You don't even need to be old to feel this. I've had vacations where I mostly played JRPGs, and those vacations certainly felt considerably shorter.
And I definitely wasn't implying they live boring lives. My spouse for example doesn't work, and in fact is quite busy with an impressive garden landscape. She doesn't always know what day it is, because it doesn't usually matter.
Also, a routine doesn't necessarily gets boring, you're right. I was thinking of a university friend of mine. He didn't work, only studied for finals, and had a very interesting life with little money. Somehow he didn't flunk.
It's a partnership, and it works better when one tries to understand that roles evolve over time - for one's self and for others. Also understand that stereotypes of age (and many other things) are not a great way to go through life.
Please don't let someone censor you for acting rationally.
No, it's not normal. Not at all. I hope for all that's good it's not your life when you're old, or if you're old it's not your life.
I still think that OP is incorrect that this is evidence that previous comment is not ageist. Just because most people hold the same prejudice doesn't stop it being prejudice.
Back in the 1920's it would have been quite normal for white people to assume that black people (like myself) were inferior. Just because it was normal doesn't mean it wasn't racist.
Not the same. You can't measure inferiority. You can measure activities, time and age.
I am right.
>I hope for all that's good it's not your life when you're old, or if you're old it's not your life.
I have no idea what you mean here.
But even that's not fine. Better to recognize we're all different, whether it be age, race, creed, orientation, cilantro/no-cilantro, whatever. VI vs EMACS tho - 'nother story.
Recognising that we're different is fine. That comes with recognising that some of us are the same.
Why are those birds cheeping? Oh, it's the dawn chorus. Again.
I admit, they're all an acquired taste in many ways but once you get into it and stop minding the complexity in some of them, they can suck you in and move you out of time.
Other classics are Dragon Warrior IV for the NES, and Phantasy star IV for the Sega Genesis. No need to play the previous ones.
My other recommendation is using an emulator to give you unlimited money and experience. The gameplay is ruined, but the storytelling is more fluid, and you'll save many hours.
Yeah...the first week of a new job feels like a month of the previous job. Four months into it now, and the weeks fly by.
While on vacation, the days feel long. Though once I get back, the week felt short. :-\
I worry about what retirement will be like. On one hand, all my time is free time. On the other, 10 years will probably fly by and I'll have no idea where it went.
Vacations to unique places last forever. Never been? Spend 2 weeks in Japan and you'll remember it just as vividly as the best summer from your childhood. Every moment of every day will be long and filled with memories.
Debugging code every day? Yeah of course that's not memorable. Your brain is just tossing away repetitive data.
Feeling like life is going by way too quick? Have a kid. Every day with a baby is unique.
People with large families will have lived 200 subjective years by the time they are 70!
Other advice: Stop doing stuff you are good at. Every few years try to take a new job that you are specifically not good at. Companies that hire people who have succeeded at a lot of different things but not necessarily the thing they are hiring for are likely to be very good places to work. (FWIW my current workplace doesn't hire based on language or tools or background, we hire good people and assume they can pick up what we are doing).
It will not work in the same way if the time won't be limited - I will be more relaxed.
People can spend years solving one problem in their mind and there are not many experiences in your mind until it generates smth you haven't thought about, and this doesn't happen often.
I think in retrospect we perceive time through our memories, less so by our momentary experience. If your memories have little variance, you'll feel like time has passed quickly. So if you work some factory job for 40 years, you may feel like life passed by in a blink of a moment.
Time seeming to speed up isn't a visual phenomena! I don't see people walking faster. People are not talking faster.
It is in recall of recent times, not in the moment, that we feel like time is going by faster.
And your point explains that.
We tend to have fewer memories of recent time, because we had fewer unique experiences relative to when we were young and almost every day was full of new experiences and new things to learn.
Staying in old routines is comfortable, but to use myself as an example if I just stayed in la complaining about how horrible the city is, I'm robbing myself of a fuller life.
My plan right now is to move abroad for at least a few months or so. I really need to change up things
I have read that explanation several times on different websites, but I don't agree. Had a lot of new and unique things happening to me in the past decade (kids, moving, new job, new country,...). Times still flew. I have talked to friends about this and they have noticed the same thing.
Some time around IIRC 25, the effect really started to take off, and it's never gotten better, no matter how much my life is shaken up.
[EDIT] and on shorter time scales, back then, tell me I've got an hour? Fuck yeah! Enough time to do several things! Now it's like... ugh, barely enough to even start something. Guess I'll putter and tidy the house until it's up, which'll feel like about ten minutes from now.
The relative portions of your life get longer the longer you live.
What "speeds up"? Looking at a clock ticking doing nothing? Eating breakfast? Waiting in line? Watching a movie? An international flight? Memories of a typical work/school day? Memories of a two week vacation? And relative to what? You can't say something "speeds up" without a reference.
For example you can ask : "What feels the longest, a day at Disneyland, or the 8h drive to get there?". And you will probably get different answers based on the context.
Our body doesn't have a single clock, and BTW, neither do computers, so the transmission delay between neurons and the amount of new experiences can each explain a different kind of "speed up".
I don't know how to get out of this. I can't think of any truly new things to do. Maybe I could go to jail or win Wimbledon? These would be truly new :-)
Any of the following can consume your whole time, and have huge communities of full-time devotees:
* Rock Climbing
* Mountaineering
* Kayaking
* Paragliding
* Kite/Windsurfing
* Surfing
* Snowboarding (if you ski, skiing if you snowboard)
* Backcountry skiing (aka ski-tour)Even better, an activity where the community surrounding it is also vastly different than your typical friends circle. Know a bunch of engineers? Dive into painting or sculpting.
Find a way to twist your brain in a painful new direction.
Another issue is that kids are exposed to more varied experience at school. Jobs often expose us to similar experiences over and over again.
The only problem is how to get paid to have a varied life.
You see 2-5 elections per year.
The day lasts from 0500-2130h (at least here in NY)
New faces throughout the day.
Constant stimulation, followed by periods of inactivity.
Practically impossible to guess when someone will walk in the door.
Strict rules for how you’re supposed to conduct the election, combined with the anxiety of how your co-workers and yourself actually perform.
And then waiting for the results.
The first trip on a new road or a road not travelled for a very long time always feels like it takes the longest. The more you travel that same road often the faster the journey feels. At least to a certain point.
The first time I drive down a road it seems longer than subsequent times. Once parts of the road become familiar the time it takes to get down the road seems shorter.