Why Time Sometimes Zooms and Sometimes Crawls

Today's Focus

Ever notice how weird time is? How it stretches and shrinks like taffy depending on what you're doing?

At work, I bounce between projects, feeling like I'll never finish everything—then suddenly someone says "lunch time!" Nine hours vanish in what feels like minutes when I'm solving problems. But those same nine hours would feel endless in a doctor's waiting room.

Even thirty seconds at a traffic light can feel like forever. My mind starts analyzing the intersection design and thinking about emailing the city with suggestions—anything to fill those endless seconds. I can literally feel each tick of the clock.

This huge difference made me wonder: is my sense of time just a mental trick? If time is supposed to be the same for everyone, why does my brain experience it so differently? And could understanding how this works give me some control over it?

The Learning Journey

I started digging into why time feels so different depending on what I'm doing. Turns out, it all comes down to where I put my attention.

When I'm deep in work mode, jumping between projects, my brain is fully focused on solving problems. Psychologists call this a "flow state" - when you're so wrapped up in what you're doing that everything else fades away [1]. In these moments, my brain doesn't have any spare capacity to notice time passing.

It's like my brain has a limited number of attention points to spend, and when they're all used up on a task, there's nothing left to track time with. It's like when I get lost in a really good book or movie - suddenly it's three hours later and I have no idea where the time went!

The opposite happens at that traffic light. With nothing grabbing my attention, my mind naturally starts counting seconds. I become hyper-aware of every moment, which weirdly makes time feel even slower.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

It's like watching a pot of water that never seems to boil. Research shows this happens to everyone - the more you actively think about time passing (like checking your watch repeatedly), the slower it seems to crawl [3].

So there's this strange paradox: focus on time, and it slows to a crawl. Forget about time completely, and it vanishes in a flash.

But it's not just about attention. Our feelings play a huge role too!

When I'm anxious or frustrated about waiting, time stretches even more. That's why waiting for test results or sitting in traffic when you're late feels absolutely torturous [4]. Have you ever noticed how the last five minutes before something important feels longer than the hour before it?

Studies show that uncertainty makes waiting feel worse - when you don't know how long something will take (like at a doctor's office where appointments are running behind), it feels more painful than when you have a specific end time [5].

Happy feelings do the opposite. When we're enjoying ourselves, time speeds up - that classic "time flies when you're having fun" saying turns out to be scientifically accurate [6]. I noticed this effect is especially strong when I'm with friends or deeply engaged in a hobby I love.

This phenomenon makes me think about roller coaster rides - they last maybe 90 seconds but feel like they're over in an instant. Yet those same 90 seconds waiting in line for the bathroom can feel like an eternity!

The cool part? Once I understand these mental mechanisms, I can actually use them to change how I experience time.

When I'm stuck waiting and want time to move faster, I can deliberately shift my attention away from time-keeping. My audiobook trick during commutes works because it captures my attention completely. Research backs this up - engaging distractions significantly reduce how long a wait feels [7]. The trick is finding activities that truly grab your focus without requiring much physical movement (perfect for waiting rooms or traffic lights). This brings to mind the uptick in podcasts, something to pull attention on to a topic we find fascinating and release the concept that is time.

Another trick for making waits feel shorter: break them into chunks. Instead of seeing a 30-minute wait as one big block, I can think of it as six 5-minute segments. For some reason, our brains process segmented time differently, making the overall experience feel faster [8].

It's like how I can stare at my phone and play a quick game that's designed to last about 5 minutes, then play another, and suddenly 30 minutes have passed without that painful waiting feeling!

When possible, I also try to find out how long I'll be waiting. Known waits feel shorter than mystery waits [5]. If I'm in line somewhere, asking "about how long do you think it'll be?" can actually make the wait feel less painful. There is an interesting example of this in an episode of “30 rock” where a pilot portrayed by Matt Damon tells the protagonist why flight crews tell people the wait will be about ½ an hour. [16]

On the flip side, when I want to maintain better awareness of time during those flow states at work, I need different strategies. Setting visible timers or scheduled alerts can gently pull me back to reality without completely breaking my concentration [10]. Before diving into a project, clearly defining how much time I'll spend on it helps prime my brain to maintain some awareness of time passing [11].

Ever had that moment where you suddenly realize it's 2 AM and you need to be up at 5 AM for work? Yeah, that's what happens when “flow state” completely takes over and you lose all sense of time!

My physical space affects time perception too. Positioning myself where I can see a clock, or using natural light changes as time markers helps maintain time awareness without requiring constant checking [12]. Building in small buffer zones between activities - like 5-10 minutes to "come back to time awareness" - prevents that jarring feeling when you suddenly realize hours have disappeared [13].

Even my environment can be designed to affect how I experience time. Research shows that comfortable spaces with pleasant distractions and natural elements make waiting feel shorter [14]. No wonder upscale restaurants and hotels put so much thought into their waiting areas!

I was fascinated to learn time perception isn't just psychological—it's cultural too. Different societies view time differently. Some cultures (like mainstream American culture) see time as linear and strictly scheduled ("monochronic"), while others view it more fluidly and relationally ("polychronic") [15]. Have you ever noticed how in some cultures, showing up 15 minutes late is perfectly acceptable, while in others it's considered incredibly rude? Or, how in some cultures arriving precisely at the time of invitation is the rude action? That's this cultural time perception at work! [17]

Growing up in a culture obsessed with punctuality and efficiency shapes how we experience time-related stress. Not every situation needs split-second timing, but my cultural programming might make me feel anxious anyway.

My Take

Learning about how time perception works has blown my mind. I never realized that something as basic as time could be so easily changed by where I focus my attention.

Wait—does that mean time isn't actually real? Or at least, not in the way I thought?

It's weird to think that both my traffic light frustration and my work time-blindness come from the same brain mechanisms—just flipped in opposite directions.

What I find most exciting is the idea that I can actually do something about this. I could transform those never-ending traffic light waits by changing where I put my attention. Or I could set up my workspace to help me stay more aware of time passing during deep work. These aren't just cool facts—they're tools I could use tomorrow.

I'm really interested in how culture shapes time perception too. Growing up in the United States, a society obsessed with schedules and productivity, I've developed anxiety about "wasting time" that someone from a more relaxed culture might never experience. Maybe some of my time stress isn't inevitable—it's just programming I picked up. (It might be interesting to look more into this at some point in the future...)

This makes me wonder what other "facts" about my reality might be more flexible than I thought. If time itself can stretch and shrink based on where I put my focus, what else in my life might be more bendable than I've assumed?

Resource of the Day

⚙️ Behind the Cognitive Curtain

Here's a glimpse into our conversation while exploring this everyday mystery of why time sometimes flies and other times crawls.

Claude: What surprised you most about how time perception works as we explored this topic?

Matt: I was most surprised about the feelings aspect, especially the awareness and anxiousness peace. I've been in a lot of waiting rooms, I've been on a lot of waiting lists, and the most positive experiences of those were always the ones with the most amount of information related to the wait time so this concept makes sense I just never really considered it before.

Claude: That connection between anxiety and time perception is fascinating, isn't it? The research showing that uncertainty makes waiting feel longer explains so much about why those "your wait time is approximately 15 minutes" messages actually help us feel better.

Matt: I lose track of time when I have very clear objectives of things I want to accomplish, things that I'm emotionally and mentally invested in. And I don't want to stop until I achieve that objective, so all other things leave my mind just iteration after iteration of work towards the objective, until something distracts me and I realize what time it is.

Claude: That perfectly describes the classic flow state! It's interesting how emotional investment in a goal intensifies that time-blindness effect. The research suggests that's because your attention is so completely captured that there's literally no mental bandwidth left to monitor time passing.

Matt: I'm sure I'm no different than many other people in playing silly little games on my phone or reading news articles to help pass time in more anxious situations. The little games are designed to be 5-minute entertainment, that's what they were designed to do. Same with reading news articles, most are written to be under 5 minutes of reading so I can easily flow from one to the other, I just never really thought about this before as being connected to that scientific principle of breaking down things into smaller segments.

Claude: That's such a great observation about mobile games and news articles! You've been intuitively using these time segmentation techniques without realizing there was science behind why they work. It shows how we often develop coping strategies that align with psychological principles, even without formal knowledge of them.

Matt: I think it is really helpful to understand a few ideas for helping manage Flow State in a proactive way to keep time from completely disappearing. We all need sleep, and suddenly realizing it's 2:00 a.m. and the work alarm goes off at 5:00 a.m. isn't a very useful time to suddenly realize you've been in Flow State for the last 6 hours I never even noticed time passing so I'll definitely be using some of these strategies!

Claude: That 2 AM realization is something I think many creative people can relate to! What struck me during our exploration was how these aren't just interesting psychological concepts - they're practical tools we can use right away. The balance between harnessing flow states for productivity while not letting time completely vanish is tricky but important.

What I found most valuable about our conversation was seeing how these scientific findings directly connect to everyday experiences - from traffic lights to waiting rooms to late-night work sessions. Time perception isn't just an abstract concept - it's something that affects our daily quality of life in countless ways.

References

1. Agarwal, R., & Karahanna, E. (2000). "Time Flies When You're Having Fun: Cognitive Absorption and Beliefs About Information Technology Usage". MIS Quarterly, 24(4), 665-694.

2. Zakay, D., & Block, R. A. (1997). "Temporal cognition". Current Directions in Psychological Science, 6(1), 12-16.

3. Droit-Volet, S., & Meck, W. H. (2007). "How emotions colour our perception of time". Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11(12), 504-513.

4. Gable, P. A., & Poole, B. D. (2012). "Time flies when you're having approach-motivated fun: Effects of motivational intensity on time perception". Psychological Science, 23(8), 879-886.

5. Maister, D. H. (1985). "The psychology of waiting lines". The Service Encounter, 113-123.

6. Danckert, J. A., & Allman, A. A. (2005). "Time flies when you're having fun: Temporal estimation and the experience of boredom". Brain and Cognition, 59(3), 236-245.

7. Antonides, G., Verhoef, P. C., & van Aalst, M. (2002). "Consumer perception and evaluation of waiting time: A field experiment". Journal of Consumer Psychology, 12(3), 193-202.

8. Leroy, S. (2009). "Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks". Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 109(2), 168-181.

9. Kramer, R. S., Weger, U. W., & Sharma, D. (2013). "The effect of mindfulness meditation on time perception". Consciousness and Cognition, 22(3), 846-852.

10. Cirillo, F. (2018). "The Pomodoro Technique: The Acclaimed Time-Management System That Has Transformed How We Work". Currency.

11. Jett, Q. R., & George, J. M. (2003). "Work interrupted: A closer look at the role of interruptions in organizational life". Academy of Management Review, 28(3), 494-507.

12. Altmann, E. M., & Trafton, J. G. (2002). "Memory for goals: An activation-based model". Cognitive Science, 26(1), 39-83.

13. Mark, G., Gudith, D., & Klocke, U. (2008). "The cost of interrupted work: More speed and stress". Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 107-110.

14. Baker, J., & Cameron, M. (1996). "The effects of the service environment on affect and consumer perception of waiting time: An integrative review and research propositions". Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 24(4), 338-349.

15. Hall, E. T. (1983). "The Dance of Life: The Other Dimension of Time". Anchor Press/Doubleday.

16. Fey, Tina, Cannon, Kay, & Ceraulo, Tom. (2011) [30 Rock S.5 E.14 “Double-Edged Sword”] (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1635811/?ref_=ttep_ep_14)

17. “Planet stories: Using AI-generated science fiction to externalise conflict in relationships”