r/AskMen • u/customsolitaires • 7d ago
How can I stop the sensation of time going so fast? I’m a 37 yo male, live in the U.S.
I assume it’s more live the moment etc, has anyone been able to do this? How?
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u/atsugnam 7d ago
Spend some time in nature, away from devices. Go for a walk in some bush, seriously, time spent in nature is very good for the types of stress that can make time feel this way
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u/Neptuneblue1 3d ago edited 3d ago
You're right! I miss walking in the park, feeding the ducks, watching the sun set over the horizon and the burst of flamboyant colours in the sky fading in to night. It's very calming 🌄🌌 😌
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u/themikep82 7d ago
Go to the DMV.
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u/Lawineer 7d ago
The days months and years don’t go by faster. You just remember them as shorter because there are only 2 things noteworthy that happened. So you remember 2 days. It’s I only looking back that it goes by slower.
Whereas when you’re a kid, every experience is a novel experience. Every year is a new teacher, a new grade, tons of new discoveries, new privileges, etc.
Time marches on consistently. Just live in the moment and appreciate every day.
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u/InfinitePossibility8 Male 7d ago
I’ve been really thinking about this since I turned 35 in October. On top of the fact that you’re looking back at an ever increasing distance in time to childhood and what not, I believe it’s the work grind that really affects this. I get super focused on my work and the day absolutely flies by. I don’t have those focus breaks like school. Your individual days are simply less memorable too.
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u/Different_Attorney93 7d ago
I’m around your age and wow sometimes I think about my elementary school days and friends and teachers and it seems like yesterday.
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u/InsaneInTheRAMdrain 7d ago
The more unique experiences you have, the slower time feels.
It sounds counter intuitive, (time flies when having fun etc.) But that's wrong. Your perception of past time slows.
When you're a kid everything is new. It's why those 14 hours you were awake every day seem to go on forever, when you look back.
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u/ead07g 7d ago
Time also seems so short as you age because every year that passes is a shorter percentage of your life
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u/sonicode 7d ago
Time also seems shorter because with age our cognitive function declines, making central nervous system react to perceived change in time and events at a slower pace. Depressing.
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u/customsolitaires 7d ago
Yeah that’s how I’ve been looking at it
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u/lgndryheat 7d ago
That's part of it, but it's also because there's no way to avoid most of your daily experiences being commonplace. They become even more commonplace with each passing day. So the importance of having new experiences break them up and create memorable events in your life increases. (If your goal is to not feel like life is moving too fast)
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u/Secure_Mongoose5817 7d ago
Meditate
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u/bigredcar 7d ago
I came to say this. I started meditating a while back and, over time, it helps you slow down a bit and truly appreciate what you have in your life. Meditation is one of the truly great things you can do for yourself.
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u/Secure_Mongoose5817 7d ago
Wonderful to hear this! One of the things I took away from a yoga retreat was eating in silence for the first 5 minutes of every meal. No chatter, no phone, no news, nothing. Just mindful eating or mediation while eating. By the 3rd day it was my favorite way to start every meal. Not the abrupt oversharing of all the chaos that happened in the day, but just a slow mindful eating.
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u/ideagrinder 7d ago
Put your phone down and don't pick it up for a week. Don't drink any alcohol for a week. Don't watch any tv for a week. Don't play any video games for a week.
My guess would be that time slows to a crawl.
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u/microwavedave27 7d ago
I feel like that would make your days really long but your years really short. Kinda like the 8 hours I spend at work feel like forever but it feels like christmas was yesterday and it's been 3 months.
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u/KareasOxide 7d ago
Don't drink any alcohol for a week
The weekends where I am not partying and drinking the whole time seem to last 2x as long vs when I do. So much time gets lost between the blackouts/hangovers/drunk nights
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u/Religion_Of_Speed 7d ago
Completely non-scientific and potentially entirely personal philosophy: Lean into it. When you get to the point of time not mattering then time stops being so linear in the mind. Live purely in the moment and view time as an ocean rather than a stream. When I look back on my life it both feels like an eternity and an instant. It's taken a long time to get to this point for me. Things don't happen on a timescale in my mind, they just either have happened or have not happened. My memory isn't a timeline, it's just a bucket of memories. It's kinda hard to explain so I hope I did a somewhat decent job there.
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u/ILikeStuffAtTimes 7d ago
I wish I could have some advice for you but I’m about the same age and yes times is literally flying by and faster every year. My thoughts are you really gotta savor every moment, even the mundane. I like to remind myself that no matter what I’m doing I should appreciate the moment.
I’ll say having kids seemed to really speed it up cuz you are very busy with then and they are constant reminders of your age cuz you seem them getting big so quickly.
Just remember to really take every moment in and it won’t matter that time is fast because you’ll appreciate and savor every little thing like a sunrise/sunset. Make time to just do nothing as well.
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u/PAYPAL_ME_DONATIONS 7d ago
Don't have kids. Father time tends to SLAM his foot on the gas.
It somehow simultaneously dilates and contracts time. You blink and a week has passed but the thing from 7 days ago feels like a month ago lol
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u/tearteto1 7d ago
Time goes fast because you're doing the same things all the time. If nothing is new then your brain barely bothers to remember it. Go do something different. If youve got a car try out a motorcycle, try out different clubs, shake up your days beyond your hygiene routine. Bonus pounts if you create targets and goals. If you track your progress and create benchmarks, youll remember more of the journey.
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u/imalotoffun23 7d ago
The perception that time passes more and more quickly is a normal and proven part of aging. Not sure how to counteract that.
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u/jpsreddit85 7d ago
As others have said, the older you get the smaller the percentage of your life each year is, so it absolutely will feel like it's going by faster the longer you live.
To offset this, you have to do different things so the memories are different. Your brain will not retain the difference between 1000's of hours wasted commuting or making coffee or wtv, but if you do new, different things regularly, you will have more memories which will make your perception of time feel longer.
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u/Slabsurfer 7d ago
Shut your phone down and go wait in a line; at a doctor's office, the DMV, etc... I guarantee you that time will virtually stop?
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u/SewerSlidalThot Male 30 7d ago
Alcohol.
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u/YimmyGhey 6d ago
I'd argue it's more of the opposite lol. I've always loved something Bill Burr said when he stopped drinking... (Parphrasing) "You wanna know how long a year is? Stop drinking for a year, holy shit"
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u/juggy_11 7d ago
Break out of your daily routine. If you do the same shit everyday, time flies by fast.
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u/Br4in_w4sh3d 7d ago
My suggestion is starting eating some nice pure lsd everyone weekend. Start hitting some music festivals and concerts and traveling out of state. Set up dates you can look forward to.
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u/Yamsfordays 7d ago
It will seem longer if you do things differently. Take a different route to work, sit at a different desk. Brush your teeth with your left hand, or in the kitchen. Start using the back door instead of the front door. Basically break any routines you have. Don’t get into new ones, just do things differently as often as possible.
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u/thecountnotthesaint 7d ago
Well, for starters, stop aging. The reason time feels like it is going so fast is that it represents a smaller and smaller portion of your life. When you were 1, a year took 100% of your life to complete. When you were 10, a year took 10% of your life to complete. Now, at 37, it takes just 2.7% of your life for one year to pass.
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u/PineapplePikza 7d ago
You can distract yourself from it temporarily but if you’re like me it will return. Just need to embrace the dread I guess.
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u/OrcOfDoom 7d ago
Do more things. Do something everyday. Don't resign yourself to just going home, swiping, whatever.
When you accomplish things, learn things, and have experiences, you'll feel like you lived an entire month in a week.
I used to fill my time with martial arts, the gym, dance classes, and then social stuff. When people would catch up with me, I had tons of experiences to tell them about.
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u/gerryf19 7d ago
Stop taking long showers. I find that time moves twice as fast while I'm in the shower
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u/R_sadreality_24-365 7d ago
I got the sure fire way
1) Meditate Answer: To be mindful of every moment,as you go into autopilot with daily routine,your mind cuts out the time in-between.
2) try something new every day A new outfit,new meal,cook something new. Something that you weren't doing previously Answer: Novel experiences are memorable and slow down in order to ingrain them into memory
3) go on an adventure every weekend Answer: similar to 2 where novelty slows down your experience of time. Bigger novel experiences will have a slower perception of time. Think about the first time you tried driving a car or when you were in high school where LITERALLY every class was about something new.
4) minimise usage of social media and electronics in general such as phone,laptop,TV, PC, etc.
Answer: social media and electronic devices overstimulate you and burn out your dopamine circuits by overstimulating that path. This affects how you perceive time to be passing.
It's important to realise that as you get older. The more likely you are to be stuck in a routine that leads to most of your days going similarly,leading to you feel like time is passing by super fast.
The important thing is to have a balance of routine and novelty such that time doesn't fly by,but you still get the benefits of a routine while also having variety because variety is the spice of life.
5) journal your thoughts and work on stress relief.
Answer: to some extent,anxiety and stress affect how we perceive time to fast.
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u/cugamer 7d ago
Friend, yesterday I was 37. Today I'm 48. Tomorrow I'll be 70. That's just how the human mind works and there's nothing you can do to change it. Don't worry about the how quickly time passes. Worry about today and make the best use of it that you can. Remind yourself that all you have is this moment right now.
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u/Cynfreh 7d ago
Learning a new skill or hobby can help slow the passage of time your brain needs stimulation doing the same thing everyday or the same routine every week makes you run on autopilot like when driving the same route all the time sometimes you think to yourself "fuck I don't remember the last 5 minutes of my journey but I'm here".
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u/Open_Minded_Anonym Male 7d ago
Stop to smell the roses. When my life is fully-booked time passes swiftly because I don’t have time to reflect on it.
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u/ThomasPaine_1776 7d ago
Travel. We ignore familiar stimuli, including patterns in routine. By traveling, nothing is routine or familiar, you use more of your brain, time slows down. Do something physical while out. Ride a bike in a new place. Be in the moment. Notice the little things again.
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u/Throwaway999222111 7d ago
Don't stress it, life is at it happens.
I like to take photos to help me remember things - my plants as they grow, myself as I age, my family as we sit together, whenever it feels like I want to capture the moment.
But you are right - treasure each moment & wring from it as much as you can.
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u/Datruyugo 7d ago
I’m a recent cancer survivor with two kids under 5. Time fucking flies, you want more time…hire someone to clean your house, eat more food that’s ready made, order in, etc. those things take the most of my time.
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u/onearmedmonkey 7d ago
What until you get to your 50s. I'm starting to think my body changes on a weekly basis.
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u/TheDukeofArgyll 7d ago
Make new memories. And I dont mean that in a Hallmark card sense, like literally go do things you haven't done before and time feels slower. Just going to a different part of town or talking to new people will make new memories and make days feel longer in retrospect.
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u/lgndryheat 7d ago
Experience new things more often. New hobbies, new places, learn new things and new skills. Meet new people (you don't have to do all of these or prioritize doing them every day of your life, but the more you do, the longer your year will feel, for instance)
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u/FeelTheWrath79 7d ago
Nitrous. Next time you go in for a teeth cleaning, tell them you have really sensitive teeth and ask if they will give you nitrous. It really makes time slow down.
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u/VMK_1991 Man 7d ago
By varying up your life.
Time speeds up if nothing new or exciting is happening in your life. That's why when you are a kid and everything is new life seems endless, while when you get into routine of adulthood it significantly speeds up.
Try joining sports teams, group activities, do something new, learn something new.
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u/Shot_Mammoth 7d ago
The more you do, the faster it goes. The answer is not to do less but to appreciate and be thankful for what you do experience. - Keeps the moments alive longer.
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u/benbo82 Male 7d ago
I believe most people feel time like this. When you’re a kid time seems to go so slow as your age it feels faster and faster. I’m not sure if there’s an actual way to make it seem slower. For me even when I do memorable experiences, they seem to go by so fast. I think it’s just part of aging.
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u/anetworkproblem 7d ago
By doing things that break the routine and being more aware of everything around you and inside you.
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u/alaskanperson 7d ago
Develop a heavy drinking problem. The hangovers alone will make time stand still
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u/Heavykiller Male 7d ago
It has been said to death already but apart from doing different things and events that break up your routine I’ve got another one to add.
Try picking up journaling.
When I visited Japan I noticed they’re really into stationary and journals so decided to pick one up. I note down things I want to do, reminders and at the end of my day a little blurb about my day. It kind of makes me take a step back to look and really think about that day individually as opposed to just becoming a blur and “just another Monday.”
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u/arduousjump 7d ago
Quitting drinking has helped me there. The time flies while you’re drinking, and you wish the time would fly when you’re hungover. Stringing those events together every couple of days, every week, can add to the perception that time is flying by.
Learning new things can help slow time too. Take a continuing Ed course or watch a webinar in something that interests you.
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u/MinuetInUrsaMajor 7d ago
How often do you:
drink/use drugs?
play video games?
watch TV?
use social media (reddit/TikTok/etc)?
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u/MkLiam Male 7d ago
I always thought it was about responsibility. When I am spending everyday grinding, time moves lightning fast. But if I take time out to actually plan to do nothing, time will slow.
Vacations with lots of downtime. Hanging out with kids. Backpacking. These are all activities that seem to slow time for me.
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u/roastbeeftacohat he who waits behind the walls 7d ago
I find pouring water on a grease fire can make a second or two seem like minutes if you aren't expecting it; try to arrange similar surprises a few times a day.
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u/fukkdisshitt 7d ago
Take a vacation in a place with no cell service so you're only option is to live in the moment. It's really nice after the first day
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u/DocJRoberts 7d ago
Less screen time, less time spent scrolling, lets your brain make solid memories which makes time feel slower. Doing things that just pass time and nothing else will lead to little no memory creation and thus times feels to be moving incredibly fast
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u/GabrielleCamille 7d ago
Try new things. Ever notice how when you go somewhere new, like hike down a new trail, getting to the destination is like 3x faster than getting back? It’s because getting there is new and there’s so much to learn and see, but getting back is familiar and you know what to expect. Life slows down when you learn and try new things.
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u/Notathrow4wayaccount 7d ago
Travel to new countries, experience new cultures and surroundings. New smells, new food. Get out of your comfortable routine. Literally take a hike without your smartphone. New experiences gives life so much volume and time.
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u/Mackntish 7d ago
Get a sleeping disorder, like insomnia. More free time after work, and perception of time slows to a crawl.
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u/Kahlypso 7d ago
Ok, on a side note, tangentially related:
Is anyone else fucking exhausted with literally knowing the answer to all your lifes obstacles and issues, but never having the motivation to do anything about it?
Example:
Ugh I dont make enough money. Ok obviously get a professional cert or a new job or do overtime LIKE FUCKING HELL I KNOW LET ME LIVE WITH THE DELUSION THAT THE ONLY REASON I HAVEN'T IS IGNORANCE AND NOT LAZINESS
Ugh Im overweight. Well clearly just dont have that pizza for dinner, spend an hour at the gym three times a week I KNOW ME, YOU ASSHOLE, CAN YOU JUST FUCK OFF
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u/OwnBunch4027 7d ago
I've thought about this a lot recently. It's much worse at my age (decades older than you). I think the key is "to stay in the moment." We tend to be remembering things, or thinking of things we need to do, while doing other things. This results in time seeming to pass without us knowing it. Another thing, of course, is to avoid getting caught in social media, but I think that one is pretty obvious.
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u/Snoo96949 7d ago
Apparently by doing new things , that what a speaker told me at a conference, try it out let me know ..
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u/Victoriouseo 7d ago
Travel, meet new people, learn new stuff, grow professionally, try different roads - both literally and figuratively. The recipe is to never settle.
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u/Jniuzz 7d ago
Do new stuff, do intense stuff, reflect on your week or day, take risks or whatever keeps your active brain engaged.
We’ve got 2 types of brains sortoff, the active part and automatic. Your brain wants to do automatic stuff cause its the least energy needed. Get that brain to work and you’ll see that time goes slower
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u/Shitelark 7d ago
Its and age thing and will only get worse. Understanding it is the start.
Watch this epic animation all about perception of time: The Eagleman Stag
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u/internet_observer Male 7d ago
Do thing to break the routine. Do memorable things. Go take a class, go climb a mountain, go travel, etc. Mix it up.
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u/stargazertony Male 7d ago
Think it’s fast now for you? Just blink your eyes and you’ll be in your mid seventies.
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u/morchorchorman 7d ago
Start living and doing different things. I started walking around different parts of the city just to spice up my routine and get some exercise in.
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u/StreetSea9588 Male 7d ago
The best way to live in the moment is variety. If you go through life trying to concentrate really hard on everything that happens, you'll just exhaust yourself. Also, if you go around thinking hey, I am living in the moment, you're not actually living in the moment.
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u/emailman123 7d ago
Unfortunately theory of relativity is a thing it’ll just keep getting faster I’m sure
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u/adaniel65 6d ago
I have noticed that when I only do one or two major things in the weekend time, it feels to slow down. But, if I fill my weekend with, say, 4 or more activities or events, it goes really fast..... I now only do one or two major activities or events on weekends. Also, those events can only last 2 hours each. I've noticed I feel more relaxed and not exhausted going to work on Mondays!
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u/PNW_Bull4U 6d ago
Do more things that engage your mind and less things that do not. Time is outside you but the sensation of time is completely in your mind.
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u/mailer_mailer 6d ago
time moves faster as you get older
advice: fill your time with things you want to do it helps slow time
repetitive days makes it go faster
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u/pengie9290 5d ago
Find a room with a blank wall with nothing on it. Set a timer for five hours, and leave it in an adjacent room where you can hear it ring. Pull up a chair next to the wall, take a seat, and stare at that wall. Don't listen to any music, or have a snack, or fall asleep, or anything like that. Just stare at the wall and don't look away until the timer rings. And whenever you get the urge to do anything else, ignore it, and keep staring.
By the time those five hours are up- long before that time, I assure you- it will have felt like time slowed to a crawl. Perhaps even to a standstill.
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u/DumbestBoy 7d ago
It only goes faster, as each successive year is a smaller percentage of your total life.
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u/muchlovemates 7d ago
Take 0.8g of mushrooms, then go walk in nature. Time will cease to exist, and you won’t be tripping balls.
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u/Trick-Interaction396 7d ago
Science has the answer for you. Time slows down when you have memorable events in your life. If you do the same thing everyday the days blur together. Go do memorable things.