The relationship to age is not really causal tho afaik.
It is.
It’s not just our bodies that want to be lazy, our brains do too.
The longer you live, the less novel situations you are in. When you’re doing something you’ve done a thousands time, your brain doesn’t really pay attention anymore, it figures this has been done lots of times and doesn’t need a high level of attention.
Most people are familiar with it on a short timeline with “highway hypnosis” where if you’ve been driving on a boring straight highway/interstate for hours, an hour can go by without you even realizing.
Your brains been driving so long without anything crazy happening, so it just stops worrying about driving.
People think of our brain as a single entity, but different parts handle different things, stuff that’s not novel gets tossed to the “autopilot” more and more as we age because we’re likely doing the same shit as last time.
I think it also has to do with scale in time vs years lived. For example, if you are 9 years old, 3 years is a third of your entire life; while for a 30 year old, it’s a tenth. So time feels faster for the latter.
I started noticing this as a kid. Sometimes the TV station would play the same commercial twice in a row. The first time I watched it it seemed to take longer than a normal commercial, but then immediately after it would repeat and it would have all the same clips and information, but seemed like it took half the time.
Did anyone else’s summer only last 4 weeks? Felt like mine did. Next year will probably go even quicker.
What you are describing is correlation not causality. Its not a biological change that comes with age which causes this. Its the environment that older people are in that causes it. If you were to keep taking in new information and experiences at the same rate as when you were a child, the effect would not manifest. Thats basically impossible tho, which is why this is such a universal experience.
We are not on autopilot because we are old, but because there is no reason to change our behaviour anymore. If you take someone out of that autopilotable stagnat environment (moving abroad, vacation, getting kids, etc), then the effect will go away, until they have adjusted enough to be on autopilot again.
I feel like we are psychologically old because we are on autopilot and not because we are physically old.
New experiences would make time move slower, but the vast majority of what we do is routine
You might eat a new thing for lunch, but you’re still eating lunch like you always have.
You might walk to a new place, but you’re still walking.
Having a kid is different than not, but have you ever talked to a parent about how repetitive things get? Things change as the kid ages but it changes incrementally, no big overnight changes. It may seem like that, but that’s because the parents went on autopilot and didn’t notice the small incremental changes till something happens where they notice the change. And then quickly get used to it, putting them back on autopilot.
Like, you’ve never heard a single parent say “it feels like yesterday I was changing your diaper!” to a kid in their 20s?
While you can cram a bunch of novel things in to try and help, it doesn’t change the past before you did so. So those years dont have as many milestones and doesn’t feel like much happened, meaning looking back time went fast.
You can try to always be doing new things constantly you’re entire life, but that takes a shit ton of money. And good luck earning that in a way that doesn’t become monotonous and allows you all that time off work to do the novel stuff.
I get what you’re trying to say, but it’s not correct.
It is.
It’s not just our bodies that want to be lazy, our brains do too.
The longer you live, the less novel situations you are in. When you’re doing something you’ve done a thousands time, your brain doesn’t really pay attention anymore, it figures this has been done lots of times and doesn’t need a high level of attention.
Most people are familiar with it on a short timeline with “highway hypnosis” where if you’ve been driving on a boring straight highway/interstate for hours, an hour can go by without you even realizing.
Your brains been driving so long without anything crazy happening, so it just stops worrying about driving.
People think of our brain as a single entity, but different parts handle different things, stuff that’s not novel gets tossed to the “autopilot” more and more as we age because we’re likely doing the same shit as last time.
I think it also has to do with scale in time vs years lived. For example, if you are 9 years old, 3 years is a third of your entire life; while for a 30 year old, it’s a tenth. So time feels faster for the latter.
Yeah. There’s also “processing speed” slowling down. And literally information traveling along our neurons happening slower due to plaque buildup.
It’s not just one thing, it’s a bunch of things.
I started noticing this as a kid. Sometimes the TV station would play the same commercial twice in a row. The first time I watched it it seemed to take longer than a normal commercial, but then immediately after it would repeat and it would have all the same clips and information, but seemed like it took half the time.
Did anyone else’s summer only last 4 weeks? Felt like mine did. Next year will probably go even quicker.
What you are describing is correlation not causality. Its not a biological change that comes with age which causes this. Its the environment that older people are in that causes it. If you were to keep taking in new information and experiences at the same rate as when you were a child, the effect would not manifest. Thats basically impossible tho, which is why this is such a universal experience.
We are not on autopilot because we are old, but because there is no reason to change our behaviour anymore. If you take someone out of that autopilotable stagnat environment (moving abroad, vacation, getting kids, etc), then the effect will go away, until they have adjusted enough to be on autopilot again.
I feel like we are psychologically old because we are on autopilot and not because we are physically old.
New experiences would make time move slower, but the vast majority of what we do is routine
You might eat a new thing for lunch, but you’re still eating lunch like you always have.
You might walk to a new place, but you’re still walking.
Having a kid is different than not, but have you ever talked to a parent about how repetitive things get? Things change as the kid ages but it changes incrementally, no big overnight changes. It may seem like that, but that’s because the parents went on autopilot and didn’t notice the small incremental changes till something happens where they notice the change. And then quickly get used to it, putting them back on autopilot.
Like, you’ve never heard a single parent say “it feels like yesterday I was changing your diaper!” to a kid in their 20s?
While you can cram a bunch of novel things in to try and help, it doesn’t change the past before you did so. So those years dont have as many milestones and doesn’t feel like much happened, meaning looking back time went fast.
You can try to always be doing new things constantly you’re entire life, but that takes a shit ton of money. And good luck earning that in a way that doesn’t become monotonous and allows you all that time off work to do the novel stuff.
I get what you’re trying to say, but it’s not correct.
Journaling and mindfulness meditation help with this and are free (except the cost of a journal if you get a physical one).
And if that’s too much effort you can always try microdosing.
If your brain is experiencing the same world in a new way it will seem to go slower.