Why Time Feels Fast or Slow: The Secret Your Brain Doesn’t Tell You
Time isn’t something you perceive — it’s something your brain constructs, and you have more control over it than you think.
Ever wondered why some moments last forever, while others disappear in a blink?
- A long, boring meeting feels like it drags on for eternity.
- An incredible vacation is over before you even realize it started.
- A car accident? It feels like time has stopped.
What if I told you that time itself isn’t real in the way you think it is? Your brain doesn’t perceive time. It constructs it.
And depending on how it builds your experience, time can expand, contract, or even freeze.
Welcome to the Dynamic Self-Temporal Synthesis (DSTS) Theory — a new way of thinking about why time speeds up or slows down in your life.
Time Isn’t a Clock. It’s a Construction Site.
Most people think of time as something external — like a ticking clock that moves forward, whether we like it or not. But that’s not really how we experience time.
Instead, our brain actively creates time in real-time, moment by moment.
And it does this by balancing two forces:
- Memory Encoding (Past): How much effort your brain puts into storing new information.
- Anticipation (Future): How much your brain focuses on what happens next.
The speed of time is simply how your brain prioritizes these two processes.
Why Time Flies When You’re Having Fun (and Drags When You’re Not)
Now that we know time isn’t fixed, let’s see how your brain speeds it up or slows it down.
🔹 When Time Feels FAST: Your Brain is in “Prediction Mode”
Ever lost hours playing a game? Or working on something you love?
That’s because your brain isn’t spending much energy storing memories — it’s predicting, reacting, and moving forward. Since less is being recorded, your brain compresses the experience, making time feel like it flies by.
✅ Examples of fast time:
- Being in a flow state (gaming, sports, deep conversation)
- Doing something familiar or routine (your morning commute)
- Excitement and high energy (hanging out with friends)
👉 What’s happening? Your brain is running on autopilot, so it doesn’t waste resources encoding every second. Instead, it’s predicting the future, and time speeds up.
🔹 When Time Feels SLOW: Your Brain is in “Processing Mode”
Think back to your first day at a new job. Or that long, dull lecture where you checked the clock every two minutes.
In these cases, your brain is working hard to store details — new faces, new rules, new surroundings. The more information it processes, the longer each second feels.
✅ Examples of slow time:
- Boring situations (waiting rooms, traffic, dull meetings)
- New experiences (first-time events, moving to a new city)
- Fear & survival mode (car accidents, extreme danger)
👉 What’s happening? Your brain is storing more details, making the moment feel “stretched out.” This is why time slows down during high-stress events — your brain is working overtime to record every detail for survival.
When Time Feels Like It Completely Stops
Have you ever been in shock — like receiving terrible news or witnessing something surreal?
For a moment, it feels like time itself stops existing.
That’s because your brain pauses both memory encoding and future anticipation. You are completely stuck in the present, disconnected from past and future.
This is common in:
❌ Trauma & shock (sudden accidents, loss, disasters)
❌ Deep meditation (letting go of past & future thinking)
❌ Sensory deprivation (floating tanks, deep relaxation)
Here, time isn’t just slow — it’s completely absent.
How You Can Hack Your Perception of Time
Now that you understand how time is built, you can change the way you experience it.
🔹 Want Time to Slow Down?
- Do something new — Travel, learn a skill, explore new places. Novelty forces your brain to encode more.
- Be present — The more you focus on the moment, the more detailed it becomes.
- Change routines — Even small changes (taking a new route to work) can make time more “real” again.
🔹 Want Time to Speed Up?
- Find flow — Get so absorbed in an activity that your brain stops “tracking time.”
- Reduce overthinking — The less your brain encodes, the more time compresses.
- Make things predictable — If you hate long meetings, make them routine so your brain starts ignoring them.
The Takeaway: Your Brain is a Time Machine
Time doesn’t just happen to you. Your brain constructs time based on how much effort it spends encoding the past vs. anticipating the future.
- Flow = Time speeds up
- Novelty = Time slows down
- Trauma = Time freezes
This explains why childhood feels longer (everything is new) and why adulthood flies by (more routine, less encoding).
So, if you ever feel like time is slipping away, change what your brain is doing — and you’ll change your experience of time itself.
🔹 Want more time? Seek new experiences.
🔹 Want time to fly? Get lost in something you love.
🔹 Want to control time? Now you know how.
