Do years really get shorter as we age?

In 2005, researchers in Germany asked about 500 people aged 14 to 94 how fast time seemed to pass. When asked to look back on the past ten years, older people said the decade had gone by faster. But for short periods, like the past week or month, there was almost no difference by age.

A common misconception is that every moment flows faster as we age. In reality, it's closer to this: time looks folded up and short when we look back over several years at once, more than in the present moment.

Firsts, like the first day of school, a first trip, or the first bus ride on your own, stay vivid in memory. As a child, firsts keep piling up, so looking back on a year brings many scenes to mind, and the year feels long.

As adults, we have more days spent commuting the same way and living similar routines. Repeated days tend to merge into a single memory, so when we look back, few scenes remain and the year seems to have flown by. The same idea explains why a three-day trip somewhere unfamiliar feels unusually long once you're home. On the other hand, a day packed with unfamiliar tasks may race by at the time but feel surprisingly long in hindsight.

Another explanation says that one year is a tenth of a 10-year-old's life but only a fiftieth of a 50-year-old's, so it feels shorter. But this is closer to a metaphor, and it doesn't fit well with the finding that short periods show almost no difference. That's why researchers put more weight on memorable novelty than on age itself.

So if you want a year to feel longer, try adding small firsts. They don't have to be grand: walk a route you've never taken, try a new recipe, or stroll through a neighborhood you've never visited. Jotting down what happened each day adds scenes to look back on, making it easier to say at year's end, "This year actually felt pretty long."