Time Flies When You’re NOT Having Fun

19th December 2016
Tom Whipple Science Editor

Time flies when you’re not having fun. And it goes really slowly when you’re trying out new things, going on holiday to different places and building the kind of memories that stay with you for life.

This, say scientists, could be the secret to a genuinely long life, as marked by the only measure that matters: how long it feels.

Everyone will have experienced the phenomenon whereby time seems to speed up as you get older, with Christmas appearing to come round sooner every year. Psychologists think that the reason could be that we get into routines — and without novelty in our lives, our brain stops building memories.

“In childhood, adolescence and even young adulthood everything has a novelty aspect, everything is new, new, new,” Marc Wittmann, a psychology researcher and author of the book Felt Time: The Psychology of How We Perceive Time, said. “But as we get older we do the same things over and over again.“

This means that by the time many people are halfway through their lives in terms of years lived, they can be at death’s door in terms of how they perceive time “Memory research and the psychology of time

perception tells us that for long durations — the last year, the last ten years — memory formation is essential for defining how long we perceive duration,” Dr Wittmann said.

“The more things we experience for the first time, the more exciting our lives are because of this novelty aspect. We will create more memories, and consequently time will feel subjectively longer.”

Writing on the website The Question, Dr Wittmann suggested that people should continually try new things — changing their weekend routine and never holidaying in the same place. Just as healthy eating and exercise are important to prolong life in the absolute sense, novelty is important in the psychological sense.

“Exciting experiences with friends in a new city, for example, can prolong a weekend,” he writes. ” … the last time I went away for a weekend somewhere new, I remember sitting in a taxi on my way back home looking at some road-works and wondering why they were still there.

“But of course they were still there. I had only been away for two nights. But subjectively these two days and nights were so long. I had the feeling of stretched time.”