Time

Time often seems to act a little strange in dreams. It often doesn't line up with real-time, and sometimes it changes in weird ways. Here are a few time-related dream phenomena.

Time dilation

This isn't the way it's depicted in the movies! You may have dreams that "last" longer than they do in the real world, but it does this with a few tricks:

• Injecting memories that you didn't actually experience

• Fast-forwarding past the boring bits, like the quiet parts of a car ride or what you're doing while you wait

• Time skips

You can do these yourself, but the effect is underwhelming.

Time skips

Sometimes called "fast-forwarding", "jumping", or just "skipping", this happens a lot in dreams. It's simply a transition between scenes that take place at different times or in different places, while being part of the same dream (you'll notice it's a continuation of something that happened earlier).

This is a lot like a camera change or scene transition in movies. There's some kind of transition, you don't notice it if you're not looking for it, and you just accept whatever setting changes happen (later in the day, at a different location, etc).