Korean Job Discussion Forums

[jayjayjay]

What��s your theory on why time seems to pass more quickly the older we get?

I didn��t go to University until I was well into my 30s. Not only feeling a need for a career change, I also surmised it would be a win-win situation because as fast as the years were flying by, I figured, only one or two things could happen: Either time would continue to wiz by and I��d have my degree in no time, or, time would slow down and I wouldn��t be getting older so quickly. Well, yep—you guessed it—time flew by and soon I looked up and was registering for my last semester.

So, now I��m paying my dues on my first contract in Korea. And the year is beginning to fly by. So, this makes it more tolerable as I look forward to finding a better job here next year.

If there is one thing I can count on—it��s the passing of time. This makes things like a marginal job, etc. more tolerable. But I find this a very curious phenomenon.

So, what is your theory (if you agree) of why time seems to pass more quickly as we age?

[EFLtrainer]

[Alan_Partridge]

I think it's something to do with the proportion of the amount of time to the length of your life to date (If that makes any sense?!)

For example: when we're ten years old, a year is 1/10 of our life (to date) but when we are 30....it's only 1/30th
a tenth of our life will appear to go slower than a thirtieth...and that's my theory!!

[Free World]

I think it's because when you're 10 years old, a year is 10% of your life (a very long time).
However, when you're 30 years old, a year is only slightly more that 3% of your life which is not very long at all.
What do you think? Y'dig?

[Free World]

[Dispatched]

I think it's because we live from event to event, for example when you're a kid the first event you look forward to is first break when you can play with your friends, the next break is the next event you look forward to. As you get older you start living from weekend to weekend instead of from break to break so time between doing stuff you enjoy/look forward to gets strecthed out and therefore our perspective of time (time as in the events in our lives) gets reduced.
Put another way, the number of events in a year changes as we change from children to adults.

[Bo Peabody]

[deleted]

[SPINOZA]

Alan Partridge and Free World are absolutely spot-on. And so are Pink Floyd:

"Ticking away....
the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find....
....ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught
or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in a quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, I thought I'd something more to say..."

[joe_doufu]

I think time goes by faster because we adopt really horrible methods of distracting ourselves from noticing its passing (namely, work, routine, and TELEVISION). Kids keep their eyes open all day long. Most of us only have a few free hours a day, if that.

[Poemer]

I'm not sure time is passing any faster for me as I get older, but if it did seem to speed up it would probably be because the memories I keep accruing never really fade, they just continue to move further into the past. It's all the looking back, not forward that may do it?

[Alan_Partridge]

[Ya-ta Boy]

The theory I like, and I have absolutely no idea where it came from, is that in the womb we are totally in synch with the universe. At birth we start the process of dying, so our internal clock begins to slow down, meaning that the world around us seems to go faster and faster.

At the point where I'd spent 10% of my life in Korea I noticed that that time had gone by faster than summer vacation when I was 10.

I do think kids live more 'in the moment' than adults do.

[VanIslander]

Intriguing question.

All theories cited to date have some explanatory value and several are not inconsistent with each other.

A hypothesis to which I could cite obvious evidence to the contrary is the one about abundant free time (Pink Floyd via SPINOZA). I have had a lot more free time in my thirties than my twenties. In my twenties I did university, was married for five years and had 60+ hour salaried jobs. In my thirties I've been single, unemployed (took a year off, helped my dad, really relaxed), and then coming to Korea for the last three years has been a way more relaxing experience FULL of free time compared to my twenties, and yet time is going by faster than ever! In my mid-thirties time is going by faster than when I was thirty, which went by faster than when I was twenty, etc.

Similarly, I have watched a lot less television in Korea, and have tried to keep my eyes open, thus limiting the explanatory value of the attentiveness/distraction hypothesis (joe_doufu).

Together then, the abundant free time and attentiveness/distraction hypotheses are put aside in my own quest for a good account of my own experience. That said, they do explain some contributing factors, as indeed, on the micro-level of comparing one day to another, watching t.v. or being very busy does affect my experience of time accordingly. But to the macro-level question of our experiences over decades, the aforementioned theories don't satisfy.

On another front, the idea of synaptic degeneration (Bo Peabody) is easy to imagine and difficult to disprove, nor does it add anything to our understanding. It's just a biological equivalent of "We're just getting older". Perhaps if scientists studied it we might get some insights, but I suspect the physiological will not fully explain the phenomenological.

The internal clock hypothesis (Ya-ta Boy) just doesn't seem believable to me, is the sort of global theory that requires a substantial ontological commitment about the nature of reality. If taken at its most macro-level, it could be embraced by proponents of several other theories, or not.

The next series of theories are all akin to each other in emphasizing the role that time plays as an increasing quantity.

The porportional length hypothesis (Free World, Alan_Partridge) is perfectly fine on the meta-level but is empty on the micro-level. It raises more questions than it answers, is more descriptive than explanatory.

One theory that could be coupled with the porportional length hypothesis is the idea of memory recollection (Poemer). If we are indeed looking backward more than forward, then as time goes by, we have porportionally more memories to recollect for each day, week and year lived. But this has limited explanatory value for those of us who experience memory as a fading phenomenon and who experience days of reminiscience more slowly than days of physical activity and non-reflective action. Like the previous theories, it does tell part of the story, though it has the additional benefit of appealing to both the micro- and macro-level, of explaining some days, weeks and years as well as the entire lifespan.

Now we get to the most interesting theory to date, in my estimation.

[SuperFly]

[tzechuk]

Time is definitely flying by me this past year - I mean, Letty is one year old in a few weeks!!!!