Why Time Speeds Up

When you were a kid, a single summer felt like it lasted forever. Now an entire year vanishes before you've taken it in. The clock hasn't changed — so why does time feel like it's accelerating as you age? The answer isn't a boring routine. It's that your brain doesn't measure time with a clock at all. It measures it with memory. In this video, we discuss: The Proportional Theory: why each year is a smaller fraction of your life, from Paul Janet to William James. Memory Makes Time: how your brain judges duration by counting memories, not seconds. Novelty vs Routine: David Eagleman's work, the holiday paradox, and why autopilot deletes whole years. The Repetition Machine: how convenience and endless feeds quietly erase your felt time. How to Slow Time Down: novelty, attention, and presence — the simple ways to make a year feel like three. Time was never slipping away. Your attention was. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SOURCES ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ PROPORTIONAL THEORY OF TIME ▸ Janet, P. (1877). Proposed the proportional theory (a year measured against total lifespan), reported via William James. ▸ James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology, ch. XV "The Perception of Time." On why years grow "hollow and collapse" with age. NOVELTY, MEMORY & DURATION ▸ Eagleman, D. M. (research on time perception and the "oddball effect"; see Eagleman, "Brain Time," and Pariyadath & Eagleman 2007, PLoS ONE, on subjective duration and novelty). ▸ Hammond, C. (2012). Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception. Canongate. (The "holiday paradox.") ▸ Wittmann, M. (2016). Felt Time: The Psychology of How We Perceive Time. MIT Press. THE REMINISCENCE BUMP ▸ Rubin, D. C., Wetzler, S. E., & Nebes, R. D. (1986). Autobiographical memory across the lifespan. (Clustering of vivid memories in adolescence and early adulthood.) #TimePerception #WhyTimeFlies #Neuroscience #Memory #Psychology