Where Did the Time Go? || Episode 314

Shannon thought she had two hours before recording. Then freshly out of the shower, she realized she had just five minutes before they were supposed to start. Somewhere in there, what felt like a blink had apparently lasted an hour. That leads to a comparison of two very different relationships with time: Shannon can look at a clock and have no idea what time it is five minutes later, while Janine can usually guess the time within five minutes without checking. From alarms, buffers, and hard departure times to vacuuming until the battery runs out, they explore what time blindness actually feels like—and then wander into the especially strange experience of pandemic time, when individual days could drag while whole weeks seemed to disappear. What We Talk About 01:08 — Shannon’s mysteriously missing hour and realizing five minutes before recording that she was running very, very late 02:10 — Hating being late while also having time blindness and very little innate sense of time passing 03:00 — Janine’s remarkably accurate internal clock, Shannon’s very different experience, and whether time blindness might have an upside 04:40 — Alarms, timers, travel time, and remembering that “20 minutes away” doesn’t mean you can leave exactly 20 minutes before an appointment 07:10 — Why specific clock times for stopping, heading out, and getting in the car work better for Shannon than thinking in five- or ten-minute increments 09:42 — How cleaning the litter box turned into vacuuming until the vacuum ran out of charge 10:54 — Shannon remembers the NLP idea of being “in time” versus “through time” as another way of thinking about different experiences of time 13:25 — Pandemic time: impossibly long days, surprisingly fast weeks, jigsaw puzzles, and what happens when there isn’t much to distinguish one day from another Key Takeaways • People can experience the passage of time very differently, from having a strong internal sense of the clock to barely noticing how much time has passed. • Getting deeply absorbed in something can feel wonderful and make flow easier, while also making it surprisingly easy to lose track of everything else. • Specific clock times can be easier to act on than relative instructions like “in five minutes” or “a little before I need to leave.” • Buffers matter because getting somewhere includes all the small transitions around the obvious travel time: stopping what you’re doing, getting out the door, parking, and walking in. • When days are very similar, time can feel distorted: individual days may drag while whole weeks seem to disappear. The Bottom Line Time turns out to be a surprisingly subjective thing. Janine can practically tell the time without a clock; Shannon can accidentally vacuum for an hour and a half without noticing. And both remember the pandemic as somehow both very long and strangely compressed. They don’t exactly solve the mystery of time, but they do end up noticing just how differently we can experience it—and ways to deal with the downsides. Want More Like This? Episode 137: Superpowers and Kryptonite Episode 185: We’re Back! Episode 241: Building a Buffer Connect With Us We’d love to know, what’s time like for you? Let us know in the comments or on Instagram and Facebook - @GettingtoGoodEnough