You know that weird, slightly panicked feeling when you realize it’s already Thursday? Or when you look at a photo from five years ago and it feels like it was taken last month? It’s not just you. Time keeps on slipping slipping into a future that feels like it’s arriving way too fast. We’re all living through this strange acceleration, and honestly, it’s kind of exhausting.
Steve Miller Band sang about it back in '76, but the "Fly Like an Eagle" sentiment hits different in a world of 5G and infinite scrolls. Back then, "slipping" was a psychedelic observation. Now, it’s a clinical reality for the modern brain.
Time perception is a fickle thing. It’s elastic. When you’re a kid, a single summer feels like an entire epoch because everything—the smell of cut grass, the taste of a popsicle, the layout of a new park—is brand new. Your brain is recording every single detail. Fast forward to adulthood, and you’re likely stuck in a loop of commutes, spreadsheets, and the same three dinner recipes. When life becomes predictable, your brain stops hitting the "record" button. It starts "chunking" time instead. That’s why your last three years might feel like one big, blurry month.
💡 You might also like: How to Respond to a Birthday Greeting Without Making It Weird
The Neuroscience of Why Time Keeps on Slipping Slipping
Why does this happen? It’s largely down to the Oddball Effect.
Researchers like David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Stanford, have spent years studying how our brains process duration. Eagleman’s work suggests that time isn't a steady stream. Instead, it’s something our brain constructs. When we encounter new information, the brain takes longer to process it, making the moment feel stretched out. When we do the same thing over and over, the brain becomes efficient. It skims.
Think about your first time driving to a new job. It felt like it took forever, right? You were looking for street signs, noticing the weirdly shaped tree on the corner, and making sure you didn't miss the turn. By the hundredth time, you don't even remember the drive. You "teleport" from your driveway to the office parking lot.
This is the neurological tax of routine. Time keeps on slipping slipping because we’ve optimized the novelty out of our lives.
The Dopamine Trap
Our phones make this way worse. Every time you open a social media app, you’re entering a timeless void. This isn’t an accident. UX designers use "infinite scroll" specifically to remove stopping cues. Without a "page end" or a natural break, your brain doesn't mark the passage of time. You think you’ve been looking at TikToks for five minutes. It’s been forty-five.
💡 You might also like: What Would I Look Like With Different Hair Color? Why Most Virtual Try-Ons Fail You
This isn't just about being distracted. It’s about the degradation of "episodic memory." If you don't create distinct memories, you don't have "anchors" in your timeline. Without anchors, the years just collapse into each other.
The Proportional Theory: Why Each Year Feels Shorter
There’s a mathematical side to this, too. It’s called the Proportional Theory.
When you are 5 years old, one year represents 20% of your entire life. That’s a massive chunk of your existence. When you’re 50, a year is only 2% of your life. It’s a smaller relative slice of your personal history.
Basically, the longer you live, the less "weight" each subsequent year carries in your mind. This creates a psychological snowball effect. If you don't actively fight against this mathematical slide, the decades start to feel like years, and the years start to feel like weeks.
Living in the "Waiting Room" Mentality
We often spend our lives waiting for the "next thing."
- Waiting for the weekend.
- Waiting for the vacation.
- Waiting for the kids to grow up.
- Waiting for retirement.
When you live for the future, you essentially treat the present as an obstacle. You’re wishing your time away. This mental state is a massive contributor to the feeling that time keeps on slipping slipping. If you’re always looking at the horizon, you’re ignoring the ground you’re standing on.
We’ve become a society of "chronophobes"—people who are terrified of time passing but simultaneously rush through every moment to get to a mythical point of "arrival" where we think we can finally relax. Spoiler alert: that point usually moves.
Strategies to Reclaim Your Timeline
If you want to slow things down, you have to break the efficiency of your own brain. You have to be less "productive" in the way your brain processes reality.
Introduce "Intentional Inefficiency"
Try taking a different route to work. Go to a grocery store in a different neighborhood. Read a book in a genre you usually hate. These small shocks to the system force your brain to pay attention.
✨ Don't miss: 7 day forecast new york city: What Most People Get Wrong
When you introduce novelty, you create new neural pathways. You’re essentially forcing your internal clock to slow down because the brain has to work harder to map the "newness" of the situation. It’s the closest thing we have to a real-life time machine.
The Power of "Micro-Sabbaths"
You don't need a month in Bali to reset. You need ten minutes where you aren't consuming anything. No podcasts, no music, no scrolling. Just sitting and observing.
Most of us have forgotten how to be bored. But boredom is where time expands. When you’re bored, you’re hyper-aware of every second. While that feels uncomfortable in the moment, it adds "texture" to your day. It prevents the day from being a total wash.
Use Your Senses (The 5-4-3-2-1 Technique)
Psychologists often use this for anxiety, but it’s brilliant for time perception too.
- Acknowledge 5 things you see.
- Acknowledge 4 things you can touch.
- Acknowledge 3 things you hear.
- Acknowledge 2 things you can smell.
- Acknowledge 1 thing you can taste.
By grounding yourself in your physical senses, you pull your consciousness out of the "future-worry" or "past-regret" loops. You land squarely in the now. And in the now, time doesn't slip; it sits still.
Actionable Steps to Slow Down Right Now
Stop trying to manage your time and start managing your attention. Time is a fixed resource; you get 24 hours regardless of what you do. Attention is the variable that determines how those hours feel.
- Audit your digital "leaks." Use an app to track how many times you pick up your phone. Each pickup is a micro-rupture in your perception of the day. Try to reduce the number of times you switch tasks.
- Create "Anchor Moments." At least once a day, do something that is purely for the sake of the experience. It could be drinking a cup of coffee without looking at a screen or walking for ten minutes without a destination.
- Document the mundane. Keep a one-sentence journal. Just one sentence about something specific that happened that day. Not a "to-do" list, but a "did" list. This creates a paper trail for your brain to prove that the day actually happened.
- Change your environment. If you work from home, move your desk. Change the art on your walls. Even small visual changes prevent the brain from going into "autopilot" mode.
The reality is that time keeps on slipping slipping only if we let our lives become a series of automated responses. The more you "wake up" to the specifics of your environment, the more you’ll find that the clock isn't actually your enemy—it’s just the background music. You’re the one who decides the tempo.
Stop rushing to the finish line. There’s nothing there but the end of the race. Slow down, look around, and give your brain something new to chew on. That’s how you keep the eagle from flying away too fast.