Steve Taylor explains in his book Making Time: Why Time Seems to Pass at Different Speeds and How to Control It that, when we are children, time seems to move slowly, while as we grow older it seems to speeds up. Time perception in childhood is therefore quite different from what we experience as adults. This kind of perception connects with the perceptual models we use to anticipate reality.

In the early stages of life, time seems to stretch out and we feel that many things happen throughout the day. However, after a certain age everything starts to happen faster and time becomes almost a daily struggle.

Just writing today’s date is enough to understand this phenomenon. It feels like yesterday when we were writing 2005 or 2008, and not so long ago we started writing 2012 and it is already about to end. To Taylor’s explanation we can add our tendency to perceive recent events as farther away than they really are, and distant events as more recent than they were, a phenomenon known as the telescoping effect.

Taylor even proposes the existence of two major life stages: a first one up to age five, and another that covers the rest of life. His reasoning is that in those early years we experience so many things, and so intensely, that this stage could be equivalent, in terms of lived experience, to several later decades.

Experience, information, and time perception

There is no doubt that multiple factors influence this changing way of perceiving time. Professor William Reville, of University College Cork, explained in an article published in The Irish Times that these perceptual variations are related to variables such as the amount of information we process, the nature of the experience lived, the number of new experiences, or the way we face each situation.

According to Reville, the return trip tends to be perceived as shorter than the outward journey. However, introducing factors such as turbulence, adverse weather conditions, or uncertainty is enough for time to stretch out noticeably again.

Using the attentional gate model of prospective timing, explain why “a watched pot never boils”, why earthquakes feel longer than they are, and why the return trip always feels shorter.

The idea of a single, absolute time, identical for all observers, is not very solid if we think of Einstein and the theory of relativity. From this perspective, our perception of space‑time is relative and depends on multiple variables. If everything is conditioned by the observer’s experience, it is worth asking whether it is possible to learn to modify our experience of time by altering the way we live each moment.

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.

Albert Einstein

Novelty, attention, and awareness

From a perceptual perspective, the amount of information we process and the capacity of our memory to store it seem closely related to the subjective duration of time. When we are children, we accumulate a huge amount of sensory information that is distributed over time and “lengthens” it. Everything is new, surprising, and worthy of attention.

Over the years, many experiences become familiar and routine. Buildings are still buildings, an anthill is still an anthill, and we know there may be fireflies at night, but we rarely pay attention to them. Novelty decreases, and with it, the sensation of time’s duration.

By simple reasoning, introducing new experiences, taking on different challenges, or making changes in our lives can make time feel slower again. Taylor also suggests increasing so‑called “conscious times,” recovering our capacity for wonder and paying more attention to the seemingly insignificant details of our surroundings.

Temporal perspectives and culture

From another complementary approach, Professor Philip Zimbardo has devoted much of his research to studying how time perception varies according to social and cultural factors. For Zimbardo, the way we position ourselves in relation to time directly influences our personality, our relationships, and the way we face reality.

His studies go far beyond the scope of this reflection, but they are especially revealing. As an example, it is worth watching Zimbardo’s well‑known RSA‑animated talk, in which he clearly and accessibly presents the power time exerts over our behavior.

RSA Animate – The Secret Powers of Time