90 Mildly Interesting Before-And-After Photos That Show Just How Much Things Can Change

Comparing things and looking at ‘before and after’ photos might be fun, interesting, and satisfy your inner scientist, but it can also be deeply bittersweet and even uncomfortable. The fact is, you might become strongly aware of the rapid passage of time, and everything that entails: changing relationships, your own mortality, beloved locations and buildings being changed, missing out on the things you used to love, etc.

Time spares no one, and what matters is the relationship you have with it. And while you can’t stop the passage of time, you can, actually, slow it down or speed it up. At least from a subjective perspective. The secret lies in what you do with your daily routine, what you focus on, what you feel, and how much you embrace novelty. At least, according to recent psychological research.

According to Ian Taylor, at Loughborough University, the author of ‘Time Hacks: The psychology of time and how to spend it,’ rethinking your relationship with time can help you feel more fulfilled, less pressured, and less bored.

He explained to ‘New Scientist’ that, from his point of view, time is a subjective perception that acts as a framework linking people’s memories of the past with their hopes and ideas for the future. This, from his perspective, is what makes people’s lives coherent.

“Our sense of time is not simply a function of the brain, it’s a complicated interaction between our mind, body and our feelings. Psychologically speaking, this internal clock speeds up or slows down depending on what else we are using our brain’s resources for and how much attention we give it,” Taylor told New Scientist.

“We know that our emotions and motivation have a strong impact upon how we perceive time. We find in the lab that, if we make people angry or sad, their perception of time slows down. If you make them happy, it speeds up. There is a reason people say, ‘Time flies when you’re having fun.’ However, emotions cannot just be grouped as positive or negative. You also need to consider their intensity, known as level of arousal.”

Higher intensity emotions tend to make time feel slower.

So, for instance, you take two positive emotional states like feeling excited and feeling calm.

Their level of intensity is different, and you’d feel as though time slowed down in the former case, but not the latter.

This shift in perception can act as a survival mechanism in life-threatening instances to allow you to think clearly.

With all of this in mind, you can, in fact, try to slow or speed time up for yourself.

“You give people a picture of something desirable, like a tasty-looking cake, time feels like it passed quicker than if they’re looking at something non-desirable,” Taylor explained that the experiences that we want to avoid make time seem subjectively slower.

Meanwhile, if you want to speed time up, you need to strive for something that you want, and stay occupied with things that you enjoy, value, or desire.

Naturally, most people wouldn’t enjoy the idea of making themselves feel horrible just to slow down their perception of time. Instead, if you want more temporal abundance, what you can do is change your priorities. For example, if you’re spending lots of time on unpleasant obligations, sure, you'll feel like time slowed down, but also, you’ll probably think that you haven’t had enough time that day. So, you should use your time wisely and focus on more valuable activities instead.

“Feeling like you have no time really comes down to whether you’ve used your time wisely or not and how that makes you feel, not how much time you really have available.”

Taylor told New Scientist that having a good relationship with time means a few things, including: not feeling exhausted, not feeling like you wasted your day, and feeling good about yourself.

“To do this, we need to have an awareness of time and how it affects our motivation and well-being.” Rewarding yourself immediately can motivate you far more than nebulous, vague, long-term rewards that are in a far-off, distant future.

We’d like to hear your perspective, so if you have a moment, join the conversation in the comments.

Which of these comparison pics caught your attention the most, and why?

From your personal experience, what changes and trends have stood out to you the most, no matter if we’re talking about products, locations, ecosystems, or something else entirely?

Do you have any advice for slowing or speeding up the perception of time? Let us know!