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Researchers have demonstrated that time really does seem to pass more quickly as we age. Have you experienced this phenomenon? Let me show you how to change your perception of the passage of time.

Of course, time doesn’t actually move faster as we age, but many of us perceive that it does and this perception can be a little distressing. If you’ve experienced this phenomenon, you’re not alone. Researchers Marc Whittmann and Sandra Lehnhoff surveyed 499 participants, ranging in age from 14 to 94, about the pace at which they felt time was moving (1). Participants over the age of 40 perceived that time passed relatively slowly in their childhood and accelerated as the grew older.

Why does this happen? We judge the passage of time by gauging the number of new memories formed during the time period. When the events we experience are novel, we encode more new memories than we do for routine events. Therefore, when we look back at periods where novel events occured, we perceive that time passed more slowly. In our younger years, we tend to experience a lot of novel events, a lot of firsts. As we age, our lives tend to become more routine, thus fewer new memories are formed, and time seems to pass more quickly (2).

So, if you want to slow down time, you can:

Strive to continually learn new things

Engage in more novel experiences

Practice mindfulness

Obviously, engaging in learning and novel experiences will cause you to form more memories, thus slowing down your perception of time. But, how does mindfulness practice slow time perception?

In much the same way that novelty causes more memories to be encoded, meditation involves improved attention, and this enhances memory formation (3, 4). Meditators also perceive a slowing of time in the present moment, because they focus on sensory experiences in the body (3).

So, there you have it, meditation not only helps you slow down and more fully experience life events in the present moment, it also helps reduce that feeling that life is rushing by too fast. Just one more thing in a long list of benefits.

Why don’t you join me now to practice slowing down

For a 12-minute guided meditation on the present moment, forward the podcast or the video above to 2:20

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