The stay-at-home slowdown – how the pandemic upended our perception of time.

[2greys]

Think back to life before stay-at-home orders. Does it feel like just yesterday? Or does it seem like ages ago – like some distant era?

Of course, time is precise. It takes 23.9 hours for the Earth to make one rotation on its axis. But that’s not how we experience time. Instead, internally, it’s often something we feel or sense, rather than objectively measure.

It turns out our emotional state tends to play a big role in our perception of time – a dynamic that I’ve studied for 10 years. Much research has shown that relative to an emotional negative state, a positive one makes time appear to pass more quickly.

theconversation.com/the-sta...

[Badbessie]

To me the time as gone really fast. Over the last 12 weeks there as been a lot going on. From the not so simple task of obtaining food supplies to management of illness within the home. I keep thinking it is June already. Where as the year gone?

[2greys in reply to Badbessie]

The same here, it has gone really fast. Especially the two weeks with the virus itself and the two weeks following with extreme fatigue, sleeping a lot of the time.

[Gingerboy1960]

I think the last three months have flown by ....

[HungryHufflepuff]

May seemed to last forever. I've never known time go so slowly. Each time I looked there was still a whole lot of May still to go. Maybe because it had five weekends and every one of them was a holiday here. But June is flying by, I can't believe we're already a third way into June.

[Kristicats]

To say I’ve been home and usually so busy it’s gone really quickly . Seems every time I look round it’s Friday again!

[Hidden]

I find the time has gone quite quickly but I am having trouble remembering what day it is! I have to keep setting reminders to do things like ordering shopping or scripts.

[2greys in reply to Hidden]

I too forget what day it is, I am forever hovering the mouse over the "clock" in the bottom, right of the computer; multiple times a day even. I also set up reminders in the calender on my phone.

[Ergendl]

Time has flown by, but that's because I've worked on several projects I might otherwise not have had the time for.