The Decibel Why time feels like it’s speeding up – and how to slow it down
18 snips
Dec 23, 2025 
Zosia Bielski, The Globe and Mail's insightful time-use reporter, dives into why our perception of time can feel skewed. She explores how hustle culture and stress distort our experience, noting that Canadians have felt the most time-pressured in decades. Zosia connects busyness language to this feeling, discusses the impact of screen time and the pandemic on our sense of time, and suggests ways to reclaim it through novelty, nature, and mindfulness. Grief's expansion of time also reveals how we can learn to value everyday moments.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Two Brains, Two Time Perceptions
- Our subjective sense of time splits into two systems: retrospective memory (hippocampus) and present feeling (insular cortex).
- These systems can conflict, so past and present experiences produce different impressions of time.
Busyness Is Built Into Culture
- Complaints about time speeding up often tie to stress, burnout and lack of meaningful leisure.
- A cultural productivity compulsion makes busyness feel moral and accelerates subjective time.
Language Normalizes A Frenetic Pace
- Language shapes how we experience pace; repeated metaphors like 'fast forward' normalize speed.
- Anne Burnett's analysis of Christmas 'busy-brag' letters shows busy equals normal by 2013.