Why time speeds up as we get older, and how journaling slows it down

Ask anyone over thirty and they’ll tell you: the years go faster now. Summers that used to feel endless are over in a blink. There’s a well-known explanation for this, and it points to a surprisingly simple fix.

The holiday paradox

The psychologist and writer Claudia Hammond calls it the holiday paradox. On a great trip, time flies while it’s happening. Yet when you get home, the trip feels like it lasted ages.

Hammond’s explanation, from her book Time Warped, is that we judge time in two different ways: as it passes, and afterwards, in memory. When we look back, one of the ways we judge how much time has passed is by how many new memories we made. A trip full of new places and experiences leaves lots of distinct memories, so it feels long in hindsight.

A routine stretch does the opposite. Weeks that look alike leave few separate memories, so in hindsight they shrink. That’s also part of why time seems to speed up with age: adult life has more routine and fewer firsts.

Giving your days more shape

You can’t make every week a holiday. But you can make ordinary days more distinct in your memory, and writing is one of the easiest ways to do it.

When you note down what happened today, you do three useful things:

• You notice. Looking for three things worth writing turns an ordinary day into one with specific moments in it.
• You label it. “The day the first frost was on the car” is easier to find again than “a Wednesday”.
• You leave a trail. Months later, your notes bring back details your memory would have dropped.

The result is a year that feels fuller when you look back, because more of it is actually there to look back on.

A small, sustainable habit

The habit only works if you keep it, so keep it small:

1. Pick a fixed moment, like right before bed.
2. Write three short lines, not a page. One minute is plenty.
3. Include something new, even a tiny one: a new café, a new song, something someone said.

Slow life down

Journaling won’t add hours to your day, but it can change how your days feel when you look back on them: less of a blur, more of a story. That’s what 3 Lines A Day is for: three small lines each evening, and a past that doesn’t quietly disappear.

Further reading: Claudia Hammond, Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception (2013).