Can you believe it’s AUGUST 25TH already?! The summer is flying by! My sister, who works in a high school, starts back at school next week, which blows my mind. It seems like yesterday when she called to say she’d survived another year with angsty teens and was looking forward to lazy summer days. But where did the summer and lazy days go? It feels like I missed half of them and, even worse, it feels like this summer flew by faster than the last. But, of course, that isn’t possible…right?
Well, I recently came across this fascinating project Why Time Flies by Austrian designer Maximilian Kiener. A theory that was first presented by Paul Janet in 1897, Kiener’s interactive presentation explains why time keeps moving faster and faster as we age…
“It’s because we perceive time relative to the ‘absolute’ time we can compare it to…When you are four weeks old, a week is a quarter of your life. By the end of your first year, a week is just a fiftieth of your life. By the time you turn 50, a whole year will be a fiftieth of your life.”
Kiener also points out: “Waiting 24 days for Christmas at age 5 is like waiting a year at age 54.”
“Your summer vacation in your first year in college will feel as long as your whole 76th year.”
“After 30, the acceleration slows, each year from then on will be under 3% of your life and similarly short.”
Fascinating, right? So when we say ‘time is flying by’–it’s because it actually is. Kiener ends with a good piece of advice that we’ve all heard many times before: “Life is short. Do things now!”
Check out the whole interactive presentation here, if you’d like, and then go out and enjoy the rest of the summer! x
(Image from Laura.)
Time is a jet plane, it moves too fast. Bob Dylan
Love this.
Dang. Makes sense.