It's the time of the year for endless cliches. From "tis the season" to "new year, new you", there's nowhere to hide from tired old phrases. One of my favourites is "Christmas comes around quicker each year" - which ignores the fact that one year equals one trip around the sun.
There's often a kernel of truth in a cliche, though. A recent study by Ruth Ogden from Liverpool John Moores University and colleagues showed that the vast majority of people in both the UK and Iraq really did experience Christmas (or Ramadan) approaching more rapidly every year. This may be down partly to festive decorations appearing ever earlier in the season.
But it's also a result of how we perceive time psychologically.
The feeling that time is speeding up can be particularly stressful around the time of the new year. It can leave us feeling out of control, fixating on all the things we failed to achieve. But it turns out that it is possible to slow down our perception of time.
Human time perception is deeply odd. Time can speed up or slow down depending on what we're doing. And it can shrink or expand when we look back at it. Marc Wittmann from the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health in Germany calls this subjective experience "felt time", as opposed to the more objective "clock time".
What's more, how we experience time in a certain moment isn't necessarily how we experience it when we look back at it. Everybody knows that time flies when we're having fun and drags when we're bored. But when we look back at boring periods, filled with routine, the days blend and blur in our minds. This distorts our sense of duration, making the period feel shorter. "When looking back, nothing happened," said Wittmann. "This has been shown in several studies: the more routine people report, the faster time passes in retrospect."
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der January 03, 2025-Ausgabe von The Guardian Weekly.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der January 03, 2025-Ausgabe von The Guardian Weekly.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
Catharsis Journalist and novelist Omar El Akkad castigates complacent liberal responses and western hypocrisy over the war in Gaza
'Where's the Palestinian Martin Luther King?\" Journalist and novelist Omar El Akkad has heard this question a lot lately, \"the implicit accusation [being] that certain people are incapable of responding to their mistreatment with grace, with patience, with love, and that this incapacity, not any external injustice, is responsible for the misery inflicted upon them\".
The US's former friends need to realise the old global order is over
A resonant phrase during Donald Trump's first administration was the advice to take him \"seriously, but not literally\".
Healthcare workers are protected under international law yet hundreds were detained during the war. Here, some of Gaza's most senior doctors speak out 'No rules': tortured, beaten and humiliated in Israeli detention
Dr Issam Abu Ajwa was in the middle of an emergency procedure at al-Ahli Arab hospital in central Gaza when soldiers came for him.
'Why aren't there Oscars or Baftas for what we do?'
From Matilda to Dear England, choreographer Ellen Kane's work has lit up show after show. It's time this art received proper recognition, she says
Print, clone, repeat
How do you follow an Oscar winner like Parasite? In Bong Joon-ho's latest film, a screwball sci-fi, Robert Pattinson keeps dying and being 'reborn'
Star chamber Pharoah's tomb is find of the century
It was when British archaeologist Dr Piers Litherland saw that the ceiling of the burial chamber was painted blue with yellow stars that he realised he had just discovered the first tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh to be found in more than a century.
Can an extinct tree be brought to life?
Abotanical discovery gives hope for resurrecting Rapa Nui's toromiro tree with 'experimental saplings'
a In London, potent mix of religion and rightwingers
The splendours of the Parthenon, Colosseum and Great Pyramid of Giza were in stark contrast to the utilitarian conference centre in London's docklands, but they were there to make a point.
Inflection point Bolsonaro faces 40 years in jail but holds out for Trump lifeline
At the height of Jair Bolsonaro's haywire presidency, Brazilian activists projected their deepest desire on to the Tower of London, where Guy Fawkes once languished after plotting to blow up parliament and assassinate the king.
Shaking off inertia, civic opposition to Trump's cuts gathers pace
On a bright winter's day last week, a group of protesters fanned out along a palm-tree-lined thoroughfare in the picturesque city of Palm Desert to demand that their Republican congressman stand up to Donald Trump and Elon Musk's slash-and-burn effort to reshape the US government.
