Dec 18, 2025 12:00:00

Scientists explain why time passes so quickly

As December approaches and Christmas and New Year's Eve approach, some people may be frightened by the speed at which time passes, thinking, 'I thought it was summer just the other day...' Professor

Hinze Hoogendoorn, a cognitive neuroscientist at Queensland University of Technology , explained the question, 'Why does time pass so quickly?'

Why is time going so fast and how do I slow it down?
https://theconversation.com/why-is-time-going-so-fast-and-how-do-i-slow-it-down-268982

When people perceive color, sound, taste, pain, and so on, their sensory organs detect the wavelengths of light that enter their eyes, the frequencies of sound waves that enter their ears, the chemicals that enter their mouths and noses, and the pressure of objects against their skin.

In contrast, time does not have any 'sensory components' or 'particles' or 'chemicals' that the brain can detect. Therefore, the brain does not actually perceive time, but merely 'guesses' it by tracking various changes, Hoogendoorn says.

However, the brain does not have a fixed scale for measuring time. So, to estimate time, we recall what events happened and calculate how long those events took, adding them up. As a result, if a series of stimulating events occurs, time seems to feel longer.

A 2006

study found that briefly showing a flashing image felt longer than a static image, and a 2007 study in which participants fell from a height of 31 meters onto a safety net found that the experience of falling felt more than one-third longer than when watching someone else fall.

'The intense excitement of the immediate experience increases attention, which causes the brain to store a dense, rich memory as the event unfolds,' Hoogendoorn said. 'When we later need to estimate how much time passed during the event, our brain overestimates the amount of time that has passed because of the unusually dense memory of the unfolding event.'

Also, when talking about time, it is important to distinguish between 'time looking back from the present' and 'time you are experiencing right now.' For example, waiting at the hospital may feel very long, but when you look back on it later, you rarely remember 'that happened.'

'The key to the story is how many events are happening and what specifically you pay attention to,' Hoogendoorn says. 'The more you pay attention to time itself, the slower it seems to pass.'

It's often said that 'time flies when you're having fun,' but even if you're not having fun, time flies if you're concentrating and forget about time. However, many people would find it unbearably boring if they were forced to 'stare at the clock' for even just five minutes.

The gap between 'time looked back from the present' and 'time you are experiencing right now' tends to grow as you get older. When you're young, events like 'going to school,' 'finding a partner,' and 'getting a job' are all new, and they accumulate as rich memories, so when you look back later, you feel like 'so many different events happened, a long time must have passed.'

However, as we get older, activities like 'doing housework,' 'working,' and 'taking our children to lessons' become routine and lose their freshness and excitement. As a result, the daily routine events themselves seem boring and time passes slowly, but when we look back on them later, we don't have any clear memories and feel like 'time has passed by in the blink of an eye.'

If you want to feel time pass more slowly, it's fine to just be bored, but that alone won't bring you satisfaction in life. If you want to spend more time reflecting, one way to do this is to write down your daily events in a diary or something, look back on them frequently, and keep your memory fresh.

Another tip is to actively seek out new and unique experiences and fill your life with exciting memories. 'Go explore! Do something crazy, something you'll never forget. Your body clock will thank you,' says Hoogendoorn.