Why Does Time Go So Fast When You’re Asleep?

Time estimations during dreaming are much more variable and some people claim to have dreamt a whole lifetime in one dream. However, the best experiments to test this come from those very rare people who can induce lucid dreams (knowing they are dreaming) at will, and then signal to experimenters to indicate what they are doing in the dream. When asked to count to 100 while dreaming or while awake, the times taken match closely. And when asked to estimate how long a dream event took, those estimates are accurate. So if time does go fast when you are asleep, you are unusual.