Does time really go faster when you are having fun?
They say time goes fast when your having fun. Time also appears to slow down when you're waiting for it to pass. From my personal experience I find it true that time seems to vary based on what I'm doing. Reality check: time doesn't actually change based on what your doing, unless your going extremely fast (for more information on this see Einstein's works). If you look at a watch after you did something fun and compare it to a a friend's watch where she's did something really boring, you won't find any discrepancy. However, doing that experiment would be missing the point. The real question is, do you experience time going faster when you are having fun?
If time doesn't actually slow down when your having fun, why does it feel like it? Do you experience time going faster? or are you merely not paying attention to the time?
If time doesn't actually slow down when your having fun, why does it feel like it? Do you experience time going faster? or are you merely not paying attention to the time?
Comments (12)
Our appreciation of time, space, and form are all subject to a variety of interpretations generally based on neural priming.
Pretty much. I wish I studied more medicine and neuroscience/cognitive science; but, my semi-educated take on the matter is that there is a perceptual shift from self-monitoring towards some external salience/reward/hedonic impulse, which typically produces a "flow" state within the mind. A little deeper, the Default-Mode-Network disengages and attention is focused on the executive function of the brain, the Dorsolateral-Prefrontal Cortex.
As an example (in this example, I'm focusing more on ADHD, and the resulting depression and anxiety, which are comorbid in the disorder), people with depression and ADHD, have a dysfunction in their ability to self-monitor and task switching from self-monitoring to rewards/salience. This dysfunction can be "corrected" by artificial means, such as stimulant use or abuse, or through elaborate reinforcing practices. Such as eliminating distracting ques or going to the same room to study, or just more simply developing a habit and conditioning oneself to study some material.
I think we simply don't notice the passage of time.
Oh well, back to my Christmas shopping.
Well, this is true to the degree that routines are established and tasks (such as working) become repetitive. Also, memory encoding, which degrades with age contributes to the sense of time flowing faster.
The way we percieve time is a product of how happy we are or at the very least content and also we percieve time not on a scientific basis but how we feel.
Humans are driven more by feeling than logic if left up to our most basic instincts.
When we focus our attention on the time we have more negative feelings.
When we focus on an activity we generally have feelings related to whatever activity that is.
It seems to be about noticing the passage of time. Say there is an event A and you check your time. Suppose A is followed by B, C, and D. If you check your time at all of these events you feel that time is passing slowly. However if you check time only at event D then you feel time has passed quickly.
It seems to me that there is a physical explanation for time appearing to pass faster as one ages. Our brains, like some other animal brains, seem to be able to track time. As we age, this facility slows down -- and time seems to speed up as a result.
Personally, I am an expert in the field of reality and by experience I can tell you time really does speed up when I am having fun.
Episodic time continues to operate in more ways than personal experience, for example, there is Hegel's observation about the owl of minerva.