I don’t know about you, but my life feels like it is moving at warp speed. We are currently closer to 2027 and I am still feeling like my 2026 New Year’s Eve celebrations were just last month. I also promise you that back in August, while I was writing a completely different article, I was standing in Bealls somewhere between the Fourth of July clearance rack and pumpkin pillows, embroidered turkey throws and Santa mugs making their way out of a giant bin labeled HOLIDAY. I just can’t. It’s all too fast.
I distinctly remember time not always moving like this. Back in grade school, getting to Christmas break felt like it took approximately two decades. Summer vacation might as well have been its own calendar year.
Even in high school, 40 minutes of English Lit was somehow enough time to text your friend about what was going on after school, who was driving and whether anyone knew what happened in the cafeteria between so-and-so and so-and-so. And by “text,” I mean hitting the same number repeatedly until you finally got the letter you wanted. If you never had to text like that, you won’t find that bit funny at all. But if you did, well … we made it through.
So, what happened? Obviously, a minute is still a minute and a year is still a year. I have not entered a middle-aged wormhole where clocks move faster specifically to upset me. But apparently, I’m also not imagining the feeling. Researchers have been studying our perception of time for decades, and it turns out there is a difference between experiencing time while it is happening and looking backward and deciding how quickly a period of our lives seemed to pass.
In one study, researchers asked 499 people ranging in age from 14 to 94 about their perception of time. And before I tell you what they found, I need to address the fact that they really couldn’t find ONE more person? You made it all the way to 499 and nobody thought, “You know what would feel better? 500.” I realize this has absolutely nothing to do with the research, but it has been bothering me since I read it.
Anyway, the 499 people generally supported what many of us swear is happening: Time seems to speed up as we get older, particularly when we look back over longer periods of our lives. Age alone, however, doesn’t explain the whole thing.
One theory involves routine. Think about how much novelty was packed into our younger years. First day of school, first sleepover, first kiss, first concert, first job, first time driving a car. There were new things happening constantly. Now think about a random week in adulthood. Wake up. Coffee. Work. Grocery store. Laundry. Dinner. Bed. Repeat.
Similar experiences can essentially get bundled together in our memories, which may help explain why a repetitive stretch of life can feel shorter when we look back at it. Your brain may look back at six months and say, “Yep. Work, errands, laundry. Got it.” And suddenly it’s October.
This is usually where wellness advice would tell you to “take a different route home” or “choose the scenic route” to introduce novelty into your day. Lovely advice unless you live in the Florida Keys, where we have U.S. 1. You can take U.S. 1 north or U.S. 1 south. Those are your scenic routes.
Thankfully, the science isn’t as simple as taking a different road anyway. Attention, memory, how busy we feel, emotion, novelty and how engaged we are in what we’re doing may all influence how we perceive time.
There’s also the popular explanation that a year feels shorter because it represents a smaller percentage of your life. When you’re 10, one year is one-tenth of your existence. At 50, it’s one-fiftieth. The math is cute, but there isn’t strong evidence that our brains are actually calculating time that way.
A 2026 study made things even more interesting. Researchers studied adults ages 20 to 91 and again found that older adults tended to perceive the previous decade as having passed faster. But it wasn’t simply because they had fewer meaningful memories. Older adults actually reported vivid and meaningful memories too. Researchers instead found a connection between faster perceived time and a reduced ability to encode new information as we age.
So, annoyingly, I cannot give you the clean answer I wanted. I can’t tell you that time feels faster simply because you’re getting older. I also can’t tell you to learn pottery, eat dinner with your opposite hand or take a different road to work because, again, U.S. 1. What I can tell you is that our brains are not clocks.
We experience our lives through attention, memory, emotion, novelty and meaning. A boring meeting can last approximately three fiscal years, while dinner with someone you love somehow ends before you feel like you even sat down.
I don’t actually want my days to drag. I just don’t want entire years of my life disappearing into one giant mental folder labeled “work, errands, laundry.” Maybe we cannot slow down time, but perhaps we can stop giving our brains so many identical days to remember.
Go somewhere you haven’t been. Learn something you’re terrible at. Try the restaurant you always drive past. Stop somewhere on U.S. 1 instead of simply using it as the conveyor belt between obligations. Say yes to something unexpected. Put the phone down when something good is happening and actually be there for it.
Not because any of it will magically add hours to your life, but because it might give your brain something worth holding onto.
Because apparently I cannot stop 2027 from coming. But I would at least like to remember what the hell I did in 2026.
