The Perception of Time
Why time feels slow as a kid but fast as an adult.
We all remember, when we were kids, that weekends, Christmas breaks, summers and car rides lasted forever! Now that we are older, things like vacations or weekends go by in a flash! We don’t know what happened to whole years! It is Middle of June already and it seems yesterday it was Christmas! What gives?
Well, I personally think that a person’s perception of time depends on how long that person has been on this planet. As examples, I am going to use Jordyn (six years old), Drew (thirty years old) and Greg who is sixty years old.
Greg is 60 years old, or 720 months old, or 21,600 days old.
Drew is 30 years old, 360 months old or 10,800 days old.
Jordyn is 6 years old, 72 months old or 2,160 days old.
So for Jordyn, a weekend is two full days. That same Jordyn-time span for Drew is one fifth of Jordyn’s time, or around 10 hours! For Greg, Jordyn’s two days is one tenth of Greg-time, or about five hours!
Now let’s go the other way. For Greg’s weekend of two days, Drew perceives Greg’s two days as four of Drew days, and Jordyn perceives Gregs two days as 20 days!!!!
Let’s break it down differently –
Greg’s 1 hour is 2 hours to Drew and 10 hours to Jordyn.
Jordyn’s 1 hour is 12 minutes to Drew and around 6 minutes to Greg!
No wonder kids are always asking “Are we there yet?”
When I was young, vacations lasted a lifetime. We will be leaving for the beach in a soon. We will be gone seven days. However, those seven days will be perceived much differently between Greg, Drew and Jordyn.
Let’s look at the difference:
For Drew, his seven days will be three and a half days to Greg, but to Jordyn, his seven days will be longer than a month!!!
For Jordyn, her seven days will be less than a day and a half for Drew and less than eight hours for Greg!
For Greg, his seven days will be two weeks for Drew and over two months for Jordyn!
So when Drew and Greg go play a round of golf, it takes 5 hours for Drew and 2 1/2 hours for Greg!
This is also why Jordyn wants to do so much on the weekends. She has a lot more “time” than we do!
This is also why, as we get older, time goes by much quicker! My perception.