Why Time Feels Like It’s Speeding Up: A Theory Based on Old Computers
Have you ever noticed how time seems to fly by faster and faster as you get older? One minute, it’s January, and the next, you’re wondering where the whole year went. It’s a common experience, but why does it happen?
I recently had an insight while driving home from Pretoria, and it all ties back to an old computer game I used to play.
The Helicopter Game and CPU Cycles
Back in the day, I had a 386 computer and played a simple game featuring a helicopter that had to dodge clouds and birds. It was nothing fancy, just a little game running on the limited processing power of the time. Then, I upgraded to a 486, and suddenly, the game became unplayable. The helicopter zipped across the screen at lightning speed, making it impossible to react in time. The reason? The game was tied to CPU cycles instead of an actual frame rate, and with the faster processor, everything ran exponentially quicker. I had to use a throttle program to artificially slow down the CPU just to make the game playable again.
And that got me thinking—what if the same thing is happening in our brains?
The Brain’s Processing Power and Time Perception
Our brains, like computers, are constantly processing information. As children, we take in everything around us at a relatively slow pace, absorbing and learning in a way that makes time feel stretched out. But as we grow older, we encounter more information every day, and our brains adapt. We learn to process data more efficiently and filter out unnecessary details, allowing us to keep up with the modern world’s relentless information flow.
But there’s a side effect: as our “mental CPU” speeds up, so does our perception of time.
We measure time subjectively based on how much we process. When we were younger, new experiences, novel situations, and slower cognitive processing made time feel longer. Now, our faster, optimized brains burn through days, weeks, and years at what feels like an accelerated rate—just like my helicopter game on a 486 processor.
Can We Slow It Down?
If this theory holds true, then maybe the key to slowing down time isn’t in trying to cram in more experiences but in deliberately throttling our brain’s processing speed. Practices like mindfulness, reducing multitasking, and engaging in deeply immersive activities might act as the “throttle program” we need. When we fully focus on a single moment, rather than letting our minds race ahead to the next task, we might just trick our perception into making time feel slower again.
So, the next time you find yourself wondering where the months have gone, consider this: maybe it’s not that time is moving faster—maybe it’s just that your brain has leveled up.
What do you think? Have you noticed time speeding up for you? Let’s discuss!