Perceived Age
"To live is to be other. It's not even possible to feel if one feels today what one felt yesterday. To feel today what one felt yesterday is not to feel—it's to remember today what was felt yesterday, to be today's living corpse of what yesterday was lived and lost." — Fernando Pessoa
At 2:15 PM on June 5th, we burst through the school doors, sprinting toward three months of freedom. Back then, summer felt endless; August seemed a lifetime away. A day at Great America stretched on forever, and road trips to LA felt like epic adventures. Fast forward to age 16—responsibilities piled up, yet moving from freshman to sophomore year still felt like an eternity. Now at 22, time seems to fly by faster each year, as the novelty of experiences fades.
A fascinating study asked different age groups to mentally estimate two minutes. People under 30 averaged 115 seconds; those over 50 estimated just 87 seconds—a 24% reduction in perceived time. This isn't random; it's rooted in our brain chemistry, especially dopamine.
[1]
Dopamine plays a big role in how we perceive time. When we're young, everything is new and exciting—first kiss, first job, first time living away from home. These novel experiences flood our brains with dopamine, making time feel elongated. As we age and novelty diminishes, dopamine levels drop, and time seems to speed up.
Our internal clock, heavily influenced by dopamine, and our memory, which relies on acetylcholine, work together to shape our perception of time. In a 2004 study, rats could estimate time intervals up to 40 seconds even without their cerebral cortex, suggesting time estimation is a fundamental process. In humans, stimulants that boost dopamine speed up time perception, while drugs that block dopamine receptors or feelings of sadness slow it down. Novelty stretches our perception of time, while routine compresses it.
Claudia Hammond, a psychology writer, talks about the "reminiscence bump," which happens when we experience a world of firsts—travel, relationships, adventures. These novel experiences help form our identity, making our brains latch onto the details that define us.
"And at the place where time stands still, one sees lovers kissing in the shadows of buildings, in a frozen embrace that will never let go..." — Alan Lightman
The acceleration of time as we age is a cognitive illusion. Childhood feels endless because it's filled with constant discovery, free from the burdens of regret or anxiety about the past and future. As adults, we don't encounter the same level of novelty. Repeated experiences feel shorter than new ones of equal duration. Learning new things and challenging ourselves can slow down our internal sense of time.
To put this into perspective, consider our perceived age relative to our actual age. Ignoring the first five years due to childhood amnesia, when you're 6, a year represents about 17% of your life. By 13, it's 7.7%; by 18, just 5.6%. Each year feels shorter because it's a smaller fraction of your life.
Time is a construct shaped by our biology, psychology, and daily lives. Our perception of time isn't fixed; it's influenced by dopamine levels, new experiences, and mental engagement. While we can't stop time, we can influence how we perceive it.
By seeking novelty, embracing change, and expanding our horizons, we can stretch our subjective sense of time. Try new foods, pick up a new sport, immerse yourself in different cultures. These experiences add layers of richness to life beyond the routines we often fall into.
Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain (1973), where surreal symbolism and rituals converge on a quest for spiritual enlightenment.
Realizing that your perceived age accelerates faster than your actual age can be liberating. Establishing good habits—like exercising, eating well, and learning new things—will continue paying off throughout your life.
Whether it's fear, comfort, or routine holding you back, maintaining a dynamic and engaging life correlates with how you perceive time. By age 40, when each year starts to blur into the next, what do you have to lose by trying things you've never done before?
It's only over if you decide it's over before you've even had the chance to make it. Having a "career" is just a construct. Money is real but often more useful earlier in life than later—unless you're planning to leave an inheritance. You have around 80 years; why spend it doing one thing when you can explore a dozen things, touching different lives and communities?
"You waste years by not being able to waste hours." — Amos Tversky
I didn't know it at the time, but June 5th was the last time I'd be at school for a full year. COVID came and went, and school felt more like a chore as I juggled it between projects and my first full-time job. Despite the chaos, I came out ahead; it's hard to find someone who didn't in that era. The first week of freshman year is arguably the most important at any school; the rest of the four years is marginally less so. That experience was taken away from me, and I felt disconnected being around people waiting for someone—a job recruiter, a VC—to give them a handout. Instead, here I am writing this blog post four years later.
If you're reading this, I must be doing something right—or at least that's what I tell myself. With time seeming to tick even quicker, life is a series of processes and systems held together by discipline and determination. It's refreshing to be in the moment, embracing change, optimistic in a world full of possibilities, working with people who have unbridled ambition, and with time feeling so endless it feels like June 5th again.
Thanks to Alex Reibman, Ankit Gupta, Anish Agnihotri, Caleb Sirak, Dar Sleeper, Jesse Michael Han, Justin Zheng, Khushi Suri, @mempooled, @spikedoanz for helping review and edit!
And thanks to Parth Chopra for inspiring the perceived age graph calculation [2].