Time can be fleeting and an eternity too

You know the saying ‘time flies when you’re having fun’? Well, generally speaking, it is true. If you’re spending a day doing something you enjoy, before you know it the day’s over. Moreover, to you it didn’t feel like a day; it felt more like a few hours. In fact, the reverse is also true if you’re doing something you hate or something boring or indeed not doing anything at all. Then half a day can seem like a week.

Apparently how you feel about something you’re doing, or about to do, can warp your perception of time. Frankly, I don’t know how much logic there is to this because an hour yesterday was the same length as an hour today is and will be the same length as an hour tomorrow will be. Furthermore, each individual’s perception of the same hour will be different even when they spend the same amount of time doing the same activity.

Therefore, if a family goes somewhere exciting for a two-week holiday and they have a wonderful time, in their perception of time, the two weeks will go by in a flash. However, to their colleagues back at the office and their friends and family back home, that same two weeks may seem like a four-week drag even though both have spent 2 weeks doing their activities.

What’s going on then? The mind is one of the most complex organs in the body and psychologists say that how we see time ticking away depends on how we feel about an activity we are doing or will be doing. The more positive we feel about an activity, the quicker in our mind’s eye the time will fly.

In addition, it appears that the anticipation of an activity also affects our perception of time. Therefore, since today is Friday and if we’ve got something important and positive planned for, say, Monday, the time between today and Monday will seem like an eternity in anticipation of that event. However, when Monday eventually arrives, the day will feel like it passed by in a flash. The reverse is also true. If you’re dreading Monday, the time between today and Monday will seem like an eternity.

We all experience this in our daily lives, especially when it comes to the much sought after weekends. The days of the week seem to go on forever in anticipation of Thursday evening and Sunday mornings seem to come around far too quickly because the weekends just fly by. If you think about it, logically, what is happening is actually fact. The weekdays are 120 hours long and the weekends are 96 hours long but our complex mind has warped those hours into more than 120 hours for the weekdays and less than 96 hours for the weekends.

But I think something is going on with time in general. I feel that time seems to have speeded up in the last 50 years. It feels like the weekdays are now flying by and before we know it it’s the weekend again. Now I’m not doing anything particularly interesting, either at the weekends or during the week to warrant this perception; I’m not anticipating some out of the ordinary, interesting or exciting event to take place yet I still feel time is now flying by, something I don’t believe I felt back in the 80s or 90s.  Interestingly, this perception of time is not just mine and is shared by many people who also think that time is flying by.

So, are psychologists wrong about the perception of time being linked to our anticipation of an activity we are doing or plan to do? Obviously, perception is not fact so it can’t be measured so this is pure conjecture.