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How Fast Did 2025 Go?

As 2025 comes to an end, you might find yourself looking back and trying to make sense of how this year passed.  You might feel like this year flew by while you were busy keeping up with daily life. Or maybe this year felt very slow for you, and you find yourself wishing it would finally come to an end. We tend to experience time at different paces. You might experience some days that feel long and exhausting, but you also feel like you have a hard time keeping track of your life, and suddenly, months have passed without being noticed. A similar perception goes for a full year as well. A year can feel slow while you’re living it, but fast when you look back. But the important thing is that when we say “this year went by so fast” or “this year took forever,” we are not really talking about time itself. We are talking about how we experienced it. Because our “internal clock” has an important role in how we experience time. This internal clock is influenced by how much attention we give to time, our emotional state, and how mentally overloaded we feel. When life is stressful, uncertain, or repetitive, time can feel slow in the moment. But still, after you look back (especially in specific times like the New Year), it can feel strangely fast. You might even feel like you have lived different lives in the same year. Because when you look back and evaluate how this year went by, you are not reacting to physical time, you are reacting to how your mind is processing it. In this mini sketch, we take a closer look at how time perception works and why it feels especially different at the end of the year.

Time versus Time Perception

Before we move on to how we evaluate our year, let’s take a closer look at the difference between time and time perception.  We experience the world in minutes, hours, and days, then in the past, present, and future. This usually feels like time as something that moves forward all the time. We notice moments changing, events unfolding, and situations shifting from one state to another. This creates a sense that time is passing. Moreover, it is also considered functional as this flow helps us make accurate judgments about timing and act accordingly. However, experiencing time this way does not mean that time itself is actually moving. The feeling that time is passing comes from how our minds notice change. We see things happen, shift, and continue, and this is what creates the sense of time moving. Because of this, time can feel different from how it is measured. Time passes at the same pace, but our experience of it does not. 

What Shapes Our Perception of Time?

We all have internal clocks that help us make sense of time, and these clocks are deeply shaped by context. When we perceive colors, sounds, or textures, our senses respond to something concrete in the environment. Time works differently. There is no direct sensory input for time. To understand time, the brain relies on contextual factors such as routine versus novelty, emotional intensity, attention, and mental load. 

  • Routine vs. Novelty

One of the factors that most strongly influences the perception of time is how new or routine our experiences are. New experiences stimulate the mind more, require more attention, and leave stronger memory traces. This is why firsts often feel longer and more pronounced. So, when you evaluate your 2025, you might remember moments like the first day at work or school, the first trip, or a first date.

Routine works in the opposite way. When days are similar, when tasks are automated, we record fewer details. During the day, these routines can feel boring and heavy. But when we look back, these days blend together, and time feels compressed. That’s why if you feel like 2025 was full of routine, you might remember it like 2025 gone by before you know it.

  • Emotional Intensity

Emotions are one of the strongest factors that affect the perception of time. Especially in case of stress, fear, or a perception of threat, time seems to flow more slowly than it does for most people. It is typical for many people who have been in a car accident or experienced sudden danger to say that “everything happened in slow motion”. In such situations, the fight or flight response is activated in the brain. The heart rate increases, and brain regions associated with emotional processing (especially the insula and amygdala) become more active. This heightened state of arousal leads to higher attention to what is happening in the environment. We process much more information per unit of time than usual. As a result, time feels longer. 

On the other hand, emotions sometimes cause time to speed up in the opposite way. In social or enjoyable situations, time itself is not the focus of attention. Time flies because we are simply occupied with other things. This is why enjoyable or flowing experiences are often remembered with a sense of lost track of time (Droit-Volet & Gil, 2009). And when you evaluate your year, please remember that you do not only evaluate how it has passed, you also assess how you felt in this year. 

  • Attention and Mental Load

The perception of time is closely related to where attention is directed. When attention is directed towards time itself, time slows down. Minutes get longer when waiting, bored, or looking at the clock. In contrast, if the mind is occupied with a task, a conversation, or a problem, time passes quickly unnoticed. Also, emotions are essential in how we navigate our attention as well.  In times of distress, anxiety, or impatience, time itself is centered. When waiting for something to end, when there is uncertainty, or when trying to get out of an unpleasant situation, attention is constantly directed to the clock. In short, if you feel like you keep track of time this year by counting days or months, it is possible that this year took longer than expected for you. 

Mental load also plays an important role in this context. If you made decisions constantly this year, tried to keep up, multitasked most of the time, and kept your mind busy, you may feel like time feels heavy at those times. However, this mental load often leaves no distinctive memories, so that in retrospect, time still seems to pass quickly, as does your whole year. 

Reviewing your year retrospectively

When we look back over a year, our brain does not experience time in the same way as we do prospectively. Retrospective time evaluation relies on a different mechanism than the sense of time in the moment. At this stage, our brain does not calculate how long an event, a task, or a situation takes. Instead, it asks what is left in memory, what stood out, and what was meaningful.

Several mechanisms work simultaneously in this retrospective process. Being under high mental load throughout the year can make time in the moment feel heavy and exhausting. But even if they are heavy and exhausting, if the days are all alike, they leave little trace in the memory. In retrospect, therefore, these periods feel compressed and short.

In moments of stress, anxiety, excitement, loss, or strong attachment, the brain operates at a higher level of arousal. This leads to a more detailed and stronger encoding of these moments in memory. When evaluating time retrospectively, the year may feel “fuller” or longer because these intense memories take up more space in the mind.

 So your end-of-year time review is not about the objective flow of time; it is about how our brain organizes time retrospectively. That’s why the year exists in memory not as it was actually experienced, but as it is remembered.

When evaluating your year:

  • When evaluating the year, a fast year does not necessarily mean it is a good year, or a slow year does not necessarily mean it is a bad year (vice versa).  How time feels has more to do with how the mind perceives it than with the year’s quality.
  • It is important to remember that periods of routine and repetition are less likely to be remembered. However, starting and maintaining a routine, such as going to work regularly, pursuing a hobby, or going to the gym regularly are also important achievements, even if they are not remembered much at the end of the year. 
  • Instead of just focusing on the end of the year, broaden the focus to the whole year. For this, you can take a look at your calendar apps and phone gallery. If you keep a diary, reviewing it can make it easier to recall. 

References

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