By Dorsey Standish, MS, CEO of Mastermind

Our precious daughter Winnie recently celebrated her first birthday!

So many people said the same thing: “Already?! She was just born!”

I’ve been hearing variations on the theme of “time flies!” since my first kiddo. As a neuroscientist, I want to understand why. How can a day feel so long and a year seem to disappear?

Why does time feel like it flies?

Part of the answer lies in how we remember our lives. Routine periods can seem shorter when we look back, while varied experiences can give us more distinct moments to remember. How long a day feels while we’re living it and how long it seems afterward are different judgments.

In research by Dinah Avni-Babad and Ilana Ritov, four experiments and two field studies compared routine and nonroutine experiences. Participants generally remembered routine intervals as shorter. In one experiment, the pattern reversed when participants knew beforehand that they would be judging duration. The difference matters: a slow afternoon can still become part of a week that feels like a blur.

This gives us one useful way to think about remembered time, without assuming routine explains every fast-feeling year.

Give yourself something distinct to remember

A little novelty can be as simple as trying a new recipe for dinner (my wife is great at this!) or using a different agenda flow for your regular team meeting. You don’t need to plan an elaborate adventure to try something different.

Another way to make time feel less fleeting is to notice and savor the good moments already there. I recently had lunch with positive psychology researcher Michelle Gielan, author of Resilient Optimism. We talked about how writing down a few positives can give us something specific to return to when a week feels like a blur.

Here are two of my favorite resilient optimist practices for noticing, recording, and sharing those moments, at home and at work.

Best Moments Texts: keep the details of a good day

Before bed, write down three or four highlights from your day. Text them to your spouse or a friend, or keep them in your notes. They can be small: something your child said, a good conversation, a food you enjoyed. If someone was part of a highlight, let them know.

You can start small with one practice, like this best-moments list I made from Winnie’s birthday:

• The strawberry-and-vanilla cake I made from scratch with Beck’s “help.”
• Her brothers assembling their own gift—a giant marble tower—during dinner.
• Winnie looking around the table at all the people she loves, so happy and proud. She was beaming.

Those are moments I want to keep.

Weekly Wins List: remember what went well at work

Take five minutes on Friday, or your last workday, to record what went well: completed tasks, meaningful interactions, and small personal victories.

For teams, Michelle also suggests a shared “#Small-Wins Slack Channel” where people can post and celebrate progress together. When you share a win, give a shout-out to someone who helped make it happen.

These practices give you a record you can revisit. You don’t have to make every day extraordinary to find something worth remembering.

What’s one moment from your week you want to remember?

For more ways to bring attention to everyday life, explore our simple mindful gratitude rituals. To bring practical brain-health skills to your team, learn about Mastermind’s corporate programs.