It seems that time goes by faster. Why does time go fast

Time is like water that flows away to no one knows where and at what speed. Here are the phrases: “ time passed so quickly, and I didn’t have time to do anything», « My God, it's already evening!», « Yes, I didn’t have time to do anything at all today, back and forth - and the day is over" - can be heard quite often.

How often, as children, we thought: I wish I could quickly become adults, finish school and go on a free voyage. I think everyone dreamed about this. And today you find out that one of your classmates has two children, and one of them has already gone to school; the other managed to get divorced and remarry, and the third... passed away. They tried to grow, they grew up - and what came out of it: problems, worries, troubles. In childhood, everything was easy: study for your health - nothing else is required of you, your parents took care of everything else. And today, perhaps, some of them are no longer alive, and there is no one to turn to for advice. Here's to adult life and free swimming.

The school and student years are over, work and the gray days of work have begun, and now there is only one desire - at least to go on vacation as quickly as possible. Time flies oh how unnoticed, stealing our youth, strength, energy. We don’t have time to wake up, and we already have to go to bed again. During the day you have to solve many issues. Sometimes you get so involved in things that you simply don’t have time to sit down and drink a cup of coffee.

There are different theories about what actually happened to time, why it passes so quickly, and why it feels like it has sped up. Without going into the depths of physics and related sciences, we can say: no matter how scientists argue, proving that they are right, time has indeed accelerated its pace and will continue to accelerate.

One of the signs of the End of the World is that time will shorten. Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: “ The End of the World will not come until time speeds up. It will accelerate so that a year will become as fast as a month, a month as a week, a week as a day, and a day as one hour, and an hour will pass as quickly as the flash of a torch. " Aren't we living in such times? At the same time, which means there is nothing to be surprised that we do not manage to do anything planned for the day. Time is so fleeting that sometimes it seems that we are in some kind of cycle of events, and by the evening we don’t have enough strength for anything. You run and run all day long, but for what? For the sake of a thousand, two thousand rubles, prayer is done in a hurry, where it is necessary and how it is necessary. In our lives, the roles of what is obligatory and what is desirable have changed significantly.

Prayer is a fard (duty), and we can miss it without even regretting it, reassuring ourselves that we were in transport, at a lecture or somewhere else. Skipping a day from the obligatory fast in the month of Ramadan is also not difficult for us: we feel unwell three or four hours before iftar, we break our fast ahead of time and again justify ourselves by saying that after drinking some water we felt better, but that day can be refunded. And so everything that directly relates to our religion Islam. I really like the position of those Muslims who plan their day based on the time of namaz (prayer) - they do not take on anything extra from one prayer to the next. That is, until the farz is completed, there is no point in doing anything else. Otherwise, how can you then answer before Allah Almighty? But we will be asked about performing namaz first of all.

Well, in order to still get the most out of your day, it is recommended to learn how to plan your day. Of course, everything is known only to the Creator, and sometimes absolutely nothing comes of what was planned, but nevertheless, self-organization has not yet prevented anyone.

When leaving home every day, be it for work, study or other matters, try to prepare everything you need in the evening: clothes, a handbag, and for your husband - also clothes, his documents, car keys. Let everything be in one place, otherwise you simply cannot avoid the morning rush and bustle.

Be sure to try to analyze all the tasks for the day, what needs to be done first, and what can wait. I repeat, if the solution to all problems is in progress and you have to travel all over the city, then be sure to combine your work with prayer!

Often, in a hurry, we do several things at once - as a result, sometimes nothing happens, as in the saying: if you chase two hares, you won’t catch either.

“You don’t need to follow the example of Julius Caesar, even if you are good at handling different things at the same time. You won’t be able to get things done faster, don’t give in to illusions. To complete a specific task, mobilize your strength and try to do it well and quickly. Automate as much as possible the process of performing functions that have become daily for you. There is no need to get hung up on cleaning the apartment or washing the dishes. And when you perform these operations, think about other “steps” that will require your concentration and attention. But when doing parallel things, don’t put sugar in the pan instead of salt” (http://www.allwomens.ru).

The same applies to men: a combination of different tasks will help you, by doing something alternately, activate your brain, take a break from one thing while doing another, and at the same time learn to do the priority first.

Don't forget about rest. The constant workload, running around, bustle, and just plain sitting in the office all day at the computer is exhausting. If you have a sedentary job, get up and walk along the corridor, this will make you feel lighter. If you are a writer, then the school one will suit you: “We wrote, we wrote, our fingers were tired, and now we will rest and start writing again.” There are special recommendations for those who constantly sit at the keyboard.

Again, for Muslims there is an excellent way to switch attention to something else, something different, sharply different from your main occupation - prayer, conversation with Allah Almighty. Having performed ablution and stood on the prayer mat, you disconnect from pressing problems, and at this moment you feel extraordinary lightness, a feeling of unity with the Creator of the Universe, and such a colossal charge of positive energy that you want to move mountains. People who are busy with physical labor all day rest at least for some period, which helps them continue to work, and for creative people this is an excellent chance to gain new strength; a surge of imagination is guaranteed to you - just communicate with the Lord! To a person who takes one step towards Him, Allah takes ten, after which grace will always be with those who are submissive to their God.

Time runs inexorably - second by second, and this run cannot be stopped. This is how minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years add up... We may not have time to do everything, but we can’t forget the Creator, the One who is so favorable to us, who loves us more than anyone in the world. He who strives for Him will distribute his time and day in such a way as to bring maximum benefit to people and society, with the intention that Allah Almighty will be pleased with him. And when any task is done with such intention and your diligence and effort makes someone feel better, then at the end of the day you can safely say that today it was not in vain.

1 529 0 Why do 3 months of summer vacation as a child fly by like one day, but 5 hours at the airport last forever?! No, time does not stop whenever it pleases. This is all our perception of space and time, as well as our biological clock, which either lags behind or rushes ahead of the wrist clock.

So, for example, waiting a whole year for your 10th birthday seems incredibly long! But at 45 you don’t think so, “The year has passed,” we say, “summer is coming…” we remember after the New Year holidays.

Besides, as you get older, the years you live seem so fleeting. And we think, “Eh...I could do more.”

But it is worth noting that age is not the only reason for the passage of time.

The unknown.

There is no zone in our brain that controls time. Therefore, everything is subjective, depending on the level of development of memory and attention. When we encounter something new, something that requires more time to learn, we feel like we are wasting a lot of time. This is why the road to a new place seems much longer than the road back.

When we are doing our usual thing, time flies quickly, and when we learn something new, it slows down.

“I remember how, at a new job, I had to learn new responsibilities as quickly as possible. There was so much information that I simply did not have time to consciously fulfill my duties: I did something on a piece of paper, I constantly asked questions about something. The first month seemed to last forever: very slow, monotonous and exhausting. I constantly looked at the clock and waited for the work day to end.
Today I do my work automatically and when there are a lot of clients, I don’t even notice how the day flies by!”
Olga, 28 years old

Emotions.

If you like to do something, for example, you are happy to build a career at your favorite job, then time will fly by quickly for you. And if you go to the office and feel that you are not doing what you love, and every day you feel sad when you come to work, then naturally time will drag on forever.

“I don’t watch happy hours,” Griboyedov said. This is partly true. Scientists have proven that people who are carried away by pleasant chores, spending time with people they like, do not notice how time flies. And vice versa: those who are exhausted, waiting for the end of the working day or their turn in the hall, suffer. This also applies to those who are experiencing the grief of losing loved ones. And in their worldview, time slows down or stops altogether.

Well-being.

Our well-being also affects our perception of time. If we are sick, then time slows down. And when we recover, the time spent in illness seems fleeting.

Cultural characteristics and technological process.

We live in an era when many more events happen to us in 1 year than to people just 100 years ago.

The urban rhythm of life speeds up our sense of time. But we are all the same when we sit down to scroll through our news feed on social networks or turn on our favorite series on TV. We simply don't notice how time flies. And sometimes, 15 minutes in sensations and 1.5 hours in reality pass by.

What to do?!

If time flies slowly for you in all areas of life, then load your brain with something: remember what you loved to do before, maybe a hobby from the past will help you.

I recently moved to a new apartment. It just so happens that she is on the 24th floor. For obvious reasons, you have to take the elevator every day. True, once I did try to climb the stairs and even timed it - I had to spend five minutes. I don't know why I wrote this.

I'll go back to the elevator. After a few days, I began to notice that time in the elevator, when you are riding alone and when you are with strangers, feels different. I realized that this was due to awkward silence and the desire to quickly get out of the confined space you share with a stranger. But I was curious:

There are enough situations in our lives when time flows either faster or slower. Why is this happening?

Naturally, when we are standing in line, in an elevator, or simply doing something uninteresting, time does not slow down. Likewise, interesting moments do not pass faster. But something is changing, because it’s not for nothing that time really seems to flow differently.

Our perception of time is changing. For example, people who have ever been in emergency situations recalled that everything seemed to slow down and the mode turned on. slow motion(slow motion). This is a cognitive error that helps us react faster to events.

Moreover, time slows down in the same way not only in situations when we are on the verge of life and death, but also when we experience strong emotions of fear or disgust. Claudia Hammond, author of Time Warped, recalls an experiment in which subjects with arachnophobia were shown spiders for 45 seconds and then asked to answer how much time had passed. The vast majority called numbers an order of magnitude longer than 45 seconds.

Sometimes time passes faster. And this is not always good. For example, many people in adulthood say that time moves faster than in childhood. This is easily explained by the theory of proportionality:

Time passes faster when you are 40 years old because it is only one fortieth (1/40) of the total time you have lived. While for an eight-year-old child it is one eighth (1/8).

However, the theory of proportionality does not stand up to criticism. According to Hammond, we cannot evaluate a day or a week as a separate unit of time. In this case, for a forty-year-old person, a day would turn into a flash, since they are equal to only 1/14,000 of his life.

One day at 40 can be as boring or fun as one at eight. The theory of proportionality ignores factors such as emotions and a person's attention span.

So Claudia Hammond had to look for another theory to explain why time passes faster as we age. The answer is also found in cognitive distortions and is called the “telescope effect.” The hypothesis linking the distinctness of memories and the assessment of when they occurred was first put forward by psychologist Norman Bradburn:

The less we remember about a past event, the more we believe that it happened earlier than it actually did.

However, Hammond was able to explain another very interesting paradox associated with travel. Why does it seem to us that time flies by unnoticed when we are on vacation, but when we look back we realize that this is not so?

Everyday life is a list of familiar events that flow in a normal rhythm. While resting, we receive a large flow of new sensations, which is why it seems to us that time is passing faster.

The paradox of time slowing down and speeding up in our minds is a very interesting phenomenon. We do not know how to control it and are unlikely to learn in the future. This is another unusual survival mechanism that does not always work as it should, but without which we would not be people in the usual sense.

The apparent shortening of the duration of a given period as we grow older suggests the existence of a "logarithmic scale" in relation to time

Time flies, whether you are enjoying life or not.

When we were kids, the summer holidays seemed to never end, and we had to wait forever for the New Year holidays. So why does time seem to gain momentum over the years: weeks, or even months, fly by unnoticed, and the seasons change at such a dizzying speed?

Isn’t this obvious acceleration of time the result of the responsibilities and worries that have befallen us in our adult lives? However, in fact, research shows that perceived time actually moves faster for adults, filling our lives with troubles and bustle.

There are several theories that try to explain why our sense of time speeds up as we get older.

One of them points to a gradual change in our internal biological clock. The slowing of our body's metabolic processes as we get older corresponds to a slowing of our heart rate and breathing. Biological pacemakers in children pulse faster, which means that their biological indicators (heartbeat, breathing) are higher in a set period of time, so the time feels longer.

Another theory suggests that the passage of time we perceive is related to the amount of new information we perceive. With more new stimuli, our brains take longer to process the information—thus, the time period feels longer. This could also explain the “slow perception of reality” that is often reported to occur in the seconds before an accident. Facing unusual circumstances means receiving an avalanche of new information that needs to be processed.

In fact, it may be that when faced with new situations, our brains imprint more detailed memories, so that it is our memory of the event that emerges more slowly, rather than the event itself. That this is true was demonstrated in an experiment with people experiencing free fall.

For children, the world is often an unfamiliar place, where there are many new experiences that can be gained. This means that children must use significantly more intellectual power to transform their mental representations of the outside world. This theory suggests that time therefore moves slower for children than for adults stuck in the routine of everyday life.

Thus, the more familiar daily life becomes for us, the faster it seems to us that time passes, and, as a rule, habits are formed with age.

It has been suggested that the biochemical mechanism underlying this theory is the release of a neurotransmitter hormone upon perception of new stimuli that helps us learn to tell time. After 20 and until old age, the level of this happiness hormone decreases, which is why it seems to us that time passes faster.

But still, it seems that none of these theories can completely explain where does the time acceleration coefficient come from, increasing almost with mathematical constancy.

The apparent shortening of the duration of a given period as we grow older suggests the existence of a "logarithmic scale" in relation to time. Logarithmic scales are used instead of traditional linear scales when measuring the strength of an earthquake or the loudness of a sound. Because the quantities we measure can vary to enormous degrees, we need a scale with a wider range of measurements to truly understand what is going on. The same can be said about time.

On the logarithmic Richter scale (for measuring the strength of earthquakes), an increase in magnitude from 10 to 11 is different from a 10% increase in ground oscillations, which a linear scale would not show. Each increment on the Richter scale corresponds to a tenfold increase in vibrations.

But why should our perception of time also be measured using a logarithmic scale?The fact is that we relate any period of time to a part of life that we have already lived. For two-year-olds, a year is half of their life, which is why when you're little, birthdays seem to take so long.

For ten-year-olds, a year is only 10% of their life (which makes the wait a little more bearable), and for 20-year-olds it's only 5%. On a logarithmic scale, a 20-year-old would have to wait until he was 30 to experience the same proportional increase in time that a 2-year-old experiences waiting for his next birthday. Given all this, it is not surprising that time seems to speed up as we get older.

We usually think of our lives in terms of decades - our 20s, our 30s, and so on - they are presented as equivalent periods. However, if we take a logarithmic scale, it turns out that we mistakenly perceive different periods of time as periods of the same duration. Within this theory, the following age periods would be perceived equally: five to ten, ten to 20, 20 to 40, and 40 to 80.

I don't want to end on a depressing note, but it turns out that Your five years of experience, spanning ages from five to ten years, is perceived to be equivalent to a period of life spanning ages from 40 to 80 years.

Well, mind your own business. Time flies, whether you are enjoying life or not. And every day it flies faster and faster.published

translation by Svetlana Bodrik

Why does time fly faster and faster? August 18th, 2016

Think about it, this was really how it was in childhood - the summer holidays seemed to have no end, and we had to wait forever for the New Year holidays. So why does time seem to gain momentum over the years: weeks, or even months, fly by unnoticed, and the seasons change at such a dizzying speed?

Isn’t this obvious acceleration of time the result of the responsibilities and worries that have befallen us in our adult lives? However, in fact, research shows that perceived time actually moves faster for adults, filling our lives with troubles and bustle.

There are several theories that try to explain why our sense of time speeds up as we get older.

But how does all this explain the constant reduction in perceived time as we age? The theory says that the older we get, the more familiar our surroundings become. We do not notice the details of our surroundings at home and at work. For children, the world is often an unfamiliar place, where there are many new experiences that can be gained. This means that children must use significantly more intellectual power to transform their mental representations of the outside world. This theory suggests that time therefore moves slower for children than for adults stuck in the routine of everyday life.

Thus, the more familiar daily life becomes for us, the faster it seems to us that time passes, and, as a rule, habits are formed with age.

But still, it seems that none of these theories can explain with complete certainty where the time acceleration coefficient comes from, increasing almost with mathematical constancy.

Infancy

But why should our perception of time also be measured using a logarithmic scale? The fact is that we relate any period of time to a part of life that we have already lived. For two-year-olds, a year is half of their life, which is why when you're little, birthdays seem to take so long.

For ten-year-olds, a year is only 10% of their life (which makes the wait a little more bearable), and for 20-year-olds it's only 5%. On a logarithmic scale, a 20-year-old would have to wait until he was 30 to experience the same proportional increase in time that a 2-year-old experiences waiting for his next birthday. It's no wonder that time seems to speed up as we get older.

I don't want to end on a depressing note, but it turns out that five years of your experience, spanning ages five to ten, is perceived to be equivalent to a period of life spanning ages 40 to 80.

Well, mind your own business. Time flies, whether you are enjoying life or not. And every day it flies faster and faster.

Here's a slightly related topic about why we don't remember being kids.

According to Freud

Sigmund Freud drew attention to childhood forgetfulness. In his 1905 work, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, he reflected in particular on amnesia, which covers the first five years of a child's life. Freud was sure that childhood (infantile) amnesia is not a consequence of functional memory disorders, but stems from the desire to prevent early experiences - traumas that harm one’s own “I” - from entering the child’s consciousness. The father of psychoanalysis considered such traumas to be experiences associated with knowledge of one’s own body or based on sensory impressions of what was heard or seen. Freud called the fragments of memories that can still be observed in the child’s consciousness masking.

"Activation"

The results of a study by Emory University scientists Patricia Bayer and Marina Larkina, published in the journal Memory, support the theory about the timing of childhood amnesia. According to scientists, its “activation” occurs in all inhabitants of the planet without exception at the age of seven. Scientists conducted a series of experiments in which three-year-old children participated and were asked to tell their parents about their most vivid impressions. Years later, the researchers returned to the tests: They invited the same children again and asked them to remember the story. Five- to seven-year-old participants in the experiment were able to recall 60% of what happened to them before the age of three, while eight- to ten-year-olds were able to recall no more than 40%. Thus, scientists were able to hypothesize that childhood amnesia occurs at the age of 7 years.

Habitat

Canadian psychology professor Carol Peterson believes that environment, among other factors, influences the formation of childhood memories. He was able to confirm his hypothesis as a result of a large-scale experiment, the participants of which were Canadian and Chinese children. They were asked to recall in four minutes the most vivid memories of the first years of life. Canadian children remembered twice as many events as Chinese children. It is also interesting that Canadians predominantly recalled personal stories, while the Chinese shared memories in which their family or peer group were involved.

Guilty without guilt?

Experts at the Ohio State University Medical Center believe that children cannot connect their memories with a specific place and time, so later in life it becomes impossible to reconstruct episodes from their own childhood. Discovering the world for himself, the child does not make it difficult to link what is happening to temporal or spatial criteria. According to one of the co-authors of the study, Simon Dennis, children do not feel the need to remember events along with “overlapping circumstances.” A child may remember a cheerful clown at the circus, but is unlikely to say that the show started at 17.30.

For a long time it was also believed that the reason for forgetting memories of the first three years of life lies in the inability to associate them with specific words. The child cannot describe what happened due to lack of speech skills, so his consciousness blocks “unnecessary” information. In 2002, the journal Psychological Science published a study on the relationship between language and children's memory. Its authors, Gabriel Simcock and Harleen Hein, conducted a series of experiments in which they tried to prove that children who have not yet learned to speak are not able to “encode” what happens to them into memories.

Cells that “erase” memory

Canadian scientist Paul Frankland, who actively studies the phenomenon of childhood amnesia, disagrees with his colleagues. He believes that the formation of childhood memories occurs in the short-term memory zone. He insists that young children can remember their childhood and talk colorfully about ongoing events in which they were recently involved. However, over time, these memories are “erased.” A group of scientists led by Frankland suggested that the loss of infant memories may be associated with an active process of new cell formation, which is called neurogenesis. According to Paul Frankland, it was previously believed that the formation of neurons leads to the formation of new memories, but recent research has proven that neurogenesis is capable of simultaneously erasing information about the past. Why then do people most often not remember the first three years of life? The reason is that this time is the most active period of neurogenesis. The neurons then begin to reproduce at a slower rate and leave some of the childhood memories intact.

Experienced way

To test their assumption, Canadian scientists conducted an experiment on rodents. The mice were placed in a cage with a floor along which weak electrical discharges were applied. A repeated visit to the cage caused adult mice to panic, even after a month. But the young rodents willingly visited the cage the very next day. Scientists have also been able to understand how neurogenesis affects memory. To do this, the experimental subjects artificially caused an acceleration of neurogenesis - the mice quickly forgot about the pain that arose when visiting the cage. According to Paul Frankland, neurogenesis is more a good thing than a bad thing, because it helps protect the brain from an overabundance of information.

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