Why Life Feels Like It's Speeding Up

It is very easy for life to become a repetitive loop where our existence seems to become a series of indistinguishable days with moments of rare novelty scattered throughout.

This happens because human beings are inherently creatures of habit - easily falling into patterns that are comfortable, routine, and predictable. Get up, go to work, relax… repeat - day after day - the pattern only occasionally interrupted due to a novel experience.

A consequence of this is that our perception of time can seem like life is going by very quickly. This sensation is in part because the brain - as a “highly efficient energy conserving prediction machine” - essentially goes into low-effort energy-sipping “stand by mode” predicting that our repetitive daily routines will not require significant effort to navigate as it has “seen it all before… many times”

This in part explains why we remember that our perception of time seems to go by slower when we are children. During these early years of our lives - life seems and is a series of daily new and novel experiences as we have not yet fallen into the routine daily patterns that characterize adulthood.

This can lead to a feeling of lack of fulfillment and anxiety that “life is just passing by so quickly”. I have heard from countless people and have experienced myself.

The antidote is to slow down the perception of time by intentionally seeking out and injecting regular novelty into our lives… and by forcing ourselves to say “yes” to new experiences when they present themselves - even when our innate preference for routine and predictability is pushing us to say “no thanks”.

Some ideas include reading subjects you would not normally read, trying different types of food, taking different paths to work even if it takes you longer, volunteering for stretch assignments and cross-departmental projects at work.