Of course, the pandemic has been anything but a holiday for most of us. But the research that Professor Brogaard highlights shows that time is similarly distorted whether we are experiencing a great adventure or something new and uniquely stressful in nature.

“Temporal markers slow down how fast your brain replays the narrative content of your memories,” she explains in the Psychology Today essay. “These markers thus serve as speed bumps on our ride down memory lane. Accordingly, we often remember time as having passed more slowly when looking back on particularly stressful, joyful, disruptive, or adventurous periods in our lives.”

From redundancies to bereavement or sudden lifestyle changes, it’s not hard to see how the pandemic has wreaked havoc on our daily lives and routines. The endless string of new announcements alone has caused widespread fatigue, with each fresh pivot or uncertainty laying down a “speed bump” in our memories.

No, it’s not (just) your imagination: why the stress of the pandemic appears to slow down time