Why do someone else feel like life speeds up after 25

Wittmann (2013) investigates how subjective time — our inner sense of how fast or slow time passes — is constructed in the brain and why it changes across the lifespan. Key points relevant to the common report that life “speeds up” after mid-twenties: - Multiple time mechanisms: Wittmann distinguishes different neural and cognitive systems for timing (milliseconds to seconds vs. minutes to hours vs. months and years). Short-interval timing relies on physiological pacemakers and attention; long-term temporal experience depends on memory, event segmentation, and life narratives. - Role of attention and change: When we attend closely to events, time feels slower; routine or unvaried sequences lead to fewer encoded events and a feeling that time passed quickly. After 25 many people settle into repetitive patterns (work, habits), producing fewer distinctive memory markers and thus a compressed retrospective sense of time. - Memory and event density: The perceived duration of past periods depends on the number and vividness of stored events. Younger years often contain novel, formative experiences (education, travel, identity changes) so they seem longer in retrospect. As novelty declines with age, retrospective time seems shorter, producing the impression that life accelerates. - Emotional and physiological factors: Age-related changes in affect, arousal, and dopaminergic function influence time perception. Reduced novelty-seeking and altered arousal can modify internal timing mechanisms and the subjective flow of time. - Subjective vs. objective time: Wittmann emphasizes that inner time is an experience constructed by brain processes (attention, memory, interoception) and need not track clock time. The “speeding up” feeling is a psychological effect of how experiences are encoded and recalled, not a change in physical time. In short: Wittmann’s account explains the post-25 acceleration as emerging from reduced event density and novelty, altered attention and memory encoding, and neurophysiological changes that together compress retrospective duration and make life feel as if it’s passing more quickly. Reference: Wittmann, M. (2013). The inner experience of time. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 368(1628), 20130066.