Biological clock

[Royston]

I did a search for this question so apologies if this has already been asked, but this has been bugging me recently. As many people know, as you get older, time appears to speed up. When you're young, your summer holidays appear to go on forever, but 6 weeks at my age seems no time at all. Now I know this has something to do with your biological clock slowing down, but why does the effect of that make you percieve time as speeding up ?

 

I'm probably missing something obvious here, but can anyone explain this.

[YT2095]

it`s percentages.

 

when you are 1 year old, a year to you is your whole life time Again a 100%.

when your 50 years old a year, a year is only a 50`th of your life, so not that great a percentage of time to you.

 

this is My opinion only though, I don`t think it actualy has much if anything to do with our bio clocks.

[Ndi]

IMHO, it's the load. The smaller the age, the less you have to do, the less you worry, etc. When you are 15 nobody fires you, you don't answer for most of your actions and you have virtually no boots to fill.

 

Also, the more you add to your life, the more you risk if you sc*w up. The more you have to balance each decision, since each year that passes you can't afford to switch careers, can't afford to not get payed, and so on.

 

Take 2 days off, and I mean off. No school, no job, no driving/commuting anywhere, no whatever you do, just get a room somewhere far away and you'll see it will take forever. What you remember of those 2 days is less, true, I also believe it's all in percentages.

[Royston]

This is pretty much what I thought to, the reason I asked was due to a programme a couple of weeks ago, that dealt with the aging process (I'll try to find a link.) The 'expert' stated that as our biological clocks slow down it seems as though time speeds up, now although this loosely correlates, it fails to explain why this is so.

 

I may have misheard, but a friend said he remembered this mentioned in the programme to.

[weknowthewor]

I have following url to tell about biological clock:

 

http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/1999/07.15/bioclock24.html

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/biological_clocks/index.html

[mr d]

Hello

 

One reason for time speeding up as you age, is you get to look mortality in the face more and more. You know you are going to die, those you've grown up with are doing so around you.

 

So when young you see a full life ahead of you, when older you see what time you have left.

Baring accident or war if your say twenty you have on average some 55 years ahead of you. At 60 perhaps 15 years left.

 

So before when young you thought plenty of time to get those things done, and you had plenty of time left.

 

When old not that much time left.

 

Also there is the perception of time, which can change by the activity in which the individual is involved.

 

Mr D

[Glider]

I did a search for this question so apologies if this has already been asked, but this has been bugging me recently. As many people know, as you get older, time appears to speed up. When you're young, your summer holidays appear to go on forever, but 6 weeks at my age seems no time at all. Now I know this has something to do with your biological clock slowing down, but why does the effect of that make you percieve time as speeding up ?

 

I'm probably missing something obvious here, but can anyone explain this.

It is a perceptual thing based on familiarity and your scale of thought. When you are a child, everything is new. The seasons change and you notice everything. As you get older, you become familiar with the changes throughout a year and so you notice less. More of it slips by 'under your radar'.

 

More importantly, as adults we also think ahead more, living less for 'the now'. We have many more 'time markers' than children, such as pay days and other regular events occurring throughout the year. We plan things, like 'next spring I'll repot these satzuki azaleas'. Next spring is 'only' 3 months (3 pay days) away. This kind of thinking telescopes our perception of time; next spring doesn't seem so far away if you think of it like that, so when next spring gets here, it won't have seemed so long.

 

When you don't plan ahead, but live 'in the moment' planning only for tomorrow, and then, only at the end of today, the bigger changes (e.g. winter to spring) creep by comparatively slowly because we're not thinking on that scale.

[Royston]

Thanks all for the responses, you pretty much confirmed my thoughts on the subject. I couldn't find a quote from the programme, so I clearly misheard...and on retrospect, wouldn't make any sense unless there was some physiological and psychological link when it comes to aging and time perception.