Video summary
The central premise of this discussion addresses why life feels like it accelerates with age, challenging the common perception that time itself is speeding up. The core argument posits that while physical time remains constant regardless of one's activities or location, subjective experience differs between present moments and recalled memories. When we say time flies, it does not mean fewer hours have passed; rather, our brains fail to encode detailed episodic memories for those periods. Consequently, when looking back on a year where little is remembered, the duration feels compressed because there are few mental markers to span across that gap in consciousness. This phenomenon of accelerated perception stems from how memory formation works: novelty and intensity act as triggers for the brain to record experiences. In childhood, almost every event represents new information—first visits to parks or schools—which forces the brain into a high-recording mode because it cannot predict future relevance. As adults settle into routines such as driving the same route daily or interacting with familiar people, the brain conserves energy by processing these actions automatically without deep cortical engagement. This lack of attention results in fewer stored memories, leading to what is termed "novelty saturation theory," where a life dominated by monotony causes days to become forgettable and time to seem to rush forward. To counteract this effect and slow down the subjective passage of time, one must actively introduce variety into daily life through novel experiences that demand attention. The speaker illustrates this with personal anecdotes from trips to Africa in 2018, where specific sensory details like a porter's worn leather shoes or an ornithology book remain vivid years later because they were unique and intense events. By saying "yes" to new activities—whether salsa dancing, visiting unfamiliar towns, or eating at fresh cafes—and saying "no" to passive consumption of the same content repeatedly, individuals create memory investments that future retrospection will draw dividends from. These deliberate disruptions to routine ensure that days are memorable rather than forgettable. However, a nuanced tension exists between the necessity of routine for predictable progress and the need for variation to expand one's life experience. The speaker acknowledges that while routines provide stability and efficiency, they inherently compress time by reducing memory encoding; therefore, balancing these two forces is crucial but difficult. A well-lived future should resemble a varied art gallery rather than a gray hallway filled with repetitive habits like endless Netflix binges or TikTok dances. Ultimately, the choice lies in whether one allows their life to be defined by internalized monotony or actively curates experiences that stand out in memory, ensuring that when looking back on life, it feels expansive and richly detailed rather than fleeting and empty.
Read the full video transcript
When I first started Modern Wisdom, I
was obsessed with why life felt like it
was going so quickly and how to slow it
down. So, I decided to revisit the topic
recently.
Why does some days feel like years and
some years feel like days? As we get
older, life feels like it's moving
faster and faster. We look back on a
year and can't really remember where it
went. Months start to pass like minutes,
and we begin to feel so helpless against
the passage of time that it almost seems
as if we're an observer of our lives,
not a participant anymore. The answer to
slowing down time, is simpler than you
think. The first thing to know is that
no matter how boring the Zoom call,
exciting the holiday, or old you are,
time always passes at exactly the same
rate for you. Shock, horror. I know you
have the same number of hours in the day
as you ever have and they are always
moving at the same pace. Even if you are
circling a black hole or moving near the
speed of light, your experience of time
remains the same. 1 second is 1 second
always.
So if this is the case, why do we feel
like time changes speed? Well, there is
a difference between present time and
remembered time. Your experience of time
differs in the moment versus when you
recall it. Your present time will always
remain at the same speed, but your
remembered time can vary widely. So when
we say that time is speeding up, we
don't mean it actually passed more
quickly, but that it seems to have
passed more quickly when we recall it.
It's not that week went so quickly, but
I don't recall what I did during that
week. Memory is our way of reliving our
past experiences and reexperiencing
time. We remember our time with respect
to what we were doing, where it was, who
we were with, and the emotions that we
had. So, here's the first key insight.
The more memories you have from a past
experience, the more that that
experience gets expanded in time.
Think back to a holiday you went on 5
years ago,
even though it was a long time ago. You
will probably still be able to recall a
lot of details, making it seem like it
lasted for longer and that time moved
more slowly for that week.
So if time is memory and we want more
time, then what we really want is more
memories. But this still doesn't explain
why our recollection of time speeds up
with age until you consider why memories
are made.
Your brain is lazy. It wants to do as
little work as possible and conserve as
much energy as it can. This is why it
likes routines, habits, and thought
patterns because once it's done that
thing a few times, it needs to think
less and less about doing it again. The
thing is, when you're young, almost
everything is new information. This is
the first time you've been to the park
or school or swam in the big pool or
kissed a girl or been on a boat. Your
brain is constantly recording. Think
about how much you can remember from the
first day you moved to where you live
now compared with any day from the last
month.
Or think about what happened on your
first ever driving lesson. I'm guessing
you can recall it quite a lot. Perhaps
even the route that you took, the car
that you drove. Yet, if you try to
remember the experiences in your car
from last Monday, you might not even
know if you drove it at all.
This is the most important lesson to
know about slowing down time. Your
subjective experience of time is based
on your memories. And the best way to
ensure that your brain remembers what
you're doing is with two things: novelty
and intensity. When something new or
intense happens, your brain doesn't know
what it needs to remember. So, it just
holds on to all of it. It's never
encountered this before. So, it doesn't
know if it will need this information in
future. Therefore, it starts recording
what's happening. This is why holidays
are such a good example to show how time
and memories are linked because there's
lots of new things and lots of intensity
happening. I took a trip to Africa in
2018 and I can still remember the shape
of the worn leather shoes that the hotel
porter had on and the ornithology book
that he was carrying and the sound of
his feet on the steps down to the hotel
room. This is the holiday paradox. Time
flies while you're having fun, but feels
long in retrospect. And as we age, our
adult life gets into routines where we
do the same actions day after day after
day. We drive the same route to work. We
speak to the same people. We even have
the same thoughts. We allow ourselves to
be dominated by monotonous routines,
passively resistance, and habituated
thought patterns. The TLDDR is that
routines compress time. Habitual
behaviors are processed with less
cortical effort, meaning less attention
and fewer stored episodic memories.
Childhood is rich with firsts, which
become rarer with age. This is novelty
saturation theory. The idea that as we
age, we experience fewer new things, so
our brain stops encoding as many
detailed memories, which makes time feel
like it's passing faster.
And this is the uncomfortable truth. As
we get older, days move quickly because
we can't remember them. And we don't
remember our days because we haven't
done anything memorable with them. Our
days are forgettable.
Therefore, we forget them. This is why I
hate it when people say, "That's just
the way I am and always will be." To me,
that is someone who has internalized the
monotony of their thought patterns so
deeply that they literally identify with
them. Monotony is the enemy of a
well-remembered life. So, in order to
slow time down, you have to give your
brain a reason to pay attention. Leading
a full life means having lots of varied
experiences that will later be
memorable. This means you need to start
saying yes to more new things and no to
more of the same things. Even if you've
never wanted to try salsa dancing or
yoga or an open mic comedy night, saying
yes will guarantee that you create some
novel and potentially intense memories.
Sure, it might be easier to stay on the
couch instead of going out, but you know
that you won't recall a single thing if
you spend yet another night watching
Netflix. Whereas you will have tons of
memories if you go and do something new
which in retrospect makes time pass more
slowly. Doing novel and intense things
is entirely within your control. Allow
yourself to be immersed in the things
that you spend your time doing.
Regularly plan new experiences. Talk to
different people. Say yes to adventures
whenever you can. Walk the dog on a
different route. Visit a new town. Eat
at a fresh cafe. These are all memory
investments that future you will be able
to draw dividends from.
Each day you can ask yourself the
question, what did I do today that will
stand out in my memory? And the more
that you can answer this question
clearly, the slower your time will move.
Eventually, you are going to be looking
back on your life. The choice is between
viewing a beautiful varied art gallery
stretching as far as the eye can see or
a gray monotonous hallway peppered with
the ghosts of Tik Tok dances and Netflix
series. If you make your life memorable,
you will remember it.
I think
I got frustrated because I wanted to
I wanted to make progress that was based
around routine because I understood that
it was very important for me.
But I also
had this realization so early on that
felt in conflict with
my desire to make progress. So I think
another tension in a lot of the
conversations today been about tension.
Another tension is how do I lean into
routine to capture the upsides of uh
predictable progress whilst also
blending that with the uh variation
that's needed in order to give me memory
dividends to expand my life to make time
feel like it's moving more more slowly.
Difficult one. It's a difficult thing to
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Congratulations for making it to the end
of a clip. Your brain has not been fried
by Tik Tok. Uh, watch the full episode
here.