Experiences change time perception
Time is altered by emotions throughout one's life
The clock ticks forward without pause, a continuous beat of tick-tock, tick-tock.
Yet, though the clock's hand moves at a steady, unchanging pace, it seems sometimes that time speeds up or stalls or even goes backward.
An individual’s mood, attention, and memory influence a person’s perception of time. For example, for many students, dull classes seem to drag on endlessly.
“It’s kind of like the watched pot will never boil sort of thing. It’s the same concept. If you’re constantly watching time and paying attention to time, it seems like it will take forever,” said Jim Kelly, the ASB Activities Director.
In other circumstances, time can appear to speed up. When one’s attention is divided, for instance, and they are busy with several things at once, time seems to pass more swiftly. This may be because people pay less attention to the flow of time when they are multi-tasking.
Edison Bai, a senior, said, “When I’m with friends, and we are goofing off, time always seems to flow faster because we are having a good time. Also, when I’m swamped with homework and assignments, time slips by and running to keep up. Or in tests, for instance, time seems to go faster, and I’m working up to the bell.”
Emotions such as awe and fear also play a part in how a person perceives the availability of time and the speed of its passing.
According to an article published in the Association for Psychological Science, experiences of awe often involve a sense of timelessness and expands people’s perception of time availability.
Fear makes time seem like it has slowed down, according to David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine studying how our brains perceive time. According to National Public Radio, Eagleman said that these frightening near-death experiences cause our brains to retain more sensory data. This tremendous amount of memory from a short amount of time makes an event seem longer.
In an interview with the Guardian, Sylvie Droit-Volet, a professor at the Social and Cognitive Psychology Laboratory at Blaise Pascal University, France, said, “Our perception of time is very revealing of our emotional state. There is no single, uniform time, but rather multiple times which we experience. Our temporal distortions are a direct translation of the way in which our brain and body adapt to these multiple times, the times of life.”
However, for many people, the biggest change in their sense of time happens as they age. A common complaint is that time speeds up as people get older, weeks pass in a blink of an eye and before one knows it New Year’s has turned into Thanksgiving.
Casey Felton, a senior, said, “People always say life is like a roll of toilet paper, the closer you get to the end, the faster it goes. I disagree. I believe we experience things at the same rate our whole lives, but when we reflect on elapsed time, we reflect upon said time in relation to our lives.”
When a person is one year old, a year is their entire lifespan -- it's all the time that they have ever known. But as they grow older, one year is a smaller and smaller fraction of their total life.
Bai said, “I remember as a kid, the week leading up to Christmas seemed like last forever. I was always asking my parents how many days left till Christmas. Now, as a senior, the whole first semester flew by so fast.”
As time slips by, people search for ways to make the most of the time they have--spending time with family, working, or for oneself. According to the Economist, ever since the advent of clocks, time has been seen in relation to money, and as time often determines one's pay, people became ever more concerned with wasting, saving, and using time profitably.
Kelly said, “I really try to consider what I am giving back to the situation I’m in. What am I giving to my kids? What am I giving to my students? I don’t ever want to waste my students time. I want my students to be able to say ‘my time spent in Mr. Kelly’s class was useful.’ So the giving of myself is a very important use of my time.”
Another explanation for the change in time perception is that most external and internal experiences are new for young children, while most experiences are repetitive for adults, according to Eagleman.
Kelly said, “Ten years ago you were 8 years old. Ten years ago your life was totally different. For me, 10 years ago wasn’t that much different. The same job, relatively the same body and thought processes, the same house, the same living situation, the same wife, the same car. The older you get, the more similar things are despite the passage of time. For you guys, your life is going to continue changing fast. At your age, your status quo is always going to be different.”
A common explanation for the change in time perception is that most external and internal experiences are new for young children, while most experiences are repetitive for adults. Children have to be extremely engaged in the present moment because they must constantly reconfigure their mental models of the world to assimilate it, and properly behave from within. On the contrary, adults may rarely step outside of their mental habits and external routines.
Trying new things, being engaged, and continuing to learn are all ways people have tried to slow down the passing of time.
“I have found that when I am doing something new, time feels slower and just a little more in my control. Maybe it’s because my brain is processing the new stuff, but the novelty of a new skill or experience, kind of just stall time. I keep challenging myself and pushing myself to do new things because, when I do, time doesn’t go so fast, and I feel like I’ve done something valuable with my time,” Bai said.
As the world moves faster because of technology and the pace of people’s lives gets faster as well, sometimes it is difficult to “stop and smell the roses.”
Kelly said, “To say there’s not enough time simply means you’re one of a couple things: you're trying to cram too much in, and you’re not prioritizing it, not utilizing the time available properly. So if you’re feeling like you don’t have enough time, you can’t create time, but you can solve how you use the time that is allotted to you.”
Yet, though the clock's hand moves at a steady, unchanging pace, it seems sometimes that time speeds up or stalls or even goes backward.
An individual’s mood, attention, and memory influence a person’s perception of time. For example, for many students, dull classes seem to drag on endlessly.
“It’s kind of like the watched pot will never boil sort of thing. It’s the same concept. If you’re constantly watching time and paying attention to time, it seems like it will take forever,” said Jim Kelly, the ASB Activities Director.
In other circumstances, time can appear to speed up. When one’s attention is divided, for instance, and they are busy with several things at once, time seems to pass more swiftly. This may be because people pay less attention to the flow of time when they are multi-tasking.
Edison Bai, a senior, said, “When I’m with friends, and we are goofing off, time always seems to flow faster because we are having a good time. Also, when I’m swamped with homework and assignments, time slips by and running to keep up. Or in tests, for instance, time seems to go faster, and I’m working up to the bell.”
Emotions such as awe and fear also play a part in how a person perceives the availability of time and the speed of its passing.
According to an article published in the Association for Psychological Science, experiences of awe often involve a sense of timelessness and expands people’s perception of time availability.
Fear makes time seem like it has slowed down, according to David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine studying how our brains perceive time. According to National Public Radio, Eagleman said that these frightening near-death experiences cause our brains to retain more sensory data. This tremendous amount of memory from a short amount of time makes an event seem longer.
In an interview with the Guardian, Sylvie Droit-Volet, a professor at the Social and Cognitive Psychology Laboratory at Blaise Pascal University, France, said, “Our perception of time is very revealing of our emotional state. There is no single, uniform time, but rather multiple times which we experience. Our temporal distortions are a direct translation of the way in which our brain and body adapt to these multiple times, the times of life.”
However, for many people, the biggest change in their sense of time happens as they age. A common complaint is that time speeds up as people get older, weeks pass in a blink of an eye and before one knows it New Year’s has turned into Thanksgiving.
Casey Felton, a senior, said, “People always say life is like a roll of toilet paper, the closer you get to the end, the faster it goes. I disagree. I believe we experience things at the same rate our whole lives, but when we reflect on elapsed time, we reflect upon said time in relation to our lives.”
When a person is one year old, a year is their entire lifespan -- it's all the time that they have ever known. But as they grow older, one year is a smaller and smaller fraction of their total life.
Bai said, “I remember as a kid, the week leading up to Christmas seemed like last forever. I was always asking my parents how many days left till Christmas. Now, as a senior, the whole first semester flew by so fast.”
As time slips by, people search for ways to make the most of the time they have--spending time with family, working, or for oneself. According to the Economist, ever since the advent of clocks, time has been seen in relation to money, and as time often determines one's pay, people became ever more concerned with wasting, saving, and using time profitably.
Kelly said, “I really try to consider what I am giving back to the situation I’m in. What am I giving to my kids? What am I giving to my students? I don’t ever want to waste my students time. I want my students to be able to say ‘my time spent in Mr. Kelly’s class was useful.’ So the giving of myself is a very important use of my time.”
Another explanation for the change in time perception is that most external and internal experiences are new for young children, while most experiences are repetitive for adults, according to Eagleman.
Kelly said, “Ten years ago you were 8 years old. Ten years ago your life was totally different. For me, 10 years ago wasn’t that much different. The same job, relatively the same body and thought processes, the same house, the same living situation, the same wife, the same car. The older you get, the more similar things are despite the passage of time. For you guys, your life is going to continue changing fast. At your age, your status quo is always going to be different.”
A common explanation for the change in time perception is that most external and internal experiences are new for young children, while most experiences are repetitive for adults. Children have to be extremely engaged in the present moment because they must constantly reconfigure their mental models of the world to assimilate it, and properly behave from within. On the contrary, adults may rarely step outside of their mental habits and external routines.
Trying new things, being engaged, and continuing to learn are all ways people have tried to slow down the passing of time.
“I have found that when I am doing something new, time feels slower and just a little more in my control. Maybe it’s because my brain is processing the new stuff, but the novelty of a new skill or experience, kind of just stall time. I keep challenging myself and pushing myself to do new things because, when I do, time doesn’t go so fast, and I feel like I’ve done something valuable with my time,” Bai said.
As the world moves faster because of technology and the pace of people’s lives gets faster as well, sometimes it is difficult to “stop and smell the roses.”
Kelly said, “To say there’s not enough time simply means you’re one of a couple things: you're trying to cram too much in, and you’re not prioritizing it, not utilizing the time available properly. So if you’re feeling like you don’t have enough time, you can’t create time, but you can solve how you use the time that is allotted to you.”