Why do some days feel like years and some years feel like days?
Chris Williamson | @chriswillx

As we get older, life feels like it's moving faster and faster. 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 any more. 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. You have the same number of hours in the day as you ever have, and they're always moving at the same pace.

There is a difference between Present Time and Remembered Time. You experience time differently 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".

The more memories you have from a past experience, the more that experience gets expanded in time. Think back to a holiday you went on 5 years ago. You'll probably still be able to recall a lot of details, making it seem like it lasted for longer and time moved more slowly for that week. 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. 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.

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, speak to the same people and even think the same thoughts. 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.

Monotony is the enemy of a well-remembered life. So, in order to slow time down, you MUST give your brain a reason to pay attention. 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, 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'll have tons of new memories if you go and do something new.

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 grey monotonous hallway peppered with the ghosts of TikTok dances and Netflix series. If you make your life memorable, you will remember it.