When we speak of "wasting time", we are not referring to that big night out, or that the week of wonderful holiday, or the three-hour movie that honestly does not want more than one hour. No, when we fret about not having enough time, or wonder where it went exactly all those hours, we are talking about mundane things. The working day. A lazy Sunday, trivial. Days in which we have not given the time apparent reason to fly, and flew it anyway.
Why is that? And where did it go all the time? The secret lies in the ticking of the clock in your brain — a clock elusive, inaccurate and easily ignorable.
First of all, Yes
In understanding any complex issue, especially to the psychological, intuition doesn't usually arrives too far. As often as you can with a theory about scrabble as does the mind, a man in a lab coat will adjust his glasses, tilt forward his eyebrows and deliver a carefully intoned, "Indeed ..."
But not today. Most of what you think you know about the perception of time is true.
"Philosophers have written for a long period (normally longer than the perception of time), and psychology has been interested in it since its inception as a separate discipline — since the late 1800s," says Dr. Frederick m. Brown, Director of the laboratory of Human Performance rhythms at Penn State University and associate professor of psychology.
Brown says that common wisdom about how "time flies" is essentially correct. "We know that now can drag rather dramatically, and that when people get older, time seems to fly much faster." More generally, "when people are interested in something, almost escaped in the time dimension."
This jibes with common experience, as well as decades of experimentation. What not to do, however, is explain that middle ground between bored and fascinated, when we are not having fun, but we are consciously not hating life, either. This time it looks fly, too.
The secret, says Brown is that something called habituation. This refers to the progressive adaptation to a stimulus or to the environment, "with a descending response," and explains why certain sensations — the bitterness of a lime, the pain of rash irritated, the shock of a loud sound — seem to decrease over time. But it can also help explain, says Brown, as it can sometimes "escape the dimension of time" — essentially losing awareness of it.
"If there is a very regular noise — one that is observable but isn't terribly harmful — after a while we tune." The hum of the machine, the drone of Muzak and a/c can all fade into the background. To listen to these elements, see what you are doing it intentionally, in terms of your attention.
The Act of thinking at the time — how long until lunch? How long have they been here? I am bored so! — has the tendency to make you feel as if you're moving more slowly. "A watched pot never boils" is particularly apt here; While it's certainly annoying to watch water to boil, the fact that it was encoded colloquially as a boring thing makes it even more boring. In this scenario, the extent of ranks as follows: 1. you're thinking about how long this seems to take. 2. you're thinking the boiling water. 3. you're boiling water.
Or as Anthony Chaston puts the University of Alberta:
Imagine that you had a little counter in your head, an internal clock, which most people believe that the brain has, in some form. To monitor the passage of time, sort of have to monitor, or add and count and collect those few clicks. Right? You must keep track of how many are going. But if your attention is dedicated to another task, such as the Visual research, then you will miss some shots that they come from.
On top of that, says Brown, the reverse is true. "When things become irritating, as perhaps a dripping tap can actually become sensitised, then that becomes the focus of your attention, so it's almost like you're waiting for the next drip, and you're losing a sense of awareness of time passing." Replace the ' dripping faucet "with" the hateful menial task at hand "and you get the idea.
But why?
Now that we understand the models (very rough) of flight time, we are left with a more basic question: why the hell our brains work like this?
It is easy to study the perception of time, and have a lot of people. And have found all kinds of weird stuff:
• Time passes more slowly than those who consciously keep track of what people who are not. (The study informed half its participants that they were asked about the length of the experiment, but not the others).
• Body temperature can affect the perception of time. (Passes more slowly when you're cold.)
• Wrist won't affect the perception of time.
• Drugs can do all sorts of terrifying/terrible things for the perception of time. (ie., our college years.)
• Certain health conditions may do the same. (An epileptic attack, for example, you may feel as if his lasted a very long time, even if it was over in a matter of seconds.)
Here's the problem: there is no clear answer as why these things influence the perception of time. We can talk in General concentration and attention, but we can't put your finger on what, in our brain, controls of this type of thing. Yet. In a book published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of Biological Sciences Journal, Marc Wittman Explore dozens of possible causes, but arrive at this conclusion:
Despite the fact that time is essential to an understanding of more complex behaviors, processes that underlie the experience of time and incomplete action times are understandable.
In other words, we don't know really why this happens.
But we have a pretty good idea of how. So the next time you catch yourself wondering how five o'clock is already ensured: whatever you were doing, and however long it seemed to take, at least it was giving undivided attention.
Original illustration from Gizmodo guest Artist Robert Grossman. You can check out more of his stuff at his website.
Copyright 2011 from Gizmodo.com
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