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Ha! What a lovely way with words you have. That made me laugh. I’ve recently ‘gone solo’ and I decided to experiment with caring a little less about time. The

Ha! What a lovely way with words you have. That made me laugh. I’ve recently ‘gone solo’ and I decided to experiment with caring a little less about time. The only starkly visible clock in the house is on the oven, so I reset it. But it still tells a time, and I knew I’d eventually figure out the delta, so I covered it with tape. It’s funny how lunch is supposed to be at ~midday, but when you don’t know when midday is, does it really matter when you eat lunch? It’s a really, really hard habit to kick. Gradually I get more to the stage where I eat “when I could eat”, but still. Lunch is at lunchtime. This experiment did make me realise just how much I looked at that clock. Check the time, check the time. To what end? I can’t tell you. That habit does appear to be on the wane.

adiM 3y ago
It will be fascinating if there were a way for you to record the actual time when you do eat lunch (without the time being revealed to you; say a Rasberry Pi where you press a switch to record current time but it has no display). I am curious how much our body clock synchronizes with real time. I see that in my kids, who don't yet know how to read time. But they are hungry right at noon and 7pm, and will get cranky if they don't get something to eat within 15 min of that. Do adults retain such strong internal body clocks?
- m-i-l 3y ago
  > "I am curious how much our body clock synchronizes with real time" Various experiments have been performed with people in caves, where they don't have "time cues" such as natural daylight. From the Michel Siffre wikipedia entry[0]: "He found that without time cues, several people including himself adjusted to a 48-hour rather than a 24-hour cycle ... Several astronauts reported experiences similar to those experienced in underground experiments such as loss of short-term memory to being isolated from external time references." And for Stefania Follini[1]: "her biological clock drifted away from its regular rhythm to following first a 28-hour day, and later on a 48-hour one ... When she finally emerged from the cave at the experiment's end ... she estimated that it was ... only two months from the start of the experiment instead of the four that had actually transpired". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Siffre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Siffre [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefania_Follini https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefania_Follini
vasco 3y ago
When I do this my body adapts to only being hungry after I'm done with work, making me go about 9 hours without food (plus the sleep time before). I found that without clocks I will just be hungry for a lot of food after work and then I'm sorted, making it kind of a natural intermittent fasting.
lloeki 3y ago
I've always had a peculiar, extremely elastic relationship with time, which I do perceive, only it's wildly all over the place, day in day out; a "moment" could fold hours into an eyeblink, or it could make split seconds last an eternity and a half. A tidy calendar, reminders for basically everything, and setting up "mental tripwires"† is the only way I found to be any sort of reliable. Finding balance between the constant dread of missing something I have to do that turns me into a slave to the clock and being able to live a relaxed life is an eternal battle of mine. † Some kind of autosuggestion trickery, where I lay a callback upon some unrelated physical thing I know will happen in order to trigger another thought. e.g "when I cross the kitchen door I'll think about texting foo about bar" > Check the time, check the time. To what end? I can’t tell you. It was Grandfather’s watch and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it’s rather excruciatingly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father’s. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools. I don’t suppose anybody ever deliberately listens to a watch or a clock. You don’t have to. You can be oblivious to the sound for a long while, then in a second of ticking it can create in the mind unbroken the long diminishing parade of time you didn’t hear. It's always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret. - William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury > Lunch is at lunchtime. “Drink up,” said Ford, “you’ve got three pints to get through.” “Three pints?” said Arthur. “At lunchtime?” The man next to ford grinned and nodded happily. Ford ignored him. He said, “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.” - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- coldtea 3y ago
  >I've always had a peculiar, extremely elastic relationship with time, which I do perceive, only it's wildly all over the place, day in day out; a "moment" could fold hours into an eyeblink, or it could make split seconds last an eternity and a half. A tidy calendar, reminders for basically everything, and setting up "mental tripwires"† is the only way I found to be any sort of reliable. All quite common in ADD/ADHD.

adiM 3y ago

It will be fascinating if there were a way for you to record the actual time when you do eat lunch (without the time being revealed to you; say a Rasberry Pi where you press a switch to record current time but it has no display). I am curious how much our body clock synchronizes with real time. I see that in my kids, who don't yet know how to read time. But they are hungry right at noon and 7pm, and will get cranky if they don't get something to eat within 15 min of that. Do adults retain such strong internal body clocks?

m-i-l 3y ago
> "I am curious how much our body clock synchronizes with real time" Various experiments have been performed with people in caves, where they don't have "time cues" such as natural daylight. From the Michel Siffre wikipedia entry[0]: "He found that without time cues, several people including himself adjusted to a 48-hour rather than a 24-hour cycle ... Several astronauts reported experiences similar to those experienced in underground experiments such as loss of short-term memory to being isolated from external time references." And for Stefania Follini[1]: "her biological clock drifted away from its regular rhythm to following first a 28-hour day, and later on a 48-hour one ... When she finally emerged from the cave at the experiment's end ... she estimated that it was ... only two months from the start of the experiment instead of the four that had actually transpired". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Siffre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Siffre [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefania_Follini https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefania_Follini

vasco 3y ago

When I do this my body adapts to only being hungry after I'm done with work, making me go about 9 hours without food (plus the sleep time before). I found that without clocks I will just be hungry for a lot of food after work and then I'm sorted, making it kind of a natural intermittent fasting.

lloeki 3y ago

I've always had a peculiar, extremely elastic relationship with time, which I do perceive, only it's wildly all over the place, day in day out; a "moment" could fold hours into an eyeblink, or it could make split seconds last an eternity and a half. A tidy calendar, reminders for basically everything, and setting up "mental tripwires"† is the only way I found to be any sort of reliable. Finding balance between the constant dread of missing something I have to do that turns me into a slave to the clock and being able to live a relaxed life is an eternal battle of mine. † Some kind of autosuggestion trickery, where I lay a callback upon some unrelated physical thing I know will happen in order to trigger another thought. e.g "when I cross the kitchen door I'll think about texting foo about bar" > Check the time, check the time. To what end? I can’t tell you. It was Grandfather’s watch and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it’s rather excruciatingly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father’s. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools. I don’t suppose anybody ever deliberately listens to a watch or a clock. You don’t have to. You can be oblivious to the sound for a long while, then in a second of ticking it can create in the mind unbroken the long diminishing parade of time you didn’t hear. It's always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret. - William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury > Lunch is at lunchtime. “Drink up,” said Ford, “you’ve got three pints to get through.” “Three pints?” said Arthur. “At lunchtime?” The man next to ford grinned and nodded happily. Ford ignored him. He said, “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.” - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

coldtea 3y ago
>I've always had a peculiar, extremely elastic relationship with time, which I do perceive, only it's wildly all over the place, day in day out; a "moment" could fold hours into an eyeblink, or it could make split seconds last an eternity and a half. A tidy calendar, reminders for basically everything, and setting up "mental tripwires"† is the only way I found to be any sort of reliable. All quite common in ADD/ADHD.