I used to work as a writer for Lifehacker. A couple of years before that gig, I’d already started writing guest posts for them. I wrote the first of these while I was a student, about how our brains perceive time. I was curious about it because I noticed people older than me always saying how quickly time passed. It only felt like it was getting faster. 

A decade later, this piece continues to inform how I think about where and when I want to spend my time—particularly the idea of creating more different memories to place between two points in time.

Imagine if you go to the same office every day, ate lunch at the same spots, went home to the same house every day, the time will all blend together. The routine will make it feel like it passed faster. 

Now, imagine if you moved out of your home, to a new town or an entirely new country, and lived somewhere else for a month. The more different the place, the more of an impression it will make. Your brain will soak up rich, new, experiences. It will be clear what you did in that time. The key is change: changing your routine, your work routes, your job, your home—all of this will probably help your brain slow things down.

Four years in your 30s will not feel like four years in high school, of course. But, after having left Toronto to move to Hong Kong and New York, I can also report that it doesn’t feel like a blur.

Just a working theory. It might be interesting to shake things up.