Why time feels faster as we grow up

I think about childhood a lot.

Not just because I love its colours, playfulness and emotional honesty, but because childhood seemed to happen under a completely different kind of sky. Time felt bigger then. Slower. Fuller.

A summer felt endless. The week before your birthday could feel like a lifetime. Even the smallest things seemed to carry so much: a new toy, a strange texture, a cartoon, a sticker, a sweet, a puddle, a walk somewhere unfamiliar.

Now, as adults, whole months disappear in a few blinks.

We say it all the time: How is it already April? How is this year going so fast? Where did the time go?

And I think one of the strangest parts of growing up is not just that time passes, but that it seems to pass faster and faster.

Maybe the real question is not whether time speeds up.

Maybe the question is why life stops feeling as full as it once did.

Time on a clock is not the same as time we feel

A year is still a year, of course. Twelve months. Fifty-two weeks. That part does not change.

But our experience of time is much less tidy than that. Psychology research has long shown that our sense of time is shaped by attention, memory and the richness of what we experience, not just by the clock itself. In other words, time as we live it and time as we measure it are not quite the same thing.

Some five-minute moments drag forever. Some whole years vanish into fog.

That is why I think the real issue is not only how much time we have, but how much of it we actually register. How much of it we notice. How much of it leaves a trace.

Because maybe the goal is not simply to live longer.

Maybe it is to make life feel fuller.

Childhood felt longer because everything was new

As children, we were in constant discovery mode.

Everything was a first. First time noticing light through a curtain. First time becoming obsessed with a tiny object for no reason. First time realising a cardboard box could become a castle, a shop, a spaceship or an entire universe. Childhood was full of novelty, and novelty changes how life feels.

Research on time perception suggests that attention and memory help shape how long an experience seems in hindsight. When life is packed with newness, variation and memorable detail, it tends to feel denser and more expansive when we look back on it.

That makes so much sense to me.

Children are not half-looking at life. They stare. They ask. They touch. They repeat things not because they are bored, but because they are fascinated. They know how to be completely occupied by something small.

That is part of why childhood can feel so huge in memory.

It was packed with first times.

Adulthood speeds up when everything starts repeating

Then we grow up, and so much becomes familiar.

We wake up, answer emails, load the dishwasher, take the train, have the same conversations, worry about the same things, open the same apps, do the same loop again tomorrow.

And somewhere in all that repetition, life begins to blur.

Studies on subjective time and ageing consistently show that many people feel the years speeding up as they get older. Researchers have explored different reasons for this, but one of the most compelling is exactly this loss of novelty and distinctiveness. When fewer moments stand out, time can feel flatter and more compressed in retrospect.

That, to me, is the real danger of autopilot.

Not just boredom. Not just tiredness.

But the way it seems to thin out life.

If too many days resemble each other, they stop leaving much behind.

And when that happens, time starts rushing past like scenery seen from the wrong train window.

The answer is not necessarily a more exciting life

I actually find that comforting, because it means the answer is not necessarily to turn your life into a highlight reel.

You do not need to suddenly climb mountains, move countries or become a person who journals at sunrise on a cliff.

The point is not constant spectacle.

It is attention.

By adulthood, I think many of us assume we have already seen everything. Our street. Our routines. Our partner’s face. The local park. The evening light through our own windows. We think we know them already.

But often we have only seen them. We have not really noticed them.

And that is a huge difference.

A fuller life is often not a busier life.

It is a more noticed one.

Wonder makes time feel richer

One of the things children are naturally brilliant at is wonder.

They let small things stop them. They let beauty interrupt them. They let fascination expand a moment.

There is research suggesting that awe and wonder can shift our perception of time and make us feel as though we have more time available, or at least a fuller sense of it. The findings are nuanced, but the broader idea is compelling: when we are pulled out of routine and into a bigger, more vivid experience, our sense of time changes.

That matters because adulthood can become so functional.

Useful. Efficient. Capable.

But not always vivid.

Wonder is one of the things that wakes us back up.

This is where art matters so much

I loved this idea in the text I was reading too: artists matter because they notice.

Art has a way of returning weight to what had become background. It can make us look again at what we thought we already knew. A colour, an object, a memory, a shape, a feeling, something playful, something forgotten. Suddenly it is alive again.

That is part of why aesthetic experiences can feel so powerful. They shift attention. They deepen presence. They make a moment feel more inhabited.

And I think that is very close to what childhood does naturally.

Childhood is full of noticing.

Art can bring some of that back.

Maybe this is what we are really missing

I do not think people are drawn to childhood only because it is cute or comforting.

I think we are drawn to it because childhood holds a way of being that many of us miss. A way of moving through life with curiosity, sensitivity, openness and full emotional presence.

Children know how to be absorbed.

They know how to let a moment expand.

They know how to be delighted without apologising for it.

That is why childhood often feels so long in hindsight. Not because it contained more years, but because it contained more aliveness.

And maybe that is what we are really grieving when we say life is going too fast.

Not just age itself.

But the loss of that intensity.

So.. How do we make life feel fuller again?

Maybe by doing less on autopilot.

Maybe by interrupting repetition.

Maybe by refusing to let every day collapse into function.

That can mean doing new things, yes. But it can also mean doing familiar things differently. Taking another route. Rearranging a room. Looking properly at your neighbourhood. Spending longer with beauty. Letting yourself become curious again. Letting colour, humour, softness and play take up space in your life.

Not because it is childish.

But because it is alive.

I think this is one reason I am so drawn to childhood in my work.

Not simply because it is nostalgic, but because it represents a richer way of experiencing life. A way of seeing that is more open, more playful, more emotionally awake. The kind of seeing that makes time feel fuller instead of faster.

To me, keeping a piece of childhood on the wall can be more than decoration. It can be a reminder to stay curious. To stay soft. To notice more. To resist autopilot. To keep your inner child not just comforted, but alert and alive.

Because maybe the real secret is not adding more years to life.

Maybe it is bringing more life into the years we already have.

Sources:

• The inner experience of time

• Time Perspective and Emotion Regulation as Predictors of Age-Related Subjective Passage of Time

• Awe expands people’s perception of time, alters decision making, and enhances well-being

• Connecting subjective time to perception, attention, and memory

• Why Does Time Seem to Speed Up with Age?