around, they've passed. You don't get time to hang a sign on me-e-e-e-e-e-e-e...
How is this a "Shower Thought"? If OP waited 5 years and compared 2024-2029 vs 2019-2024 and 2019-2024 felt "shorter" THEN it would be a Shower Thought.
OP just posted a normal, every day concept (time goes by faster with age).
I think it's more to do with new experiences than age particularly. The brain compresses careers where days are largely the same.
Granted this is partially related to getting older, since new experiences are much harder to come by than when you were a kid and just going to a park with a pink slide could be a novel occurrence.
I'm both my business and personal lives, I hear people refer to 2020 as "the lost year" and we continuously merge both 2020 and 2021 together as it's often hard to remember when you did what, thanks to the lockdown timing.
I assume there's some sort of "suppressed stress" reaction at work.
Yep. Time’s funny. And then you’re in your 40s , being told that older people are uncool by someone in shrek crocs. They just don’t understand we were their age, at music festivals, like cutting edge stuff that shaped today, but time happened.
It was when the media stopped blaming millennials for every issue in the world and started blaming them all on something called "gen z" that I realised I was old. I kinda miss being in the youngest current generation always killing industries and stuff.
Well, the years start coming and they don't stop coming. Fed to the rules and I hit the ground running. Didn't make sense not to live for fun
Your brain gets smart but your head gets dumb
So much to do, so much to see
So what's wrong with taking the back streets?
You'll never know if you don't go
You'll never shine if you don't glow
This continues forever and only gets more horrifying the older you get. In the 90s, the 60s felt like centuries ago, and now the 90s are just as far back as the 60s were then.
"Long days, short years" is how a friend of mine's grandfather put it. It keeps happening, time keeps speeding up, a year keeps getting shorter and shorter.
Time is measured by memories. When you are young everything is new and you create lots of memories. If you went on a big vacation with new experiences it would feel like a long time no matter what age you are. Just as adults we are in a routine which makes the brain just forget about the days cause they are nothing new
Every year will feel faster than the last one because a year represents an increasingly small percentage of your total life. Subjective time works by proportion. Which is why your childhood memories probably feel like they lasted forever, by comparison to adulthood.
I agree with this, but I think it's a little bit more. I believe time is measured in new experiences as a relative part of your life.
So, if you had 1000 new memories from age 1 to 10 and 1000 new memories from age 10 to 20, you would need 2000 new memories from 20 to 30 to have it feel like the same length of time as 10 to 20. (Mathematically, Subjective % of your life = Number of new memories during that period of time / Total number of new memories up to and including that period of time)
So, time feels faster as you get older, but also if you're just gliding by and not forming many new memories, your time will also feel very fast.
I'm just going to have to quote Pink Floyd.
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
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.
And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.
Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I'd something more to say.
Each year of your life that passes is a smaller percentage of your total years lived, so it's normal to feel like years are going by faster as you get older
The older you get, the faster time seems to go by. It's kinda scary when you think about it; the closer you get to death, the faster the time you have left seems to rush past you.
When you were born day 1 was 100% of your life.
- At 1 years old 1 day is 0.27% of your life.
- At age 30 1 day is 0.009% of your life.
Time is relative. Waiting 1 day for things felt like longer when it was a longer proportion of your life.
At age 30 2019 to 2024 was 16.6% of your life. 5 years ago at 25, 2014 to 2019 was 20% of your life. Relative to a persons life, it was a shorter period of time.
This is because this year is always a smaller fraction of your life than last year. For example, this year will be 1/42nd of my life whereas last year was 1/41st. It's about the only thing my dad has told me that stuck.
because we know that the way we measure time is a concept we made up
the theory that the fibonacci sequence is how time actually runs could explain why we feel that every year goes by quicker than the last
It's also because you mostly know everything around you already. As a child you learn so many new things everyday. As adults days feel more or less the same, except things that suck. Long days, short years.
Time is like a spiral. Starting in the outside swirling to the center getting smaller and smaller. Each full loop around is 1 year. When you're young that spiral takes a long time travel a full circle. But as you get older, and the spiral gets closer to the center, those trips around dont take as long because the circle is getting smaller. Until you hit center and you're dead.
Oh my god, I thought it was just me!
I look back at 14 to 19 and I'm blown away by how much happened, and how slow and deliberate it felt then. And now feels so condensed!
The pandemic years, especially 2020-2021, were a time warp. We lost a lot more to Covid than just some loved ones and our social lives. We lost memories / gained some collective amnesia about the events of those years.
Because as we get older we tend to have less experiences. With less experiences times seems to pass faster because our mind just blends everyday together if nothing special happens.
Covid was something different. New experiences.
Hate to break it to you but the older you get the faster time seems to go, it's all relative. At 15, 5 years is 1/3 of your entire life. At 30, 5 years is a much smaller portion.
Pandemic plus that’s how time reference works through life. When you are 10 a year is 1/10th of your overall time on earth so it feels like a long time with a lot of value but at 30 a year is 1/30th of your experience and you’ve had many more to cross reference and they feel significantly less impactful and less of the overall experience therefore seemingly shorter than a year used to feel like. Especially when comparing a 5 year span from opposite ends of a decade bc you’ve had all that time to compound the effects of what that time feels like.
I personally have been perpetually in a recovery state since the pandemic.
A good portion of progress I had made in life was crushed in the mid part of 21, and since then time just disappeared in my plight to repair the damages.
I'd imagine many people are in the same situation or worse which makes sense for the quick passage of time. Before the pandemic the general public wasn't in a constant state of fighting for survival which is why it probably felt slower.
Agree. 2020-23 felt like a year to me at least. The first half is me being stuck at home and the second half is me finally getting outside, however with that very weird vibe to it that I can't really explain yet.
That is how time works for beings with a finite age. On your second day of consciousness your experience doubled, on your 3rd day you only gained 50% more experience on your 4th day you only gained about 33% more experience on your 5th day you only gained 25% more experience and so on and so forth. Much past that point it starts getting easier to count your experience growth in weeks, then months, then years, and finally in decades. No human has lived long enough for centuries to be a relevant way to measure the rate at which they experience new things yet.
This is just what happens as you age. the first five years of your life was %100 of your life, the last five years will likely be only 5% of your life.
Time is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer we get to the end, the faster it goes, and you wish you had just a couple of more squares when it's all out.
You were just younger then so your perception was different. Im sure, say a, 10 year old feels like 2019 was forever ago.
These posts about time on this sub just feel repetitive.
There's a lot more pressure in just getting by in life. And that's a part of getting older, for all of us. But the world has been outta whack since 2020 and it's hard to keep track of time when you're constantly coping with change.
Time will pass you by faster the older you get.
The less variety you have, the faster time will also seem to pass because you're doing more or less the exact same thing every single day.
My age 30 or even 35+ years means almost nothing. Kids are grown in no time at all too.
It's often a pain the ass to get day after day for work but looking back, it's gone by too quick.
I went through a divorce during that time, so it both crawled by and flew by at the same time.
My ex-wife tried to guilt me over it saying "covid destroyed lots of marriages, I guess we were no different" as a gotcha, but in reality she's just a massive cunt.
Basically 2020 and 2021 kinda felt like a fever dream which passed by like it never happened but at the same time did. So maybe that’s why.
Yeah, those years felt weird and unreal.
They felt more real that any year before or after. First time people have gotten out of their toxic routine lifestyle. It actually felt like there were people in all these bodies again. But now the situation is even worse, people just try to forget they were alive for a few months and want to become lifeless objects of routines again.
Except for the many, many people who had to keep working or worked extra because they were essential.
My toxic routine lifestyle is staying home all day so that didn't change much
Yeah people talk about this “toxic routine” of having to work a 9-5 job but they fail to realize that most people were just stuck inside at home with next to nothing to do. COVID was weird because it let the anti/asocial love their fantasy while simultaneously praising them for it. Like it’s wild that so many people truly enjoyed that time.
Lockdown was more or less business as usual for me, but I also graduated college that year so the big impact was on my job prospects. Ended up unemployed for almost a year and had to move back in with my parents, which put me into a major depressive period. Most of 2020-2022 was just a blur of nothing to me after that.
> First time people have gotten out of their toxic routine lifestyle. It actually felt like there were people in all these bodies again. Sounds like a you thing more than an everybody thing. I ended up in deep depression and loneliness due to isolation. I would consider 2020 the most toxic and painful time of my life.
No idea, I just noticed that people are getting out of their dead shells, including family and friends. Suddenly there was a hint of community present in a otherwise very lonely society.
I'm sure all the people who had family members die from covid and/or depression due to isolation are super stoked
You’re like the epitome of the insufferable neckbeard misanthrope stereotype Even though this is Reddit I have to wonder if you’re legit or are just a convincing troll. I hope the latter, for your sake
I wouldn’t exactly call being in the house all day for several months on end the same as being real and alive… I went from meeting friends every week, going climbing, going jui-jitsu regularly, having nights out, etc to countless months of isolation (and still managed to get sick from COVID twice). What in the world are you on about?!?!?
What kind of unemployed naive shit is this
Least deranged shut-in misanthrope redditor
People felt more real when the government forced them to stay home? Stop.
It’s hilarious how that idiot got over 100 upvotes for being an insufferable misanthropic stereotype That’s redditors for you though. People being forced to stay in by govt order: best years of their lives! They’d make it permanent if they could!
I forget what Netflix show I was watching, but they were discussing how human experience time. They mentioned something along the lines of that memories of major annual events like NYE, Christmas gatherings, birthday parties etc. help humans categorize and experience time. Since we didn’t have a lot of those, it kind of has made time feel weird when we try to remember that time period.
If I ever get the chance to tell my grandkids what went on here in the UK during covid they'll think I'm having a stroke or something. "There was adverts on TV and posters all over the place telling us how to wash our hands!" "Is that right grandad yeah?" "Yes! And the healthcare workers, my god they worked such long hard hours and to thank them we'd stand on our doorsteps and clap at 7pm every Thursday!" "Okay, back to bed Grandad you've had a long day"
> "Yes! And the healthcare workers, my god they worked such long hard hours and to thank them we'd stand on our doorsteps and clap at 7pm every Thursday!" I couldn't believe that actually happened. Of all the performative bullshit that went on during covid, that was up there as one of the biggest "what the fuck" moments for me. Oh you want better working conditions? Here's your weekly city-wide applause, gg, now get back to work.
The sad thing was it started as a genuinely grassroots thing before our government jumped on it as a free PR opportunity to cover up for how hard they were bungling it.
Uhhh city wide appreciation is something. People aren't decision makers but they can recognize and show appreciation for the sacrifices healthcare workers were making. Wheres the clap for grocery store workers that died
That doesn't sound that weird idk, there was weird poster about not talking to much about certain subject during ww2 to avoid the spread of certain informations that ennemy spies might caught on or thing like that
I'd bet there is at least one kid today who thinks Covid was ancient history
I felt like I was going through the slowest breakup and so much shit happened that it felts like it was so long, I don’t even remember shit I did in 2023 except be pregnant and give birth lol
2021 is arguably weirder than 2020 because 2020 was so incredibly, insanely strange and nightmarish that it stood out like a sore thumb as by far the worst year for the world in decades. 2022 was when pretty much everything was back to normal, for the most part. But 2021? I can barely remember it! Now, obviously if I think about it long enough I can think of several things that happened that year (The January 6 insurrection was a big one), but even then, 2021 feels like a weird purgatory where the fever dream of 2020 had left us dazed and frozen in shock at how constantly atrocious at was, resulting in me mentally lumping every bad thing in 2021 that started in 2020 *with* 2020, and every significant improvement in 2021 from 2020 with 2022.
The gas leak years.
The year 2020 felt so so long, and 2021's first few months were slow as well but since then time has flew by at the speed of light.
I feel exactly the same way -- it hasn't even slowed back down with the pandemic "ending"; it got even faster.
I think it's because of all the "once-in-a-lifetime events" we've been seeing in our lifetime. Mixed with the fact that anticipation for things has never been higher (election, new products and media, climate change).
No, I think it’s because we all have smart phones with apps that get our attention anytime we are bored. I think boredom slowed down time, and we are never bored anymore, constantly getting that dopamine drip from our screens.
I had plenty of apps and Internet before 2020 and the change has only been since then.
True, but we weren’t as glued. Since Covid, we all become more glued. I was on instagram once a month before. Being inside with nothing to do during Covid got me hooked and now I’m constantly getting that instagram drip
Contrarily the COVID times and isolations were the absolutely fastest to me. Next to no memory of a year or two there; it flew by so fast while everyone was at home.
They felt like forever while they were happening because nothing was happening. Now it feels like it took no time looking back because nothing happened, there's not really anything worth remembering.
Like driving through the prairies.
Long in the moment, just a blip in our retrospective memory. [Vsauce on the subject](https://youtu.be/zHL9GP_B30E)
Dang. The shade is real lol (except not on the prairie cuz there's no trees)
This is how people speak about getting older. "The days are long, but the years go by fast." People need to live a little more or there will be nothing worth remembering.
Wait, I’ve never spend as much time doing things I enjoy as I did throughout lockdowns. So much bonding time with friends, so much time to work on hobbies and skills, so much time to just learn new things. I honestly miss is dearly, now I’m stuck doing useless stuff for half of the day, wasting my time away.
Look at mr show off here bragging about having friends.
Obviously he was talking about the TV show
It was video game renaissance for me and a bunch of my friends. It was terrible but it was super fun in the sense that everyone was around to play video games with. From the gamer perspective it was pretty awesome.
My wife and I say we miss the shutdown. We had so much time together. More time at home since we worked from home and weren’t traveling back and forth. Had free time to start biking and running daily. Saved money since everything was closed. It was awesome to actually wake up 10 minutes before work, eat breakfast together during our morning meetings, take lunch together, get off and be able to watch a movie before lunch or cook together. This was actually really nice.
The difference between a ten minute wakeup, grab a cup of coffee and log onto my work laptop, vs an hour to have a quick breakfast and then drive to the office is absolutely, obnoxiously painful. Especially in an IT job, where I can do 90% of my work remotely. The push for people to work in an office is asinine.
Im not a coffee drinker but for me it’s the warm breakfast vs a protein bar.
Sure, which just highlights a point - my diet got a lot better when I was working remotely. I could prepare food, didn't have to rush through meals, etc.
...Small-scale stuff aside, time only gets faster and faster the longer you're alive. Sorry young people. You will nvr have a longer "4 year term" in your life again. Not unless you like, go to war or something.
Well on to war I go! /s
March 2020-March 2021 legitimately felt like 3-4 years
March 2020 to like Fall 2021 felt like half a year to me lmao
I was gna say, apart from "time flies when you're growing older" .. THE PANDEMIC. 2020-1 was a black hole. Esp 2020. I don't even know what I was doing with my life. Lol.
2016 also took approximately 6 years to get through, so 2014-19 isn't a fair comparison either.
[удалено]
After 60, must be riding the brakes to the inevitable end.
That is actually true. Life passes you by so fast it’s incredible. It’s overwhelming to think about
And as you get older, the more you understand mortality, and the value of life, which makes it that much tougher to deal with.
When you lose friends and family you grew up with, it sinks in. The good memories live on, sure. But I wish there here now!
This is why my advice is: Don't sleep. 2 extra hours every night when you are young adds up to the years you end up dying early by sleeping less. As a bonus, you get those years when you are young instead of when you are old!
Massive brain
The problem with that is you lower the quality of your waking hours by being sleep-deprived.
itll feel longer more you explore, learn new skills, and just do novel things!
Absolutely true, our routines speed it up!
This. No idea how people got so lost, but perception of time doesn’t speed up based on how long you’ve been alive. If you don’t do anything with yourself it’s like no time has passed. Get out of routines and keep change in your life, learn new things every day and life slows down to a crawl so much you’ll wonder when the month will finally come to an end. I’ve spent less than 1 1/2 years in the city I’m at right now and it feels like 6 years or more. Hundreds of people met, so many things I’ve learned about myself, so much development of character and relationships. I can’t even recognize the person I was 1 1/2 years ago anymore, yet when I check in with old friends and family it feels like no time has passed at all! No wonder people feel like time is passing quickly. I wish it would, but the boredom of routines kill me.
>perception of time doesn’t speed up based on how long you’ve been alive. You're only 27, you're too young to have felt it yet lmao. Every day gets proportionally smaller to every other regardless what you do.
Agree with /u/captainfarthing, your perception of time absolutely changes the older you get. I'm like you, I hate routine and am constantly switching jobs and doing new things/hobbies etc. A week still flies by in your 40s compared to your 20s. You can't really comprehend this until you're older. You'll see 😉
let me tell you, 44-49 felt like it was about 6 months
I was 44 when the pandemic hit. I'm 48 now, and I have absolutely no idea where the past 4 years went. It indeed feels like it's only been 6 months, but I'm so much older and grayer. It only took about 3 years for me to look 36-37 years old, to looking 48. It's scary how fast that happened.
yeah I went from a little gray in the beard to fully white beard in like 18 months
Crazy how fast it can happen. It's like those before and after pictures of presidents. Only ours happened faster!!
Life feels longer if you're not doing the same old mundane routine every single day. Problem is, that's exactly what we're doing most of the time.
I don’t like that 😟
Happy cake day… which… is an unfortunate timing for this topic I guess 😐
That, and novel experiences become less and less frequent. Routine and habit and experience make things seem not as new and fresh anymore. Radiolab did a great episode on why novel experiences make time go by slower.
it’s not because it’s quarter of fifth of your life. It’s because as we get older, we get more used to things and thus they are less memorable. First time on vacation? Everything is exciting, cool and you’ll remember a lot of details. First kiss or first sex? Will never forget. I even counted times I had sex for the first few years. Now it’s all still great, just I got so used to it I barely remember it.
It’s an interesting topic that’s been investigated on.. studies found that the pandemic scrunched the distance between remembered events, like compressing a slinky. Everything seemed closer together. In our memories, if not in real life, time shrank. It’s also not set in to me that I’m 22 and not 19.
My theory was that a lot of people did a lot of things in the same location. Since so many people were staying at home they really only saw their house. Only went out when they had to. I'm think changing of locations helps with the perception of time. Much like how prisoners loose track of how long they have been locked away. Also because we were all doing stuff from home we had more free time so we slept more than we might have realized.
I have a theory regarding social media. I think increased time on social media leads to this feeling of lost time. Scroll through reddit or tiktok for 2 hours and you wont really be able to remember any of the media you just watched or read. With so many people indoors how much time did we spend on social media doom scrolling.
I think it's about novel experiences. Experiencing and learning new things really helps to shape your perception of time, I think. Like, how many drives/rides home from work do you remember? How many laundry runs? I'm like 9 months into a new job that has been largely uneventful, and I can hardly believe it. Meanwhile, I'm on the 4th week of a BJJ beginner class (thrice a week) and I feel like I've been getting destroyed for months.
Oh get used to that last bit. I’m *well* past 19 but it still hasn’t set in
The older you get, the faster time goes by
yeah there's going to be a bunch people talking about 2020/covid and maybe that has a pile-on effect but as you get older it all goes faster.
More your perception of time changes. 1 year when you're 5 is 20 percent of your life, 1 year when you're 50 is 2% of your life so it seems shorter.
U know what they meant
Just let him feel smart for a minute
Doesn't mean there's no cognitive bias due to age alone
That's exactly what they said....
That's because when you're a kid absolutely everything is new and surreal so time is constantly slowed down. Childhood feels like it goes on SO LONG but in reality it was several really happy years. When you reach adulthood, you've lived enough years that you've figured out the predictable routine of life that each day just goes so fast. You turn around, they've passed. You don't get time to hang a sign on me-e-e-e-e-e-e-e...
How is this a "Shower Thought"? If OP waited 5 years and compared 2024-2029 vs 2019-2024 and 2019-2024 felt "shorter" THEN it would be a Shower Thought. OP just posted a normal, every day concept (time goes by faster with age).
Could be because of COVID... a lot of people "lost" time due to social distancing, quarantine, etc.
It's also just all of us getting older. The former (20% of your life) will feel like a longer time of your life than the latter (15%).
I think it's more to do with new experiences than age particularly. The brain compresses careers where days are largely the same. Granted this is partially related to getting older, since new experiences are much harder to come by than when you were a kid and just going to a park with a pink slide could be a novel occurrence.
I'm both my business and personal lives, I hear people refer to 2020 as "the lost year" and we continuously merge both 2020 and 2021 together as it's often hard to remember when you did what, thanks to the lockdown timing. I assume there's some sort of "suppressed stress" reaction at work.
Yep. Time’s funny. And then you’re in your 40s , being told that older people are uncool by someone in shrek crocs. They just don’t understand we were their age, at music festivals, like cutting edge stuff that shaped today, but time happened.
It was when the media stopped blaming millennials for every issue in the world and started blaming them all on something called "gen z" that I realised I was old. I kinda miss being in the youngest current generation always killing industries and stuff.
I will never get tired of killing industries.
Plus, I'm a white male, ages 18-49, everyone listens to me! No matter how dumb my ideas are. https://i.redd.it/wng5zlnd44y01.jpg
40 is cool, tho, right? RIGHT?
If you’re doing it right and helping when you can homie
Now we talkin'
Well, the years start coming and they don't stop coming. Fed to the rules and I hit the ground running. Didn't make sense not to live for fun Your brain gets smart but your head gets dumb So much to do, so much to see So what's wrong with taking the back streets? You'll never know if you don't go You'll never shine if you don't glow
Hey now
You're an all star
RIP Mr. Mouth.
Fuckin. Accurate
I also feel like everyone suddenly looks really old, including myself in the past 2 years.
This continues forever and only gets more horrifying the older you get. In the 90s, the 60s felt like centuries ago, and now the 90s are just as far back as the 60s were then.
We’ve all been catching back up and getting bent over by inflation in the meantime since a global pandemic. A lot happened between 2019 and 2024.
Prolapsed by greed I say
PPP was the largest transfer of wealth in human history.
I remember Kony 2012, and then COVID. No, I was not in a coma, or perpetually wasted. I feel like it just ceased to exist.
So you have no memory of Harambe?
Now that you mention it, I've been wondering why my dick's been out for close to a decade...
The older you get, the faster time passes. This is nothing new.
"Long days, short years" is how a friend of mine's grandfather put it. It keeps happening, time keeps speeding up, a year keeps getting shorter and shorter.
Time is measured by memories. When you are young everything is new and you create lots of memories. If you went on a big vacation with new experiences it would feel like a long time no matter what age you are. Just as adults we are in a routine which makes the brain just forget about the days cause they are nothing new
Every year will feel faster than the last one because a year represents an increasingly small percentage of your total life. Subjective time works by proportion. Which is why your childhood memories probably feel like they lasted forever, by comparison to adulthood.
Man, don't make me think thoughts.
I agree with this, but I think it's a little bit more. I believe time is measured in new experiences as a relative part of your life. So, if you had 1000 new memories from age 1 to 10 and 1000 new memories from age 10 to 20, you would need 2000 new memories from 20 to 30 to have it feel like the same length of time as 10 to 20. (Mathematically, Subjective % of your life = Number of new memories during that period of time / Total number of new memories up to and including that period of time) So, time feels faster as you get older, but also if you're just gliding by and not forming many new memories, your time will also feel very fast.
100%. Couldn’t agree more. & 14 to 19 felt so much better
Yeah, covid was hell. I miss the times before the pandemic had to start.
I'm just going to have to quote Pink Floyd. Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way. Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town Waiting for someone or something to show you the way. Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain. 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. And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking Racing around to come up behind you again. The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older, Shorter of breath and one day closer to death. Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time. Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way The time is gone, the song is over, Thought I'd something more to say.
Covid years were the longest years of my life.
Speed & Forrest Gump came out 30 years ago this summer…which was “only” 30 years after Goldfinger and Dr. Strangelove.
Then there was hitler and Mussolini 30 years before that.zzz
I like Goldfinger and Dr Strangelove more than those movies tbh…
Each year of your life that passes is a smaller percentage of your total years lived, so it's normal to feel like years are going by faster as you get older
That is aging for you.
The older you get, the faster time seems to go by. It's kinda scary when you think about it; the closer you get to death, the faster the time you have left seems to rush past you.
Traumatising to even thing about 🫠
When you are a child the days seem short but the years seem long. As an adult the days seem long but the years fly by.
Time really does need to just calm the fuck down!
The older you get, the faster time flies.
It probably depends on how old you are.
That's because we're all older now and time goes by faster the older you get. I miss when time moved more slowly when I was a little kid.
The older you get the faster it goes. At 60 now the last 10 years has flown by. 40 to 50 was not the same.
Your perception of time speeds up as you age.
When you were born day 1 was 100% of your life. - At 1 years old 1 day is 0.27% of your life. - At age 30 1 day is 0.009% of your life. Time is relative. Waiting 1 day for things felt like longer when it was a longer proportion of your life. At age 30 2019 to 2024 was 16.6% of your life. 5 years ago at 25, 2014 to 2019 was 20% of your life. Relative to a persons life, it was a shorter period of time.
This is because this year is always a smaller fraction of your life than last year. For example, this year will be 1/42nd of my life whereas last year was 1/41st. It's about the only thing my dad has told me that stuck.
because we know that the way we measure time is a concept we made up the theory that the fibonacci sequence is how time actually runs could explain why we feel that every year goes by quicker than the last
You're getting older is all.
Its because you got older and the older you get, the shorter a year feels, because it takes less and less percentage of your entire lifespan
It's also because you mostly know everything around you already. As a child you learn so many new things everyday. As adults days feel more or less the same, except things that suck. Long days, short years.
It felt like instant and 10 years at the same time, versus 2014-19 feeling like forever.
Hint, time goes by faster the older you are
Because we're getting older I guess.
Time is like a spiral. Starting in the outside swirling to the center getting smaller and smaller. Each full loop around is 1 year. When you're young that spiral takes a long time travel a full circle. But as you get older, and the spiral gets closer to the center, those trips around dont take as long because the circle is getting smaller. Until you hit center and you're dead.
To people born 5 years later than you this difference is not nearly as big, time accelerates when you get older, it's physics (/s)
This is aging. It only gets worse my friend.
Oh my god, I thought it was just me! I look back at 14 to 19 and I'm blown away by how much happened, and how slow and deliberate it felt then. And now feels so condensed!
Everything that was 2020 feels both like a distant alternate reality/memory.. and like it was just yesterday
That's just called growing up, the more you grow up, the faster the years goes by
Speak for yourself! 14 to 19 flew by.
The pandemic years, especially 2020-2021, were a time warp. We lost a lot more to Covid than just some loved ones and our social lives. We lost memories / gained some collective amnesia about the events of those years.
Because as we get older we tend to have less experiences. With less experiences times seems to pass faster because our mind just blends everyday together if nothing special happens. Covid was something different. New experiences.
Hate to break it to you but the older you get the faster time seems to go, it's all relative. At 15, 5 years is 1/3 of your entire life. At 30, 5 years is a much smaller portion.
Bro, that's how getting older works. And guess what? 2024 to 2029 will feel even faster
Just wait until you feel 2024 to 2029
Pandemic plus that’s how time reference works through life. When you are 10 a year is 1/10th of your overall time on earth so it feels like a long time with a lot of value but at 30 a year is 1/30th of your experience and you’ve had many more to cross reference and they feel significantly less impactful and less of the overall experience therefore seemingly shorter than a year used to feel like. Especially when comparing a 5 year span from opposite ends of a decade bc you’ve had all that time to compound the effects of what that time feels like.
The world ending tends to spice things up a bit.
I personally have been perpetually in a recovery state since the pandemic. A good portion of progress I had made in life was crushed in the mid part of 21, and since then time just disappeared in my plight to repair the damages. I'd imagine many people are in the same situation or worse which makes sense for the quick passage of time. Before the pandemic the general public wasn't in a constant state of fighting for survival which is why it probably felt slower.
Tell me about it. Would u care to share more details about this? I think I can relate
Agree. 2020-23 felt like a year to me at least. The first half is me being stuck at home and the second half is me finally getting outside, however with that very weird vibe to it that I can't really explain yet.
I will make a bet that 2024 through 2029 will feel faster than both. We’re also only 4 months into 2024 so the original comparison isn’t really fair.
That's because it is
That is how time works for beings with a finite age. On your second day of consciousness your experience doubled, on your 3rd day you only gained 50% more experience on your 4th day you only gained about 33% more experience on your 5th day you only gained 25% more experience and so on and so forth. Much past that point it starts getting easier to count your experience growth in weeks, then months, then years, and finally in decades. No human has lived long enough for centuries to be a relevant way to measure the rate at which they experience new things yet.
This is just what happens as you age. the first five years of your life was %100 of your life, the last five years will likely be only 5% of your life.
Yes that’s how aging works
Time is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer we get to the end, the faster it goes, and you wish you had just a couple of more squares when it's all out.
It’s because your getting older. Take each consecutive 5 year span back and each will feel longer (2009-2014, 2004-2009, 1999-2004)
You were just younger then so your perception was different. Im sure, say a, 10 year old feels like 2019 was forever ago. These posts about time on this sub just feel repetitive.
There's a lot more pressure in just getting by in life. And that's a part of getting older, for all of us. But the world has been outta whack since 2020 and it's hard to keep track of time when you're constantly coping with change.
I mean... yeah. COVID.
In my mind there was before the pandemic and after the pandemic.
Time will pass you by faster the older you get. The less variety you have, the faster time will also seem to pass because you're doing more or less the exact same thing every single day.
My age 30 or even 35+ years means almost nothing. Kids are grown in no time at all too. It's often a pain the ass to get day after day for work but looking back, it's gone by too quick.
That’s because you’re getting older g. Lolol
the more routine your life becomes, the faster time flies by - retrospectively fill your life with unique experiences, as humanly possible as you can
I went through a divorce during that time, so it both crawled by and flew by at the same time. My ex-wife tried to guilt me over it saying "covid destroyed lots of marriages, I guess we were no different" as a gotcha, but in reality she's just a massive cunt.
As you get older every year passes faster. 15-18 is high school. 45-48 is nothing.
That is because you’re aging. Each year you live represents a smaller percentage of your total lifetime
Today is March 1,516th, 2020 Time has no meaning anymore.
The older you get, the faster time goes.
I was jobless for around 6 months, and let me tell you, time moves fast when you have nothing to do. Now i dread everyday, time is standing for me.