I first wrote this reflection in French. You can read the French version here: French version

I am reacting here to a tweet I saw on X about this strange feeling that time seems to pass faster and faster.

I do not think time is physically accelerating.

But I do think our perception of time can really compress with age, routine, stress, and digital life.

Does time pass faster as we age?

As we get older, time seems to fly by.

We are more occupied, caught up in work and responsibilities, with our heads full.

Result: fewer discoveries, less awe, less presence in the moment.

As a child, the brain is still discovering the world: it scans, observes, encodes.

Everything seems bigger and the days seem longer, not because time changes, but because the experience is denser.

Study on age and the subjective speed of time

With age, the brain already knows a lot.

It recognizes, anticipates, automates, saves energy. Useful, but we live some moments less fully.

And when routine settles in, days go by without leaving many traces.

You are no longer really in the moment.

You are managing the next moment.

No need to go into a strange theory.

And digital life accelerates all of this even more.

Digital life de facto accelerates our perception of time because it removes empty spaces.

We almost never get bored anymore, we almost never stop.

As soon as there is a gap, we fill it.

The brain is constantly functioning.

But constantly functioning does not necessarily mean being present.

Awe, as Dacher Keltner talks about it, is that moment when something breaks the autopilot. Suddenly, the brain stops only managing.

It observes.

And when it truly observes, time regains depth.

Huberman Lab — Dacher Keltner on awe

That is also why meditation is interesting.

We believe stopping is counterproductive.

We think we do not have time, so we never stop.

But maybe it is precisely because we never stop that time disappears.

Study — Awe Expands People’s Perception of Time

Meditation does not create more hours.

It gives presence back to the hours we already have.

And paradoxically, when you recover presence, you can sometimes do more with less.

So no, I do not think time is accelerating.

I think we become more automatic, more stressed, more loaded, more fragmented.

And digital life amplifies all of this.

The real question is not only:

“Why does time pass faster?”

It is rather:

“What is stealing my presence?”

Huberman Lab — Space-Time Bridging Meditation