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Find yourself feeling like the weeks are dragging by while the weekends are over in a flash? Or that it was just January and suddenly we’re nearly halfway through the year and you don’t know where the time has gone? You’re not alone.
But there are times in your life that seemed to have lasted far longer than they actually did, right? Chances are that’s when you were doing something brand new and because it needed so much of your attention it seemed to slow down time.
According to this article on Bufferapp, the way we perceive time is different from our other senses. In fact, we use our senses to organise the information in our brains so we can perceive what has just come to pass. So when we receive lots of new information it takes longer for our brains to process that information and that makes it seem like that period of time took longer.
Unlike when you do something that is familiar and repetitive, your brain already knows those processes so it doesn’t seem to take as long.
So how does this play into making your weekends last longer? Well, it’s simple really. Try something new.
In an article for New York Magazine’s Science Of Us, David Eagleman, a professor at Stanford University and the author of The Brain: The Story of You, says you should try new activities to make those weekends that seem so fleeting turn into longer days worth remembering.
“When you’re a kid, everything is novel and you’re laying down new memories about it. So when you look back at the end of a childhood summer, it seems to have taken a long time because you remember this and that, this new thing, learning that, experiencing that,” Eagleman says. “But when you’re older, you’ve sort of seen all the patterns before.”
So if you spend your weekends watching old episodes of your favourite TV series in bed instead of trying that new restaurant your friends have been going on about or finally going to that yoga class, your weekend is going to feel a lot shorter.
Also, as we age, time seems to speed up and things seem to be moving faster and faster. It feels like just yesterday we were celebrating with friends at that epic party, yet when we actually think about it, it was 5 years ago.
Why is that?
As we age, the more likely it is that our brains have already come into contact with information its already processed and therefore doesn’t need to take as long to register the thoughts, feelings and memories associated with it. The information being processed takes a “shortcut” in our brains and so it feels like the time is passing us by.
So if you want your weekends (or holidays or just your life in general) to seemingly last longer, try something new. Go bungee jumping, go for a jog on a Sunday afternoon instead of just prepping for work the next day, or read a new book instead of that old favourite you already know all the words to.
