It’s an almost universal feeling: summers fly by, winters drag on. The explanation isn’t about the calendar, it’s about memory. The brain measures elapsed time not in hours, but in the amount of new experience it retains – and summers are usually full of broken routines: trips, outings, unplanned meetings.
Paradoxically, that very richness of memories is what makes summer, looking back, feel like it went by fast – because it got compressed in memory. In real time, each new day feels long; looking back, a month full of novelty “compresses” into a flash.
Winter, with its repetitive routine – the same commute, the same hours, the same light – leaves few distinct markers in memory, so it feels slower in real time, but in hindsight seems more “stretched out.”
It’s actually a good reason to introduce small variations into an ordinary week – not necessarily to “slow down” time, but to make it more memorable.
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