---
title: Why Does Time Feel Like It's Speeding Up as I Get Older?
description: Why does time feel like it's speeding up as you get older? It's not the clock—it's memory. The real science, and how to make your life feel longer again.
image: https://www.optyoumize.com/hubfs/why%20does%20time%20feel%20like%20its%20speeding%20up.jpg
---

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# Why Does Time Feel Like It's Speeding Up as I Get Older?

Why does time feel like it's speeding up as you get older? It's not the clock—it's memory. The real science, and how to make your life feel longer again.

![why does time feel like it's speeding up](https://www.optyoumize.com/hubfs/why%20does%20time%20feel%20like%20its%20speeding%20up.jpg)

## Why Does Time Feel Like It's Speeding Up as I Get Older? 

`~20 min | September 25, 2026`

Time feels like it's speeding up as you get older not because the clock is moving faster, but because your memory is recording less of your life. Childhood is packed with firsts that the brain stores in vivid detail; adulthood settles into routine that the brain compresses into near-identical days, so whole years collapse when you look back — and that emptiness feels like speed. In this solo episode, Brett Ingram explains why the popular "fraction of your life" theory falls short, why optimizing your days actually makes the problem worse, and how to make your weeks "thick" enough to remember.

---

## What You'll Learn in This Episode

- Why time feels normal, even slow, while you're in it — and only disappears in the rear-view mirror
- The proportional theory Paul Janet proposed in 1877, and why it's elegant but probably not the real cause
- William James's 1890 explanation of how routine makes "the years grow hollow and collapse"
- Claudia Hammond's Holiday Paradox, and why your mid-teens to mid-twenties take up so much room in memory
- Why the feeling that time is racing is closely tied to feeling rushed — and why productivity is the wrong cure
- The difference between thin time and thick time, and the three levers that thicken it: novelty, attention, and marking
- Where the idea stops: why routine is load-bearing, novelty-chasing is its own trap, and hard seasons are allowed to blur
- The Thick Week — a two-part weekly practice that takes about sixty seconds of reflection

---

## Episode Timestamps

- `[00:00]` The third Tuesday you can't remember
- `[01:05]` Introduction
- `[01:45]` The rear-view blur: two different clocks
- `[03:25]` The proportional theory and why it's probably wrong
- `[05:25]` William James: "the years grow hollow and collapse"
- `[07:25]` The Holiday Paradox
- `[08:10]` Brett's family vacations vs. the forgotten work stretches
- `[08:50]` The reminiscence bump: memories per year
- `[10:00]` Why "just do more" is the trap
- `[11:00]` The research: feeling rushed makes time feel faster
- `[12:05]` Two versions of a Saturday
- `[13:05]` Stop saving time, start making it thick
- `[13:30]` Three levers: novelty, attention, marking
- `[15:20]` The honest caveats
- `[17:00]` The Thick Week practice
- `[18:50]` Key takeaways and closing

---

## Episode Summary

Try to remember what you did on the third Tuesday of last month. For most people, it isn't misplaced — it's gone, as if it was never written down at all. That small blank sits underneath one of the most common sentences of adult life: *I can't believe how fast time is going.* And underneath that sentence is a quieter fear. If it's already moving this fast, and it only speeds up from here, will you just blink and be seventy?

Brett Ingram opens by getting precise about the feeling. Time doesn't actually feel fast while you're living it. A boring Wednesday afternoon still crawls; a long meeting is still eternal. What's warped is the retrospect. You turn around to find the year, the decade, and there's almost nothing there. The days are fine. It's the years that have gone hollow. There are two clocks at work — the one you live in and the one you remember with — and the gap between them is the whole mystery.

The explanation most people have heard is the proportional theory, proposed by the French philosopher Paul Janet in 1877. At five, a year is a fifth of your life; at fifty, it's a fiftieth, so each year feels proportionally smaller. It's elegant and fits on a napkin, but the evidence doesn't support it well as *the* cause. You aren't unconsciously comparing this year against a running total of every year you've lived. Brett also points out a quieter problem with it: it's fatalistic. If time shrinks as a fixed fraction, there's nothing to do but ride it down.

The better explanation came from William James in 1890. Childhood is dense with firsts — the ocean, the bike, the first day of school — and novelty gets recorded in high definition. Then, James wrote, "as each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly note at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse." The brain doesn't record time like a camera running at a steady speed; it records events, and especially new ones. When the commute, the desk, and the route through the grocery store are the same every day, the brain says "seen it" and files a thousand similar days as roughly one.

The science writer Claudia Hammond calls the everyday version of this the Holiday Paradox. A great trip flies by while you're on it, yet afterward that single week feels enormous — you can walk through it in detail — while the six ordinary weeks that followed have already vanished. Novel time feels fast in the moment and long in memory; routine time feels fine in the moment and evaporates. Brett makes it personal: he can still narrate the family vacations he took with his kids, full of firsts for all of them, while entire years of ordinary work life have left no specific events behind. Same clock time, wildly different amounts of life recorded. The same logic explains the reminiscence bump, the way roughly the mid-teens to mid-twenties stay over-represented in memory for life: first love, first apartment, first job. Those years weren't slower. You recorded more of them. The reframe: you're not running out of time. You're running low on memories per year.

This is where the optYOUmize angle turns sharply against the usual advice. The productivity instinct says that if full days beat empty ones, you should fill every day. But optimizing a day into a frictionless machine creates efficiency, not novelty — and efficiency is repetition. It lays down more of the same blur, faster. Research backs up the cost: in a 2005 study of around 500 people aged 14 to 94, Marc Wittmann and Sandra Lehnhoff found that the feeling of time racing was closely tied to feeling time pressure. The busier you make your life in a panic to make the most of it, the faster it seems to slip away. Brett illustrates it with two Saturdays: one maximized with twelve errands and three life-admin tasks, already a gray smear by Sunday; the other built around one new or fully present thing — a different trail, a long unhurried lunch with a friend, building something with your kid. Fewer boxes checked, but that's the Saturday you'll still have in ten years. The metric that matters isn't how much you got done. It's how much you'll be able to remember.

So the goal shifts: stop trying to save time and start trying to make it thick. Brett names three levers. **Novelty** — small deliberate firsts, like a new route, a new dish, or a place in your own town you've never been. **Attention** — a moment you're fully present for gets recorded, while a moment half-watched over email never makes it to memory at all; [you don't need better time management, you need a better relationship with time](https://optyoumize.com/time-rhythm-rest). And **marking** — landmarks like a Friday check-in or one line in a notebook, because landmarks are how memory measures distance.

He's careful about the limits. Routine is load-bearing and worth keeping; the aim is a life where routine isn't *all* there is. Chasing novelty as a scoreboard is just the productivity trap in a vacation shirt. And some seasons — a newborn, an illness, grief — are supposed to blur, and that's mercy, not failure.

The practice is the Thick Week. At the start of the week, plant one deliberate first. At the end, take sixty seconds to write down what you'll actually keep — not what you accomplished. The episode closes on a single idea: you don't need more time. You need more of your life to register.

---

## Resources Mentioned

- **The Principles of Psychology, Ch. XV "The Perception of Time"** — William James, 1890. Source of the "years grow hollow and collapse" passage and Janet's proportional theory — [https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/Principles/prin15.htm](https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/Principles/prin15.htm)
- **Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception** — Claudia Hammond, 2012. Origin of the "Holiday Paradox" framing — [https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/16248212-time-warped](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/16248212-time-warped)
- **"Age Effects in Perception of Time"** — Marc Wittmann & Sandra Lehnhoff, *Psychological Reports*, 2005. Lifespan survey linking time pressure to the sense that time passes quickly — [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16512313/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16512313/)
- **Paul Janet's proportional theory (1877)** — The "each year is a smaller fraction of your life" idea, discussed via James and modern reviews — [https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/mind-read/why\_does\_time\_fly\_by/](https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/mind-read/why_does_time_fly_by/)
- **About Time (2013 film)** — Referenced for the father's lesson about living a day a second time just to notice the ordinary good in it
- **The reminiscence bump** — The well-established tendency for roughly ages 15–25 to be over-represented in autobiographical memory
- **Time, Rhythm & Rest pillar** — optyoumize.com/time-rhythm-rest

---

## Frequently Asked Questions

**Why does time feel like it's speeding up as I get older?** Time isn't actually accelerating — your memory is thinning out. In childhood, constant firsts create dense, vivid memories, so those years feel long. In adulthood, routine days blur together and the brain barely records them, so whole years seem to collapse when you look back. That blur is what feels like speed.

**Is time actually speeding up, or is it just my memory?** It's memory. Notice that time doesn't feel fast in the moment — a dull afternoon still drags. The acceleration shows up only in retrospect, when you look back and find little recorded. The clock hasn't changed; the amount of life your brain wrote down has.

**Is the theory that each year is a smaller fraction of your life true?** It's intuitive but weakly supported. The French philosopher Paul Janet proposed it in 1877: a year is a fifth of a five-year-old's life but a fiftieth of a fifty-year-old's. Researchers haven't found strong evidence it's the main driver, and people don't seem to measure time against a running total of their lives. Memory-based explanations built on novelty and routine are better supported.

**Why does a vacation feel long in memory but short while it's happening?** Claudia Hammond calls this the Holiday Paradox. Novel, immersive experiences keep you busy, so the time flies — but they also create many distinct memories, so the trip feels long in retrospect. Routine weeks work the opposite way: fine in the moment, then gone.

**Does being busy make time feel like it goes faster?** It appears to. A 2005 survey of around 500 people aged 14 to 94 by Marc Wittmann and Sandra Lehnhoff found that the sense of time passing quickly was closely tied to feeling time pressure. Packing more into your days to make the most of them can make life feel like it's slipping away faster.

**How can I make time feel like it's slowing down?** Make more of your life register. Add small deliberate firsts, give ordinary moments your full attention, and mark your weeks with landmarks like a short weekly reflection. One simple version is the Thick Week: plant one new thing at the start of the week, then spend sixty seconds at the end writing down what you'll actually remember.

**Should I get rid of my routines to make time feel longer?** No. Routine is load-bearing — it provides safety and stability, and blowing it up would backfire. The aim is a life where routine isn't the only thing happening. Frantically chasing new experiences is its own trap, and some hard seasons of life are supposed to blur together.

---

## Keep Exploring

If this episode resonated, these are worth your time:

- **What Is Time Confetti — and Why Do You Feel So Busy?** — How fragmented hours add to the feeling that time is disappearing → optyoumize.com/blog/what-is-time-confetti-and-why-do-you-feel-so-busy
- **What Is the End of History Illusion?** — Why we assume we're done changing, and what that does to how we see the years ahead → optyoumize.com/blog/what-is-the-end-of-history-illusion-and-why-do-you-think-youre-done-changing
- **What Is Flow State — and How Do You Actually Get Into It?** — Full attention from another angle: the absorbed kind of time that stays with you → optyoumize.com/blog/what-is-flow-state-and-how-do-you-actually-get-into-it
- **Time, Rhythm & Rest** — The pillar this episode belongs to → optyoumize.com/time-rhythm-rest

---

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Asking for help is hard for capable people not because they're stubborn or bad at vulnerability, but because they've mispriced it. There are three costs you assume the ask will carry — that you'll look weak, that you'll be turned down, and that you'll owe a debt — and the research on all three says the numbers in your head are wrong. In this solo episode, Brett Ingram walks through what each price actually costs, why the person who only ever gives is holding half a relationship hostage, and a small experiment that lets you check the price yourself without having to perform vulnerability.

---

## What You'll Learn in This Episode

- Why the people everyone else leans on have the least practice being on the receiving end — and what that quietly costs them
- The "beautiful mess effect": you see your own vulnerability in high-definition close-up and everyone else's from a warmer distance
- Why people underestimate others' willingness to help by roughly half — and why that figure comes from studies on total strangers
- The reason saying no is usually harder than saying yes, and why you never get to see that side of the ledger
- Why "I don't want to be a burden" isn't generosity — it's a decision you made on someone else's behalf
- Help as a current rather than a loan, and what you take from people when you only ever let them receive
- Where the fear is legitimate: the difference between real discernment and a wall wearing the costume of discernment
- The One Ask — a small, falsifiable weekly experiment that tests the three prices with real data

---

## Episode Timestamps

- `[00:00]` The friend you'd drop everything for
- `[01:10]` Introduction
- `[01:35]` Why the capable one has no practice being helped
- `[03:20]` The frame: three prices you think asking will cost
- `[03:50]` The Competence Price and the beautiful mess effect
- `[05:55]` The Rejection Price: people say yes about twice as often as you predict
- `[07:05]` Asking as the overlooked skill
- `[09:15]` The Debt Price: help is a current, not a loan
- `[11:20]` Benjamin Franklin's borrowed book
- `[12:40]` When not asking really is wisdom
- `[14:30]` The One Ask experiment
- `[17:05]` Brett on his own difficulty asking
- `[18:15]` Key takeaways and closing

---

## Episode Summary

Start with a thought experiment. A friend calls and says, "I'm stuck, can you come?" You're already reaching for your keys. You don't think they're weak. You don't resent the interruption. Some quiet part of you feels good about being the person they called.

Now reverse it. When you're the one buried, overwhelmed, in over your head — how often do you make that call?

For a lot of people, and especially for the competent ones, helping is easy and being helped is almost unbearable. Brett Ingram opens this episode by naming who it's really for: the reliable one. The person who gives good advice, shows up in a crisis, and is everyone else's first call. Precisely because of all that, they have almost no practice on the receiving end. An entire identity gets built around being the one who helps, and the muscle for being helped goes soft from never being used.

His central claim is that this isn't a willpower problem. It's a pricing problem. You're not refusing to ask — you're declining to pay three specific prices you assume the ask will cost. And all three are marked up.

**The Competence Price** is the fear that asking makes you look weak, that the request is a small confession reading *I couldn't handle it*. The research pushes back hard. In 2018, Anna Bruk and colleagues published seven studies in the *Journal of Personality and Social Psychology* and gave the finding a name that stuck: the beautiful mess effect. People tend to evaluate their own displays of vulnerability harshly — messy, exposing — while reading the identical act in someone else as honest, brave, human. Same act, two entirely different cameras. The harsh judgment you're bracing for is one you're making about yourself and almost nobody else is making about you. As Brett puts it: *you're the only person in the transaction who thinks the ask makes you smaller.*

**The Rejection Price** has an actual number attached. Francis Flynn at Stanford and Vanessa Bohns ran a now-classic set of studies — one published in 2008 — asking participants to predict how many strangers they'd have to approach before enough said yes to borrowing a phone, filling out a questionnaire, or walking a couple of blocks to the campus gym. Replicated many times since, the finding is that people underestimate others' willingness to help by roughly half. We predict needing to ask about twice as many people as we actually do. And these were strangers — not the people who love us. The reason for the gap is instructive: when you're asking, you feel every ounce of the awkwardness and can vividly imagine the no. What you can't feel is the pressure on the other side, where turning down a sincere, direct request from someone you care about is genuinely uncomfortable. Saying no is often harder than saying yes. You just never see that side of the ledger. Which reframes the burden worry entirely — a burden is dumped on someone with no way out; a request is offered *with* a way out. When you never ask, you aren't sparing anyone. You're quietly deciding on their behalf that they wouldn't want to show up for you.

**The Debt Price** is the one that runs deepest among givers: *if I ask, now I owe you.* Here Brett challenges the whole model. Help as a transaction is exactly the wrong frame for the relationships that matter. In a real relationship, help isn't a loan — it's a current, and it's supposed to run both directions. When you refuse to ever ask, you think you're staying clean and independent, but look at what you're doing to the people who love you: you only ever let them receive from you, and never let them give. Being needed, being trusted with something that matters, is one of the deepest ways people feel close. The person who can only give and never receive isn't holding the relationship up — they're holding half of it hostage, keeping everyone close enough to help and never close enough to be leaned on. Because [connection is built on mutual need, not one-way service](https://optyoumize.com/relationships-connection), the very thing you're doing to protect your relationships is quietly starving them. A story from Franklin's autobiography carries the point: unable to win over a rival in the Pennsylvania legislature in the 1730s, Franklin didn't do the man a favor — he asked to borrow a rare book from his library. The rival, flattered to be asked, lent it, and was friendly for life. Asking gave the other man a way in.

Then the fair caveat, which Brett refuses to skip. Sometimes the answer really is no and it stings. Some people genuinely do keep score, and declining to owe them is wisdom rather than fear. Some workplaces and family dynamics make showing need unsafe. The skill isn't just asking — it's asking *well*: the right person, something specific, in a way that gives them a real out. What he's arguing against is the blanket rule that decided everyone is unsafe and every ask is weakness. "That rule isn't protecting you. It's just isolating you with extra steps." The difference between *I read this situation and chose not to ask* and *I never ask anyone for anything* is the difference between judgment and a wall wearing the costume of judgment.

The practice is deliberately small, and explicitly not an instruction to go be brave — because "be more vulnerable" is vague, exhausting, and turns asking into one more performance. It's called **the One Ask**. Sometime this week, pick one thing you'd normally grind through alone: a ride, a second set of eyes on an email, an hour of childcare, a question you'd otherwise spend an hour googling. Before you ask, write down your prediction — how weird will it be, how likely is a no, how much will you owe afterward. Then ask one specific person, directly. Afterward, compare what happened to what you predicted. You're not becoming a different person; you're running one clean test and letting reality quote you the number instead of your imagination. For most people the gap between prediction and reality *is* the entire education. And watch the other person, too — whether they seemed put upon or pleased to be asked. That data matters as much as your own comfort.

What the experiment is really doing is bigger than getting a ride. Every time you ask and the ceiling doesn't fall in, you chip at the story underneath: that you're only lovable when you're useful, only safe when you're self-sufficient, only acceptable when you need nothing from anyone. That story has cost some of the most capable, generous people a quiet, well-hidden loneliness. It comes down one small ask at a time.

The episode closes where it started, with that friend. You are that person for someone — probably for several someones. There are people who would feel honored, trusted, and glad if you let them show up for you the way you show up for them. Every time you decide not to ask, you think you're sparing them. You might just be robbing them of the chance to be, for you, what you love being for everyone else. The strongest thing in a relationship isn't being the one who never needs anything. It's being someone who can both give help and receive it.

---

## Resources Mentioned

- **"Beautiful Mess Effect: Self–Other Differences in Evaluation of Showing Vulnerability"** — Anna Bruk, Sabine G. Scholl & Herbert Bless (University of Mannheim), *Journal of Personality and Social Psychology*, 2018. Seven studies on why we judge our own vulnerability more harshly than others do — [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326743464\_Beautiful\_mess\_effect\_Self-other\_differences\_in\_evaluation\_of\_showing\_vulnerability](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326743464_Beautiful_mess_effect_Self-other_differences_in_evaluation_of_showing_vulnerability)
- **"If You Need Help, Just Ask: Underestimating Compliance With Direct Requests for Help"** — Francis J. Flynn (Stanford GSB) & Vanessa K. B. Lake, now Vanessa Bohns (Cornell), *Journal of Personality and Social Psychology*, 2008. The source of the "roughly half" underestimation finding — [https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/francis-flynn-if-you-want-something-ask-it](https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/francis-flynn-if-you-want-something-ask-it)
- **The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin** — the primary source for the borrowed-book story, now popularly called the "Ben Franklin effect" — [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben\_Franklin\_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Franklin_effect)
- **Relationships & Connection pillar** — optyoumize.com/relationships-connection

---

## Frequently Asked Questions

**Why is it so hard to ask for help when I'd help anyone else?** Usually because you've built an identity around being the capable one, which means you have almost no practice being on the receiving end. Beneath that sits a miscalculation: you assume asking will cost you competence, invite rejection, and leave you in debt. Research suggests all three are substantially overestimated. The clearest sign it's a miscalculation rather than a real cost is the double standard — you would never judge a friend for asking you the same thing.

**Does asking for help make you look weak?** Mostly to yourself. A 2018 set of seven studies by Anna Bruk and colleagues, published in the *Journal of Personality and Social Psychology*, found what they called the "beautiful mess effect": people tend to evaluate their own displays of vulnerability more negatively than they evaluate identical vulnerability in others. Think of the last time someone you respect admitted they were in over their head and asked for your help. You most likely felt trusted and closer to them — not less impressed. That's how your ask reads to other people too.

**Why do I feel like a burden when I ask for help?** Because you're comparing the wrong two things. A burden is something dumped on someone with no way out. A request is offered *with* a way out — they can say no. Research by Francis Flynn and Vanessa Bohns found people underestimate others' willingness to help by roughly half, even when asking complete strangers. When you never ask, you're not sparing people a burden; you're quietly deciding on their behalf that they wouldn't want to show up for you.

**Are people actually willing to help if I ask?** More willing than you predict, by a substantial margin. In studies where participants guessed how many strangers they'd have to approach to get a set number of yeses — for things like borrowing a phone or being walked to the campus gym — people expected to need about twice as many asks as they actually did. That finding has been replicated many times. Part of the reason is that we feel our own awkwardness intensely while having no access to the discomfort on the other side, where turning down a sincere, direct request is genuinely hard.

**How do I get better at asking for help?** Start small and treat it as data collection rather than bravery. Pick one low-stakes thing this week you'd normally handle alone, write down your honest prediction of how the ask will go, then ask one specific person directly. Afterward, compare what actually happened to what you predicted. Framing it as an experiment gets past the wall in a way that "be more vulnerable" never does, and the gap between prediction and reality tends to be the whole lesson.

**Is it ever right not to ask for help?** Yes, and the episode is explicit about it. Some people genuinely keep score and will hold a favor over your head; declining to owe them is discernment, not fear. Some workplaces and family situations make showing need genuinely unsafe. The real skill isn't asking indiscriminately — it's asking well: the right person, for something specific, in a way that leaves them a real out. What's worth questioning is the blanket rule that everyone is unsafe and every ask is weakness.

**What am I taking from people when I never let them help me?** The chance to give. Being needed and being trusted with something that matters is one of the main ways people feel close to each other. If you only ever let the people who love you receive from you, you're keeping them at arm's length — close enough to be helped, never close enough to be leaned on. Help in a real relationship works like a current, not a loan, and the flowing in both directions is the point.

---

## Keep Exploring

If this episode resonated, these are worth your time:

- [**What Is Social Fitness — and Why Does It Matter?**](https://optyoumize.com/blog/what-is-social-fitness-and-why-does-it-matter) — If the "asking is a deposit, not a withdrawal" idea landed, this is the maintenance work underneath it 
- [**Why Do You Feel Lonely in a Relationship?**](https://optyoumize.com/blog/why-do-you-feel-lonely-in-a-relationship) — The loneliness of being close enough to help but never close enough to be leaned on, examined up close 
- [**How Many Close Friends Do You Actually Need?**](https://optyoumize.com/blog/how-many-close-friends-do-you-actually-need) — On who you'd actually make the One Ask to, and why the number is smaller than you think 
- [**Relationships & Connection**](https://optyoumize.com/relationships-connection) — The pillar this episode belongs to: how closeness actually gets built 

---

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My name is Brett Ingram — coach, speaker, podcast host, and award-winning entrepreneur. After 20 years building businesses I came to believe the most important self-improvement question isn't "how do I do more?" but rather "what does a genuinely good life actually look like for me?" We'll explore that question across the seven pillars of a well-lived life: mind, body, purpose, relationships, money, time, and growth.

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