# A year seems shorter the older you get... why? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 1, 2002, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-year-seems-shorter-the-older-you-get-why/121876 "2002-08-01T14:45:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2002, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-year-seems-shorter-the-older-you-get-why/121876/21 "2002-08-02T17:28:25Z")
I think its just how busy you are. Wait until you don’t have any thing to do & see how slow time is. ---
**Author:** ![Theobroma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b5a626/32.png) [@Theobroma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Theobroma)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2002, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-year-seems-shorter-the-older-you-get-why/121876/22 "2002-08-02T17:32:28Z")
I’m with Clairobscur, who brought up something I had noticed myself. When I go away for the weekend and have something new and interesting planned for every minute, it seems like a week. I’ve also noticed that trips out seem to take much longer than trips back. But Hail Ants came up with an excellent point…the view of time as a Resource (never enough) vs. the view of time as a Restriction (WHEN will it EVER END?!?). This is especially true for me at work…surely I am not the only one who finds that the day flies by when it’s busy and I’m racing the clock to get things done, but time drags when I have nothing to do but wait until it’s quittin’ time. Hail Hail Ants! [sub]I’ve always wanted to say that![/sub] ---
**Author:** ![Engywook](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bc8723/32.png) [@Engywook](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Engywook)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2002, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-year-seems-shorter-the-older-you-get-why/121876/23 "2002-08-02T17:41:48Z")
I’m more persuaded now that time is marked proportionally. This would fit the observation that the time contraction affect is a function of age, and is cumulative. I think there’s something to the measuring time by events, although I believe that our observations about the passage of time would be different if this were the primary mechanism. And the fact is that I remember being four years old for a very long time. But I remember very few experiences from being 4 years old. Either way, though, it seems there’s got to be some mechanism for setting the “standard” length of an interval - an amount of time that is perceived, and expected to be, a year. This standard could be a fraction of a lifetime (what I’d go with), or a certain number of experiences. And then somebody on a linked thread said something about drugs… that may tell us something about the way time perception works. My own experience with time-stretching drugs, from years and years ago: 1. If I break up a minute into seconds, I do not find that the apparent lenth of a second is any different from usual. The second hand on the watch does **not** appear to be frozen, or slowed down at all. But it does seem like there are a lot more seconds in a minute. 2. While I notice thoughts a lot more, and generally seem to have more experiences as time goes by, but I don’t remember all that much about it. 3. Even if I remembered next to nothing about an experience the following day, there was at least one case where I felt like I’d had a three day weekend, even if it was only Saturday and Sunday. ---
**Author:** ![kniz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c37758/32.png) [@kniz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kniz)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2002, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-year-seems-shorter-the-older-you-get-why/121876/24 "2002-08-03T19:44:42Z")
> [@](#): > > _originally posted by clairobscur_ > **The older you grow, the less new experiences you have.** > [@](#): > > _originally posted by Nouveau Bozo_ > **I agree with kayT, but with the added point that as you get older and experience more new things, fewer and fewer things have the same novelty about them as they did when you were younger.** In the last 10 years I’ve had a heart attack, gone to Spain, Italy, England, France to name a few. We are now adding onto our house. All these are new and novel things (well maybe not the heart attack, but it was memorable). So new and/or novel things do not seem to enter into it. The truth is 2b, IMHO. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-year-seems-shorter-the-older-you-get-why/121876.md?page=1)