Perception of Time

Posted on 2005/09/28 11:37:31 (September 2005) by john.

Long, short or otherwise...?

It has been a very interesting summer. The process of moving from one country to another has resulted in a huge amount of travelling and not just the obvious going from A to B - also a fair amount of pissing about before I leave A and after I get to B... then going back to A for a bit via C, and so on.

If I added up all the hours I have spent over the last six months in assorted planes, trains and automobiles it would probably run into several days, if not weeks. Since the start of May I have made 12 plane journeys, six of these being 9 hours or more. I can think of at least ten days where I have spent 6 or more hours on a coach or train. I have travelled in six countries across three continents, and have had to adjust between four different time zones.

One upshot of this is that I seem to have developed a very different perception of time. For example, when I was living in England, getting the train into London would generally take somewhere in the region of 45 minutes. Believe it or not I sometimes found this journey quite daunting - the thought of being stuck on a train for three quarters of an hour was really quite tedious. Now a 45 minute is laughably short. On the way from North Wales to South Wales the other day we were in the car about four hours. I used to think of this as a truly mammoth journey, now it is over in a flash. When I used to go up to the isle of Eigg in Scotland for holidays the train journey from London was about 8 or 9 hours, this used to seem like a really massive undertaking, now spending this amount of time on a train is commonplace. I've been heard to ask Chie how long a train journey in Japan will take, and on hearing I have replied, quite sincerely, "Oh only six hours? That's not bad". I even seem to be getting used to long haul flights - as someone who really hates flying, 12 hours on a plane used to be like a punishment for me, now it is little more than a minor inconvenience.

I remember seeing a TV programme once that said apparently your perception of time changes as you get older. To a child, a week seems like an absolute age, whereas to an adult this is barely any time at all. I suppose this is down to having previous history with which to compare - if you've only lived five years then a week is a much bigger portion of your life so far than it would be to a thirty year old. I wonder if for my grandmother, now in her eighties, time literally does fly past...?

I am slightly worried by this phenomenon - has all this travel artificially aged me? Is my life from here on going to be at an accelerated rate? Well, hopefully not. Having had to kill time today and yesterday whilst everyone I know is at work, I have realised that time can still seem to pass quite slowly. Yesterday Chie would have been on a plane whilst I was wiling away the time in London and Reading. I don't think she would actually have landed until about 1AM UK time - in the intervening time that she had been stuck on a plane, I'd had a very full day and it seemed like an absolute age since I dropped her off at the airport first thing in the morning. If I compared the last 12 hours of that time span, with my last long haul flight from Japan, then certainly time seemed to pass at a very different rate.

The old addage "time flies when you're having fun" is of course very true. However, I'm pretty sure that I'm not always having fun when I'm travelling, particularly not on long haul flights. So I am beginning to wonder if I have actually developed some kind of subconcious fast forward switch...? When I'm travelling I appear to be able to make the time pass quicker, even without doing anything particularly fun. Presumably this is not beyond the realms of possibility - it is commonly accepted that our perception of time changes depending on what we're doing. When I was working in England, I used to notice that the hour between 8 and 9 in the morning (when I'd have to leave for work) seemed to go in absolutely no time at all. However, the last hour of the working day, between 4:30 and 5:30 would often drag quite unbearably.

Is it possible then, that with appropriate psychological training, we could actually make a sort of dial in our heads, that allows us to speed up and slow down time (or at least our perception of it). As it seems I have already done to some extent, this would allow us to get past tedious long tasks like flying much easier, and perhaps allow us to slow down and appreciate "quality time" a little more.

Just a thought really, one of those things that has been milling round my head recently...

You have too much time on your hands.

Posted by Mike at 2005/09/28 13:44:58.

Thanks for your hypothesis of why time seems to go by faster as we age - it makes sense - the older you get, the less any specific amount of time represents in your total years lived.

Posted by Tina at 2005/12/27 02:24:49.

Everything is a perception. We call green that because someone decided it sounded good how do we know it is not actually orange or even computer? I have many ideas on the diference between perception and reality so if you wanna talk to me about it email me ... hhenderson91@gmail.com

Posted by Heidi at 2006/04/26 09:23:33.

I used to find London to Reading trips boring. Now that kind of journey flies by. And 4 hours in a car isnt much at all either. I find that these journeys go fast for the most part but drag towards the end or if your in a traffic jam.

Posted by Lawrence at 2006/09/18 13:48:04.

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