That most alarming New Year’s morning question  “Uh-oh, what did I do last night?”  can seem benign compared with those that may come later, like “Uh, what exactly did I do with the last year?”

Or, “Hold on  did a decade just go by?”

It did. Somewhere between trigonometry and colonoscopy, someone must have hit the fast-forward button. Time may march, or ebb, or sift, or creep, but in early January it feels as if it has bolted like an angry dinner guest, leaving conversations unfinished, relationships still stuck, bad habits unbroken, goals unachieved.

“I think for many people, we think about our goals, and if nothing much has happened with those then suddenly it seems like it was just yesterday that we set them,” said Gal Zauberman, an associate professor of marketing at the Wharton School of Business.

Yet the sensation of passing time can be very different, Dr. Zauberman said, “depending on what you think about, and how.”