Time perception · Janet's Law

The Shrinking Year

A calendar year is always 365 days. But your nervous system doesn't experience it that way. Each year feels shorter than the last — not because time speeds up, but because each year is a smaller fraction of everything you've already lived.

Try entering a past age to revisit how a year felt then.

At age 35
felt equivalent days
At age 8
365
felt equivalent days
Age 35
Age 8
Calendar (equal every year)

Based on Janet's Law (Paul Janet, 1897): each year feels proportional to the total life already lived. Formula: felt weight of a year at age n = log(n+1) − log(n). Research on temporal perception by David Eagleman and Laura Carstensen at Stanford supports the psychological basis of this effect.