Please describe your perception of time.

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That's interesting, I was just reading this

http://www.leighb.com/notime.htm

Time goes faster and faster with each passing year. It seemed to drag on, when I was a child, but the older I get, the faster time seems to be flying by. I wish that I could slow it down, a bit. It's almost 4:30 in the afternoon. I will be in bed, in 6 to 7 hours. It's not fair!

I found this:

http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy ... thesia.php



More explanation at the link, of course.

wow, thank you. and it tied in with something I never knew had anything to do with anything else which is my crystal clear memory with regards to certain things.

Life is event driven--I measure time by the completion of tasks. If it takes longer for whatever reason, so be it. This drives my wife nuts--though not as much since realizes it is due to how my brain is wired.

Interestingly enough, there are many things I can do with lightning speed, such as put together material into a properly edited and formatted document.

* I have absolutely no clue what time it is (other than morning, afternoon, evening, night) without a clock.
* People say as you get older time goes faster, for me it seems to feel the same.
* I have difficulty judging how much time has passed when performing activities - I believe mostly this depends upon how engaged I am in the activity. If it's something I am enjoying, time moves much more quickly. If I am annoyed or bored it moves much more slowly. However, I think this is true for most people.
* I can judge time by distance when traveling and can even estimate my new arrival time within a few minutes when I hit traffic delays.

Yeah, that. And, even bigger jumps, despite trying to look at the clock often enough to avoid it. I.e. 7:42... 7:42... 7:43... 8:07... and then I'm late. I use a PDA (iTouch with the "BeepMe" app) to help with that, nowadays.

Other time-related oddness:

My memories don't seem to be time-stamped, and I often have trouble remembering what year something happened, or in what order my memories are supposed to be arranged.

When I was younger I could seem to program my brain to wake me up at a certain time. I was rarely off by more than 5 minutes, which I find odd, given how my sense of time feels pretty shaky in other ways.

At times I think I have little episodes of deja vu, though they aren't very intense. I'll feel like I can remember being where I am at that moment, doing the same thing I'm doing, and everything around will seem a perfect match with the 'memory.' But sometimes I'm able to actually check that, and it doesn't make sense. I.e. a radio show with topical jokes that wouldn't have made sense at the time the memory seems to be from.

As I get older time seems to be shooting by way too fast, but that's normal, from what I hear.

I have learned it is necessary to follow certain schedules, if you want to get to the library when it is open, for example, but time is only distantly relevant to my mind otherwise. If I am outdoors, or can see outside, I can guess roughly what time it is, but otherwise have no idea unless I look at a clock.

When I am bored, time passes so slowly that a single minute seems to contain eternity. When I am reading a good book, or doing anything related to my special interests or anything else I consider important, no time seems to pass until I am done. I have sat so long in one position reading that I could barely get up, I was so stiff. I've missed meals. I've missed sleep. When I am absorbed, it seems to be totally outside time.

My memories aren't "timestamped"; I can't recall when something happened unless I make a very conscious effort to remember the date. However, I can usually work out a pretty good timeframe for most events in my life, just by reconstructing a framework of memories I can date, and seeing which one fits where.

In another sense, the past is a distant continent, with countries I am overjoyed never to see again, and others I long to visit but will never be able to. The present is elusive, insubstantial, forever out of reach. And the future is lost in fog, a mysterious destination I know almost nothing about until I get there.

+1

I'm like this. I have to assemble my memories in the correct order each time. Then I have to figure out what year they may if been in, if I'm able to at all.

So how do YOU perceive time? I didn't think there was a normal way other than what others have posted, the only odd thing being synesthesia time.

Wow, that's very similar to my "synesthetic" way of attempting to comprehend linear time. I remember telling someone years ago and they became very put out that what I was talking about "isn't how time really works". I never claimed it was how time really worked, it was just how my mind would envision the kind of time most people seemed to operate on. I've never heard of anyone having that the same before. I guess for me it's only semi-visual, it can be spatial without visual in some contexts.

As for how I innately perceive time, that's a totally different matter. I'll cut and paste from the thread that sparked this discussion (I suggested he ask more people how we perceive time, given that this place is great for getting a range of answers on any question pertaining to how individual people here perceive just about anything). I discussed it a few times so it might get repetitive:

I'm autistic and I don't experience much of a sense of time at all to the point where I get confused between past present and future. I also don't experience life in the sort of rigid, "scientific" (I don't know a good word for it) way described in the article. Remember there are all kinds of autistic people.

So, time. I barely have a sense of time, and what I have is very fluid. What English calls past and future are more to me like the now I can see but can't access entirely, and the now I can't see. Yet I always find patterns between them and can sometimes feel as if I'm in several nows that are touching. Sometimes I even see myself as a different person in each now instead of one continuous person. Other times I'm unaware of any other time but what most people call now, and nothing else exists/existed/will exist except my immediate sensory awareness. Sometimes I don't even have sensory input or thoughts/ideas, just awareness. Sometimes time repeats and gets stuck like a broken record, sometimes it ties itself in complicated knots and goes out of order. I have fairly wonky temporal lobes, which may account for some of this, most people who share this with me have TLE like I do or are suspected of it.

Anyway, if there's anything time isn't for me, it's linear, easily measured, or mechanical. It's often not there as far as I can tell, or else it's alive and twisting and bending in strange ways. Space for me isn't "functional/mechanical" either. It's movement through space. It's a dance. It's living, like all the things that fill it.

(Link to original thread)

I may have asked a question that I can not answer myself.

I am always concerned about doing everything on time. For example, I have to leave for work on time, I need to put the kids to bed on time, I need to pay the bills on time. I am always concerned about not being late to appointments.

I think that I perceive time by who I am with. I could be wrong. For example, I have time with my wife, my sons,and my friends at work. I have a strong need to be near my wife and family at all times. If I spend too much time alone, I feel disconnected with my body and emotions. It drives me crazy.

Many people on this forum seem to be able to perceive time in a way that I can not as an NT person. In addition, so many of the people seem so much more intelligent than me. The guy who wrote the following is probably two times smarter than me:

Anbuen's description of time seems poetic. His post exemplifies how the autistic mind can describe time in ways that I can not.

This quote is so beautiful and eloquent.

'Be Here Now'

I don't wear watches, years ago i got an infinity tattooed on the top of one wrist and pi on the other.

Wow. That's normal? I've wondered whether or not I'm synesthetic. I honestly don't know. Some stuff about my experiences just screams it, but descriptions of it leave me confused as to whether they're talking about what I experience or something else.

anbuend, if you say this is how you perceive time, I won't argue, but I want to point out that to me, time definitely is linear and is very clear. It's not confused at all, and I know past from present from future. (I know now from not-now, I'm no worse than average at telling memories from fantasies, and specific dates go on a mental timeline and don't get confused. When I bother to picture time, anyway. I don't care much for dates and stuff; I missed that point on the Aspie quiz. )

Actually, there's yet another calendar, for spans of time on the order of one or two weeks or less. Each day is a vertical column, with time passing downward for each, but they're arranged left-to-right. So, it's like...
Morning Monday|Morning Tuesday
Noon Monday---|Noon Tuesday
Night Monday---|Night Tuesday

This being an awful representation. But it shows you the direction. It's more fluid, though.

And I don't always picture them, but most if not all of the days of the week are colored.
Sunday-- yellow
Monday-- cream
Tuesday-- pink/peach/flesh/whatever this color is called
Wednesday-- bright red
Thursday-- dark red (maroon?)
Friday-- gray
Saturday-- lighter gray

I'm pretty sure the year thing is something I do because otherwise how could anyone understand time? I mean really, how can you understand time, if not visually? That's the only way I know of. Other people just... aren't making sense.

But this isn't really spatial. It's more visual. Like, I just picture it, and I move the picture so I'm looking at what I want. But it has colors. Like, January is light whitish-pastel blue. February is light pink. March doesn't get pictured as a month, rather recalled as the absolute worst time of the year. March sucks. I don't know what color April is, but I know it's a bouncy, bright color. May is... I don't know if that's called red or pink. June is blue or yellow (it depends), July a slightly darker blue. August is... this is strange. I'm starting to lose my words right now. And my clarity of thought. I'm quite certain of why, and I'm quite certain it's temporary, but um. August. Brownish yellowish-glowy-golden-brown it looks like the sound of a violin. Which color I don't know as I can describe. I could describe it as sounding like a violin, but I'd have to describe violin music as looking like this color.

September... actually, know what? I have this picture clearly in my head of its color. Not sure what to call it. But it's an intermediate step between August and November.

November is brown.

December is beautiful.

The very bottom is just between December and January. The very top is in the summer.