I still remember when I was a child, waiting for the new year was a very long time. But now, year after year, it's like flying past. Why do you feel that time passes faster and faster when you grow up? The following is a collection of reasons I collected for you. Let's have a look!
Why do you feel that time passes faster and faster when you grow up?
Text / time difference uncle
01
In the twinkling of an eye, half of 2019 has passed.
Uncle felt that he had just finished the Spring Festival and suddenly it was going to summer vacation (although I didn't have summer vacation...).
I still remember when I was a child, waiting for the new year was a very long time. But now, year after year, it's like flying past.
Uncle sometimes feels that time is like a lover who is determined to break up with me. Even if he works overtime and stays up late every day, he can't keep it.
Panic, panic because time keeps passing.
Uncle can't help feeling: will time really pass faster when you grow up?
"Can't the earth turn fast?" Well, I think like that sometimes.
Uncle knows that in fact, the physical time change is basically constant, that is, 1 second, 1 minute, 1 hour... The actual time interval has always been so large.
What has changed is our psychological time and our perception of time.
Figure left: actual time; Figure right: subjective time perceived by the brain
When you grow up, do you think time is getting faster and faster? In the blink of an eye, "whoosh", I graduated from College (suddenly I dare not blink...).
Uncle found that there are really many such people.
In one study, psychologists asked 499 people, aged between 14 and 94, to assess how quickly time had passed. [4]
Not surprisingly, with age, people perceive that time passes faster and faster.
Whether it's the past week, the past month, or the past year, the older you get, the faster time passes.
Theoretically speaking, children's perception of time is particularly slow. To exaggerate, a day can lead to a year;
On the contrary, the elderly are the other extreme. They perceive time very quickly. To exaggerate, a year is like only one day.
From childhood to old age, our perception of time has been changing on the continuous spectrum of "slow fast". Although there are various differences between people, on the whole, it becomes faster and faster.
Look, it's not the uncle's affectation alone. Many people will feel that when they grow up, time is like a runaway wild horse. If they don't pay attention, they run out for a few kilometers
But why?
Why is it so hard to grow up, but time has to go away from yourself?
02
Where did our time go when we grew up?
In psychology, our perception of time refers to our subjective perception of external objective time, which is often different from the passage of real time.
For example, you will feel that the happy time is extremely short, and the painful days seem to live like years every day.
Then why does aging also affect our psychological time and our perception of time?
1. Repeated life is hard for the brain to remember
A large number of psychologists believe that when we grow up, we feel that time flies, which may be related to our own memory.
In fact, our memory is very "lazy". We basically hold a love and ignore attitude towards those repeated messages.
Therefore, only those new stimuli will be lucky to become an indelible part of memory.
More interestingly, the more memories we leave in the past, the more we will feel that we have spent a long life because of the huge amount of information;
On the contrary, if you recall the past and find that your mind is empty, you will only feel that time flies.
Therefore, when our life turns into class, eating, sleeping, getting up, going to work and getting off work, even if we have an impression of these past, the formed memory is extremely dull and the amount of information left is very small.
There is no difference between personal experience and previous experience. Therefore, repeated life makes time in our hearts feel like acceleration.
Fixed work, fixed study
You may ask, "aren't many behaviors fixed when we were young? Repeated behaviors will make us unable to keep a lot of memories?"
Yes, but different from growing up, when I was a child, it was full of all kinds of unknown things.
When we were young, we came into contact with the world soon. Many things are full of freshness for us. However, when we grow up, we experience too many things, and many experiences are repeated.
As a child, your attention will be very focused on the moment, because there are too many new things, and you need to constantly change the mode of dealing with the world to adapt to the new environment, understand new things, and then make appropriate responses.
For example, when you think back to your first train ride, you may feel that it was a particularly long time.
Because you've only been on a bike, car and bus before, and you've never been on a train, you'll be particularly interested in this novel big machine.
There are many furnishings you have never seen before. You can't even imagine that there can be beds and toilets in the car
When you take a car, you learn to open the door, sit in and you're done. Trains are completely different.
Therefore, the previous "mode" about taking a car doesn't work. What should we do now? Observe and learn, instead of thinking about opening the door directly.
When we were young, we had many "first times"
These fresh and unique experiences will be deeply engraved in your mind and full of memories.
When you grow up, it will be different. After taking the train repeatedly for countless times, you don't need to change the inherent model in your mind to deal with this scene, so you won't leave a lot of things to remember.
In psychology, this phenomenon is called neural adaptation, that is, after constantly experiencing the same stimulus, our brain will actively ignore this information.
In fact, this will not only affect the perception of time when recalling these information, but also affect the current perception of the duration of these information.
For example, in one study, psychologists showed participants a repeated picture and asked them to evaluate the time each picture was presented. However, these pictures are presented at exactly the same time.
An interesting thing happened: after the participants looked at some of the same pictures repeatedly, they thought the time of picture presentation was reduced.
It was further found that in the face of repeated information, the corresponding neural activity in our brain decreased. The heart of the brain may be like this: "you have appeared so many times, and you still want me to respond to you? Dream!"
In this way, the brain will not only ignore these repeated information, but also feel that this period of time is shorter.
2. Is the time getting faster or are you in a hurry?
In addition, we can concentrate on one thing when we were young, but now we have to do a lot of things together.
For example, in order to cope with pressure, many people are "multitasking" and want to improve efficiency in this way.
However, this "multi task parallelism" not only does not bring full efficiency, but also ruthlessly compresses our perception of time.
Especially in today's highly developed electronic equipment, when we carry out a variety of behaviors related to electronic equipment at the same time, we will feel that time flies. For example, while working on the computer, we listen to the learning courses in the mobile phone.
Why?
Because we can't do these two things at the same time, but we are constantly switching. Switch from work to study and from study to work.
Change around, time is gone.
In one study, psychologists asked participants to do other media related activities while browsing advertisements and found that their time perception was shorter than those who only watched advertisements, that is, they felt that time passed quickly. [6]
Sometimes, maybe because we are too anxious, we want to finish everything on our head at the same time. However, this switching not only reduces efficiency, but also deprives us of time perception.
03
Three moves to slow down the fast passing time
Presumably, uncle, after introducing the reasons for the rapid passage of time, you may already know how to slow down time. Let's see if your ideas are consistent with those of psychologists.
1. Refuse to repeat and start a "new life"
As mentioned above, repeated information makes us feel that it lasts for a short time. So, in the face of fresh stimulation, will we feel that it lasts longer?
In fact, a large number of psychological studies have found that the sudden emergence of new stimuli will affect our time perception. Rather, it will make us feel that it is particularly long.
Thinking of repeated things that wasted so much time I felt, I suddenly felt that my life had been stolen for several years.
Now it is clear that the first step we can do is to get in touch with more new things.
You can see some different things and do some unique things every day.
For example, we can change our daily routine.
Take uncle for example, my daily commute route is exactly the same: get on the bus at a fixed bus stop, get off at a fixed bus stop, and walk over a fixed overpass
Now, in order to make my time longer, I will choose to change my route. Go around from the left to work, and go back from the right to work; Start from the main gate in the morning and return from the side gate in the evening.
Try to make new friends and change your routine
Of course, if you have time, energy and money, you can learn some new things, such as painting and playing the piano.
In addition, you can also try to make some new friends. Just like Uncle's Department, every time I come to a new colleague, I feel that this day has passed for a long time.
Finally, you can also travel and enjoy the scenery from time to time.
Maybe you will feel that the happy time like the journey passes very fast every time. How can you make yourself feel that the time becomes longer?
In fact, this is a "holiday paradox".
During the holidays, if we go out to play, the happy mood will really make us feel that time flies.
However, in this process, we have come into contact with many new things, which has greatly enriched our memory. When I look back, I will look back for a long time.
2. Focus on the present and avoid impatience
Focusing on the present means living through our senses and experiences, not through our brains.
This is a different way to avoid familiarity - not by seeking new experiences, but by changing our attitude towards them. [1]
For example, when you take a bath in the morning, don't let your brain chatter about what you want to do today or what you did last night. Try to turn your attention to the moment and feel the water splashing and flowing down.
Or on the way home from work, instead of thinking about all the problems you have to deal with at work, focus on the moment: look at the sky and look at the houses and buildings you pass by.
When you do housework such as mowing the grass or washing the dishes, don't wear headphones to listen to music and don't daydream. Pay attention to the things and phenomena around you and the physical feelings you are experiencing.
You will find that these chores become more interesting.
You will also find that this attitude of openness and attention to our own experience has a time expansion effect, because focusing on the present allows us to obtain more unique information.
Focus on the present and don't multitask
At the same time, we may not have to do many things together, especially those related to electronic devices (playing mobile phones while watching computers).
Focusing on one thing will not only improve our efficiency, but also make us feel more details and find more new content, which will greatly enrich the memory in our mind.
Time, so it will slow down.
3. "Do not advance or retreat": no progress, time will never return
Some psychologists have also found that information related to events will affect our perception of time, which can determine whether the perceived time is "shrinking" or "expanding".
Professor gal Zauberman once asked a group of people to assess how long has passed since a previous news event, such as the opening of the world cup. [2]
At the same time, these people also need to tell gal whether they pay attention to the follow-up development of this news event, such as the performance of the last World Cup champion in this session and the "dark horses" in this session
Interestingly, in general, these people underestimate how long this period of time is. However, those who have continued to pay attention to the development of the event show that they feel that they have just passed for a long time.
In other words, if we just hear a news event and don't care about it, then when we recall it in the future, we will feel that it hasn't been long in the past;
On the contrary, if we have been paying attention to the development of this matter, we will think that it has been a long time since it began.
Make meaningful progress
According to gal's research results, time may pass quickly because we have not taken any action, especially those meaningful actions.
Therefore, you may be able to take effective progress on your projects and goals to slow down the passage of time.
Making progress and being aware of our progress will not only bring us great internal motivation, but also prevent us from falling into automatic and easily forgotten empty time.
When you think about how you start with a skill, or how you work towards a goal, such as becoming healthy, or learning how to do your job well, it seems to be a long time ago, because you have made great progress.
This journey has left a lot of memorable experiences and achievements. Therefore, we will not regret for doing nothing. On the contrary, we will feel that we have been particularly full and have a lot of time.
In fact, it is wise for many of us to try to eat good food and exercise to ensure that we can live as long as possible.
However, we may increase the time we experience in life in another way, that is, to experience new things, conduct new behaviors, put our goals into practice, enrich our experience and slow down time.