The Psychological Secret to Longevity

Your subjective sense of things going slowly, and then speeding up, is real. But you can also control it.

Excerpt: "When I was 9 years old, Thursday was my favorite day of the week, for one very special reason: I had my beloved weekly French-horn lesson. I remember thinking that Thursdays felt as though they came only about once a month. Some five decades later, Thursdays still have a special significance for me—as the day my Atlantic column comes out.

But unlike the way I felt so many years ago, I now feel as though Thursdays occur about every three or four days. The weekly thing seems to come around much sooner than every week. What gives?

This phenomenon of time seeming to speed up with age—or, for that matter, slow down under the influence of boredom or frustration—attracts a good deal of wonderment. The jarring juxtaposition of clock and calendar time with the subjective experience of time’s passing can make life feel like a poorly dubbed movie. You may simply have assumed that your sense of time was unreliable, but the truth is more complicated—and interesting.

An entire science and philosophy of perception explains this warping of time. Whether time speeds by or crawls along, a grasp of this concept can help you make the most of your life."