There’s a fine line between being in a rut, and being in the groove. And that difference can drastically affect the way we perceive time.

According to science, sticking slavishly to routine makes it seem like your life is whipping past. You can’t actually slow time, but you really can do some things to make it feel fuller, richer, and longer.

Think about it. As we get older, time flies, especially compared to our younger years. Remember how summers seemed to last forever when you were a kid, whereas now they’re gone before you know it? There’s a reason for that.

Research cited in Scientific Reports says the passage of time is related to the amount of new information you absorb. In your younger years, lots of things were new and your brain had lots to figure out, making it feel like things were moving slowly.

But the brain adapts. So as you get older and many things in life become easier because you’ve already done them so many times, you have comparatively fewer new experiences. So your brain has less to process, and time seems to speed up.

As Stanford neuroscientist David Eagleman explains, our brain’s main job is to understand the world around us and figure out how to operate in it. “Whenever it encounters a surprise,” he says, “it writes that down and it makes changes to your circuitry [for next........

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