Relaxed time & concentrated time

[paigetheoracle]

Not sure if this is the right forum for this but here goes.

I notice that when I'm relaxed, time seems to rapidly slip through my fingers like water - yet, when I'm involved with something, time seems to slow down to accommodate whatever I want to do.

I've noticed before that the emotions seem to affect the flow of time but this is the first time I've seen it as a reflection of basic states as well.

Has anybody else noticed either of these phenomena in their own livesi.e emotion and time or activity/ non-activity and time flow? (People talk of objective and subjective time and this obviously links to the latter).

[sanctus]

Yes i feel the same, but the other way around, when I'm involved in something (for example working in a bar with heaps of customers) time flies, but when I'm sitting down and doing nothing (for example waiting for someone) then time doesn't pass.

The latter of my examples isn't really a relaxation, I agree that time goes quick when I'm hiking in the mountains and take a break to relax...

[Kriminal99]

I've experienced extreme versions of this before.

Sugar reaction speeds time for me
Often when I eat small particle carbohydrates and some kinds of sugar (anything with high glycemic index it seems) I get lethargic. I lose motivation to do much of anything, can't/don't really concentrate on anything really well, and time seems to go by really fast. I often lay down somewhere and pass out and druel alot.

Sugar Coma
One time I ate an entire bag of particuarly bad candy when I was younger, and afterwards ended up on my bed looking at the ceiling. I did not close my eyes but rather stared at the ceiling for what seemed like a few minutes. When I got up with a large amount of druel on me that apparently I did not even realize i had gotten on me, I checked the clock and to my surprise it was 5 HOURS later.

Memory effects how you percieve time

It is my belief that what had happened is that I experienced the time normally. However A) Even had I been in a normal state all I did was stare at the unchanging ceiling and no other stimuli were experienced, and B) I was in a state that I already know inhibits my storing of memories.

Because of these two things I think after the fact it seems that time went by quickly because there is a gap in my memory. When looking back I see myself getting up, and I remember what happened before I laid down and conclude that the former happened immediately after the latter.

I think its the same thing when we normally percieve differences in how quickly time goes by. When events are more emotionally signifigant to you, I think you are more likely to store them as memories. The more memories you store from a period of time, the longer and more robust that time period seems to you.

[InfiniteNow]

Here's an interesting article:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...&dopt=Abstract

A "theory of relativity" for cognitive elasticity of time and modality dimensions supporting constant working memory capacity: involvement of harmonics among ultradian clocks?


...
Similar logic of periodic signals may hold for slower ultradian rhythms, including hypothetical ones that contribute to time-tagging and fresh sense of familiarity of a day's event memories. Similar logic may also hold for spatial periodic functions across brain tissue that, hypothetically, represent cognitive information. Thus, harmonic transitions among temporal and spatial periodic functions are a possible vehicle for the cognitive dimensional elasticity that conserves WM [working memory] capacity.

Supporting roles are proposed of (a) basal ganglia, as a high-capacity cache for traces of recent experience temporarily suspended from active task-relevant processing and (b) of hippocampus as a phase and interval comparator for oscillating signals, whose spatiotemporal dynamics are topologically equivalent to a toroidal grid.

[paigetheoracle]

Originally Posted by sanctus

Yes i feel the same, but the other way around, when I'm involved in something (for example working in a bar with heaps of customers) time flies, but when I'm sitting down and doing nothing (for example waiting for someone) then time doesn't pass.

The latter of my examples isn't really a relaxation, I agree that time goes quick when I'm hiking in the mountains and take a break to relax...

Yes it's funny but that was how I reacted to time until recently, when I changed from a Night Owl to a Morning Lark (I was rushing headlong into the future - now it seems I'm relaxing into the past: It's almost like a pole reversal). There is, sense wise, a change too - I no longer favour the visual (TV/film etc) but the sonic (music/radio). Funny that?