the corner office

Browsing around and stumbled on this:

My favorite psychology chapter is one that asks why, as we get older, the years seem to go by faster and faster. Carefully designed experiments suggest there is actually an explanation for this annoying impression. As we age, our biological clocks run slower and, since our clocks are running slower, the world seems to speed up. Depressing as this may be for those of us long past the subjective midpoint of our lives (which turns out to be about 20 for someone who lives to be 80), it could be worse. Ingram describes a man with a brain tumor that affected his biological clock who quit driving and watching television because traffic seemed to be rushing at him at an incomprehensible speed and television nattered on faster than he could follow.

(via Matthew Yglesias).

My half-serious theory was always that time seems to go faster as we grow older because each unit of time becomes a smaller percentage of our total life experience. I'm glad to learn the real reason, and somewhat relieved to know that the warp-speed at which years seem to pass by nowadays is not just my imagination.

The book being reviewed, The Velocity of Honey: And More Science Of Everyday Life looks like a really interesting read. I (re)discovered a few old book shop gift vouchers in a chest of drawers the other day; this might be just the thing to spend them on.