Please describe your perception of time.

Post Reply New Topic

Exactly the same for me. Only that it's not a curve but a straight line. Same with week days.

Correctamundo, this is Synaesthesia (tho there is some new trendy name). I have it too - numbers have colours and shapes, sounds have colours and shapes and dances, counting is via a visual numberline, and my perception of time laid out is very like this poster's observations of themself.

I could not agree more!
In fact, lately I've started (in my head) using the phrase "Time is Political" - it is! I have another concept, "The Neurotypical Desktop" (its my version of something that has many names by many people) which represents all the information (symbolically learned flotsam and jetsam) that NT's expect to be in the 'common domain', ie. that "everyone just knows" as their quaint little minds put it.
It only recently occured to me that this includes Time. Time is measured and marked by agreed signposts, and these have nothing to do with clocks and calendars - clocks and calendars are much lower level concept.



Somewhat jealous of you there

Yes the passage of time, sorry "The Passage Of Time[tm]", as inflicted on us by NTs, has always been an extremely painful thing for me, and still is.

Exactly!

Same thing here, except that centuries are seen as blocks that are put in a row on a left-to-right timeline. A year is seen as a circle with the months, similar to a cut pizza (except that its middle has just four divisions, for each season one), when I think of days within a month, I still see a part of the circle but instead of where the month is, I see a little calendar (with always the same layout though). I guess, blame kindergarten for that. We had to create a small "calendar" showing a year as a circle with the four divisions for the seasons and 12 divisions for the months. On top was December/January and the new year was marked with a think line on the outer ring of the months. The seasons were marked with colours, light blue for winter, green for spring, orange for summer and brown for autumn. It had a red arrow attached in the middle, but that one is somehow not present in my mind.

...
I guess this sounds weird.

EDIT: Oh and if you mean perception of time as in "how does it pass for you": Depends on what I am doing. Sometimes it passes slow, sometimes fast. When I am busy with my obsession, time passes in a moderate to high speed, when I am doing something obligatory, it can be both, slow or fast. I can't really explain it well and why...

Well, it keeps on going forward, doesn't seem to want to go backwards, seems to slow down at the worst possible moments, and always speeds right on by the best. That about sums it up for me .

Real simple for me. Sometimes I can tell you what time it is within +/- a few minutes without having seen a clock for many hours (I don't wear a watch). Other times I don't even know what day it is. It really all depends on how much I've been 'spacing out'. 10 hours can go by and it feels like a few minutes.

I perceive time in the following way:

If asked, I would probably be pretty accurate at being able to state the time to a very near degree without having looked at any clock recently.

As regards how I use time, I frequently become lost in time. What I mean by that is, that having executive dysfunction I am bad at organising myself within time and I also frequently become so immersed in something I want to do that it is to the detriment of tasks that ought to be done at or by certain times. I need a watch or clock to keep track therefore. It's very hard for me to get to appointments on time even if I have organised myself well for it. I think I get too distracted by other things.

Fluid, like a liquid.

Time goes by extremely quickly for me. I guess I just don't notice time I used to think an hour is a long time...but it's nothing really. It scares me to think of the billions of years that will go by after my death that I will have no perception of.

I am always five minutes late. I f it is something really important (like a plane departure) I won't be there on time, I will be there way before I have to. I find it hard to 'hit' the right point in time.

If I make sure I have plenty of time ('just get up ten minutes earlier, then you won't have a problem' - yeah, right!) I look at the clock and see that I have plenty of time. I wait a bit and look at the clock. Still plenty of time. I do this repeatedly until I decide to do something to pass the time and in a fraction of a second five or ten minutes have passed and I am late - again!

Time is perceived as experience here. The clock works merely as a social organizational tool for structuring that experience, but that is not time but a construction of it.

I generally think of time as a bar extending forward infinitely and back until (unknown?) and my life being something that moves along it. If I look ahead and set goals for the timing of tasks or actions then I become more conscious of the passing of time. If I have no solid goals set ahead of time then time becomes a bit blurry and I can go through days without really noticing the passing of time and only noticing the clock here and there. I have times in my head for certain things, ex lunch 12 ish and dinner 5ish so when I first notice the clock after 12 then I start making lunch and for dinner its actually 4 that triggers the "its time to prep food" since dinner tends to take longer to make. I have no set bedtime so I go to bed when my eyes start to close on their own or 3 at the latest (rarely stay up past three). And then theres the whole physics view of time. I'm very into physics so here and there I will be considering the influence of gravity and movement on our perception of time.

Now is mostly what I see. I hate planning, schedules and dates. I try not to think more than a day ahead if I can help it.

But the actual mental image of a year - I use the wheel of fortune from Price is Right, with twelve panels. But I don't know when I did what, or with whom. Just that it happened and I can guess the year but be very wrong.

My mind has a personal relationship with time since I was 12years old.

On the hour I’m drawn towards the time.
When a clock anywhere in my house reaches the hour then I sense it, even the second hand will be on the hour.
Whenever I wake up in the morning, (no matter what time I set off for bed), I wake up at 04.00am or 07.00am on the dot, without the aid of an alarm clock. It’s dark in my bedroom and the clock is sat on the wall opposite my bed.

If someone asks me the time I sometimes know the time without looking, even if I haven’t seen a time piece for hours (I don't own a watch).

I did some research on the subject and found that only 150 people have ever being able to do this mind feat with time, all subjects live with autism.

My sense of time is quite bad. If I don't watch closely, an entire day can go by without my noticing it at all. I don't have any regular schedules at all -- I may eat lunch at 10 am, 12 noon, 7 pm, or not at all. Supper, if I remember to eat it, is typically any time between 5 pm and 4 am.

I also tend to be rather patient, especially if I have something to occupy my time. I was supposed to meet someone one day at about 3 pm but he said he might be a bit late. He finally showed up at about 7 pm.

If I'm expecting an important package to arrive, I rarely bother to use their web site to track the package. I just wait for it. In 2012, I waited about nine or ten months for something that I had ordered before I finally canceled the order.