Scroll & Signal

An exploration by Jimmie Veal

Where did
the year go?

Time, proportion, and a question that stayed with me.

A childhood schoolyear can feel like an eternity. Years later, a whole year can seem to slip past before we have quite caught up with it. Why?

Try your numbersRead the story

The question before the tool

An intuition.
Then an equation.
Then more questions.

“The tools are simply to help explain things in a different way and let others decide if the results from their own numbers seem to fit their perception.”

For years, I wondered whether time seems to move faster as we grow older because each year becomes a smaller part of the life we have already lived. I had trouble putting the idea into words, but this was the example I kept coming back to:

To a four-year-old girl, something that happened two years ago happened half her lifetime ago. To a fifty-year-old, the same two years represent just 4% of a lifetime. The calendar measures the same distance, but I wondered whether our minds measure it against very different scales.

While exploring that idea with Claude, I encountered the proportional-time hypothesis often called Janet’s Law, and a logarithmic way of illustrating it. Finding a model was exciting. It did not put my skepticism to rest. How do you measure a feeling when the person reporting it is also changing?

These tools grew out of that conversation. I’m not offering a new theory, a prediction of anyone’s lifespan, or proof of how a mind experiences time. At 57, using an assumed lifespan of 83, this model gives a year the weight of roughly 117 days. I can’t tell you whether that describes your experience, but it comes surprisingly close to mine.

That resemblance is a personal reaction, not proof. I wanted to give you a way to explore the idea—and decide where it fits yours, or where it falls short.

Your numbers, different perspectives

Begin with a life.

Enter your age once. The clock, year comparison, and optional curve will use the same starting point.

Start with the example, or enter your own age. 83 is an editable assumption—not a personalized life expectancy. Decimals are welcome. Nothing you enter here is sent anywhere.

The question after the tool

Does it feel
anything like that?

Perhaps the comparison fits. Perhaps one unusually full year refuses to fit at all.

Think of a year that felt long, and one that disappeared. What made them different? The numbers offer one lens. Your answer may need more than one.

Optional: look at the curve

The gold line accumulates the model’s year weights. The straight line tracks calendar age. Both reach the same endpoint at the assumed lifespan; neither measures the actual amount of experience in a person’s life.

Gold / logarithmic modelDashed / calendar proportion
100%0%BirthAssumed lifespan

Moving this slider explores the curve only. It does not change the age used by the clock or year comparison. The familiar “felt midlife” claim is intentionally not presented as a fact about you.

What the numbers assume—and what they don’t

The shrinking year: for age a and assumed lifespan L, the normalized lifetime scale is F(a) = L × ln(a + 1) / ln(L + 1). The whole-year illustration is 365 × [F(a + 1) − F(a)]. It uses a 365-day reference year, while the clock separately uses 365.25 days for age conversion. If the chosen horizon leaves less than a full year, we show an explanation rather than extrapolating beyond it.

Matching rates: on the same year-equivalent axes, the calendar line has slope one. The model matches that slope at a = L / ln(L + 1) − 1. Matching slopes means equal rates within this chosen scale, not equal accumulated totals or empirically equal perception.

The optional curve: ln(age + 1) / ln(assumed lifespan + 1). The +1 makes the curve defined at birth. The denominator normalizes it to the chosen endpoint. These are modeling choices, not evidence that memory begins at birth or follows this curve. The shrinking-year result uses this same curve’s whole-year increment, so it changes when the assumed lifespan changes.

The clock: 365.25 days per year; 70 heartbeats and 16 breaths per minute; three meals per day; one sunrise and one sleep per day; about 29.53 days per lunar cycle. These rates vary in real life. Remaining values stop at zero at the chosen horizon, without implying that life stops there. There is no fixed “heartbeat allowance.” Pausing freezes the display; resuming catches up to elapsed time.

Limits: this is an illustration of one idea about time perception. It has not been calibrated to your memories, attention, health, or life circumstances. Mathematical consistency is not empirical validation. The model’s mathematical reference point is not a scientifically established age of equal time perception.

Time tool privacy: your age and assumed lifespan stay in this page’s memory and are not submitted. Reloading restores the example. The separate, optional email signup below is provided by MailerLite and loads its form resources; submitting it sends your email address to MailerLite.