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.
Back in the early days of the pandemic, when it became clear that the virus would upend our everyday lives, it wasn't a stretch to assume that the coming weeks and months would be an emotional roller coaster.
Thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation, my team and I developed a smartphone application to document the emotions, perceptions and behaviors of Americans during the pandemic on a month-by-month basis. We've been able to track the extent to which Americans' internal clocks went haywire — and explore why this might have happened.
...
There's truth to the aphorism "time flies when you're having fun." On the other hand, the opposite seems to occur when we're scared, sad or anxious. ...
... If you felt like time slowed down during the early days of the pandemic, you weren't alone.
In April, we asked 1,000 Americans how time seemed to be passing during March. About half said they felt time dragged and a quarter indicated that time passed more quickly than normal. The remaining quarter reported that they didn't experience a change in the passage of time.
Whether time slowed or sped up was most closely related to people's emotions. Those who reported that they were most nervous or stressed also indicated that time passed more slowly, while those who felt happy or glad tended to experience time passing more quickly.... In April, about 10% of our sample moved from feeling like time dragged to feeling like time flew. More people were feeling relaxed and calm, and interestingly, it was these positive feelings, along with the perception of time flying, that predicted whether people would engage in social distancing. So it's possible that people's improved mood and the shift in their perception of time motivated their willingness to socially distance.
Still, there was a big chunk who felt — and probably still feel — that time is dragging.
Fortunately, if you feel this way, you can do something about it. Exercise, hobbies and a routine help speed up your perception of time. Sure, it might not "fly by," but its pace could quicken just enough to make you feel a little better.
https://www.livescience.com/pandemic...n-of-time.html