There is one question that Mark Whitman hears over and over again: why does time seem to pass faster and faster?

Psychologist and neuroscientist Whitman has been researching the way people perceive time for over three decades. And according to his experience this feeling of time slipping through our hands is something that all people feel.

Especially during the Christmas and New Year period most people think “Sit down, how has a whole year gone by again? Didn’t we celebrate 2024 just a while ago, wasn’t it summer a few weeks ago? Or even autumn?”

In a 2005 study Whitman found that “the last ten years are the most sensitive in terms of our perception of time. The older we get, the faster we feel that these ten years have passed.” This feeling starts as early as adolescence and continues until the age of 70. “In our 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, everything seems to happen much faster.”

“Routine kills time”

But why does this happen? The answer given by the studies so far is this: “Routine kills time”.

How we remember each past event is also related to the impression it left on us. “The more new experiences we experience in a given period of time, the more distant it seems to us. The same happens, for example, when we spend a weekend with friends: those days we have a great time, we live fantastic experiences – and later we feel like a whole century has passed,” explains Wittmann.

Scientists Dina Avni-Badad and Ilana Ritov came to similar conclusions in 2003, when they studied how different people on vacation perceived time: those who took part in the study said that they felt that the first days of their vacation were exciting and lasted longer . But the longer their vacation went on, the shorter the days seemed – precisely because the vacation had now developed into a kind of routine.

It’s the same with people’s age, as Whitman discovered: when someone is young, they often experience things for the first time that make an impression on them. “However, at some point we realize that we have been living in the same place for 30 years, we have the same job and the same friends. Then time seems to us to pass much faster, because we do not experience enough special new experiences”, says the scientist.

The role of emotions

The same seems to be true of how we feel during the holiday season. In other words, those who stick to traditions or prefer to spend the holidays quietly will feel the days between Christmas and New Year pass more quickly – or as it is often said, they will “lose track of time”, adds Whitman. If, on the other hand, one goes skiing on vacation, sees new places and meets new people, one will probably feel that the days last longer.

Of course, emotions also play a role in all of this. According to the expert, “all the studies on the pandemic in England, Italy, France and Germany showed that the worse someone feels, the slower they feel that time passes. Of course, the exact opposite can also happen. When I went to the University of San Diego, for example, the first year went incredibly slowly because everything I was experiencing was something new. Nevertheless, the memory of this period is very pleasant”.

Stopping – or speeding up – time

Anyone who wants to stop time can do it – sort of. The key is to change our lives at least a little every once in a while. “Routine can be good and create a sense of security for us. But we can even talk to our neighbor like that for a change, with whom we never exchange two words,” says Whitman. With such small differences we can “have new experiences in our adult life and in this way feel better and feel that time passes more slowly”.

And what about when moments feel like they last for ages, such as the times we wait in line at a cash register? According to the scientist, in such phases “we have a few minutes just for ourselves. The goal is to practice taking advantage of these minutes, thinking for example about how our day is or what other things we have to do today, in the context of a “cognitive restructuring”. Thus, through a mental process that is quite similar to that of meditation , we can feel an inner calm even in situations that otherwise make us nervous – and at the same time not feel like we’ve been sitting in the same queue for hours.

Edited by: Giorgos Passas