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Journey can not gradual the clock—however it could change how we bear in mind time. Right here’s what psychology and neuroscience reveal about memorable journeys.
By Prof. Alexandre Rodrigues
Take into consideration the primary morning of a memorable journey: an unfamiliar road, the scent of bread from a bakery you didn’t know was there, a language you should decode, a flip you almost miss, a view that seems with out warning.
Now examine that day with an peculiar Tuesday at residence.
Each lasted 24 hours. But once you look again, one could really feel expansive whereas the opposite virtually disappears. Journey doesn’t actually gradual time. However it might change how expertise is encoded, segmented, and later reconstructed in reminiscence.
Your Thoughts Does Not Retailer a Stopwatch
Psychological analysis distinguishes between potential time—how lengthy one thing feels whereas it’s taking place—and retrospective time—how lengthy it appears once we look again.
A basic meta-analysis by Richard Block and Dan Zakay discovered that these judgments depend on partly totally different processes. Once we are consciously monitoring time, consideration issues strongly. Once we estimate length afterward, reminiscence and contextual change change into extra vital.
That distinction is helpful for understanding journey, however it’s important to not overstate the proof: the analysis doesn’t present that “journey makes time longer.” Quite, it suggests mechanisms by way of which occasion construction and reminiscence can affect how lengthy an expertise appears looking back.
Journey is unusually wealthy in contextual change. Earlier than lunch, you will have navigated an unfamiliar station, heard a brand new accent, tasted one thing you can’t fairly identify and found that the road you deliberate to take is closed. Every transition can create one other boundary in reminiscence.
Novelty Makes Expertise Extra Distinctive
Novelty tends to draw consideration, and a spotlight helps decide what enters episodic reminiscence—the system that helps reminiscence for occasions and their context.
Tourism analysis provides a very related instance. Skavronskaya, Moyle and Scott examined 75 novel journey episodes recognized by way of semi-structured interviews. Their research linked novelty with consideration, emotion and memorability, and located that novel experiences—constructive or destructive—have been central to what travellers later remembered.
The vital level will not be that each unfamiliar expertise turns into a stronger reminiscence. Novelty will also be tiring, complicated or disagreeable. However it usually provides the thoughts one thing distinctive to prepare.
Think about arriving in a coastal city simply earlier than sundown. The air smells of salt and grilled fish. You hear plates being stacked inside a small restaurant, scooters passing behind you and a church bell someplace uphill. You might keep in mind that ten-minute stroll extra clearly than a complete routine afternoon at residence as a result of it accommodates sensory and contextual options that distinguish it from what got here earlier than and after.
Reminiscence Boundaries and the Feeling of Time
A 2026 research by Yue and colleagues helps make clear the broader mechanism. Contributors watched movies of on a regular basis occasions divided into subevents and later estimated how lengthy these occasions had lasted. For entire occasions, the variety of subevents individuals remembered considerably influenced their length judgments.
This was not a journey research. Making use of it to journey is due to this fact an interpretation, not a direct discovering. However the connection is believable: journeys naturally comprise extra shifts in place, exercise, individuals and sensory context than many routine days. These shifts could create extra retrievable occasion boundaries once we later reconstruct what occurred.
In that sense, journey could create extra “reminiscence landmarks” inside the identical quantity of chronological time.
Do Not Confuse Novelty With Overload
Extra stimulation will not be routinely higher.
A schedule filled with points of interest, notifications, reservations and images can fragment consideration. The objective is to not maximize novelty however to create sufficient distinctiveness whereas preserving sufficient consideration to expertise it.
Analysis on pictures illustrates the trade-off. In a museum research, Linda Henkel discovered that individuals remembered fewer photographed objects and fewer particulars about them than objects they’d merely noticed, though extra targeted pictures produced totally different outcomes. The lesson is to not cease taking footage. It’s to note when documenting an expertise begins to switch experiencing it.
Three Methods to Make a Journey Extra Memorable
First, add deliberate novelty. Select one expertise that breaks your typical sample: a neighborhood market, a residential road, a regional meals ritual, or public transport as a substitute of a well-recognized vacationer route.
Second, defend consideration. Give your self occasional intervals with out concurrently navigating, messaging, photographing, and reviewing. Discover the temperature, smells, voices, textures and small surprises that make this place totally different from one other.
Third, depart area for consolidation. Sleep will not be time stolen from journey. A meta-analysis by Sabrina Berres and Edgar Erdfelder examined 823 impact sizes from 271 unbiased samples reported throughout 177 articles and located an total good thing about sleep for episodic reminiscence. The magnitude various throughout duties and designs, however the broader conclusion is related: reminiscence wants situations during which new info may be stabilized.
Let AI Take away Friction, Not Discovery
Synthetic intelligence can examine routes, translate menus, arrange reservations and cut back logistical effort. Used nicely, it might defend consideration for the expertise itself.
The danger will not be AI; it’s optimization with out judgment. An itinerary engineered to remove each uncertainty may remove the detour, dialog, or unplanned discovery that later turns into the story you inform.
A greater precept is easy: let expertise handle friction, however don’t ask it to take away all shock.
A Longer Reminiscence Does Not Require a Longer Clock
We can not gradual chronological time. What we are able to affect is the density and distinctiveness of the experiences from which remembered life is reconstructed.
Novelty can appeal to consideration. Consideration helps encoding. Modifications in context can create occasion boundaries. Sleep helps episodic reminiscence. Collectively, these processes assist clarify why a journey containing fewer however extra absolutely skilled moments could later really feel richer than an itinerary filled with exercise.
So earlier than your subsequent journey, probably the most helpful query is probably not solely, “The place ought to I am going?”
It might be: “What’s going to I discover there that on a regular basis life has taught me to cease noticing?”
Prof. Alexandre Rodrigues is a professor, researcher, advisor, mentor and creator working on the intersection of neuroscience, human behaviour, decision-making and Synthetic Intelligence.
He’s a doctoral researcher in Communication Sciences at Universidade Lusófona in Lisbon, the place his thesis focuses on metacommunication. His work interprets analysis on consideration, notion, reminiscence and cognition into sensible purposes for organizations and on a regular basis expertise.
He’s additionally the creator of 4 books and works professionally by way of DNA Corporativo. Join with Prof. Rodrigues on Instagram and LinkedIn
References
- Block, R. A., & Zakay, D. (1997). Potential and retrospective length judgments: A meta-analytic overview. Psychonomic Bulletin & Evaluate, 4(2), 184–197. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03209393
- Berres, S., & Erdfelder, E. (2021). The sleep profit in episodic reminiscence: An integrative overview and a meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 147(12), 1309–1353. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000350
- Henkel, L. A. (2014). Level-and-shoot reminiscences: The affect of taking photographs on reminiscence for a museum tour. Psychological Science, 25(2), 396–402. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613504438
- Skavronskaya, L., Moyle, B. D., & Scott, N. (2020). The expertise of novelty and the novelty of expertise. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 322. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00322
- Yue, W. W. Y., Liu, J., Yao, Z., Zhang, Y., Mu, Z., et al. (2026). Retrospective length judgments of naturalistic occasions depend upon reminiscences of occasion boundaries. Psychonomic Bulletin & Evaluate, 33, Article 33. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-025-02833-z