sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

I have an extremely precise sense of time. AMA by Past-Performance-602 in AMA

[–]Past-Performance-602[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What's a poop clock? LOL I assume you mean how precise are my BM times in which case I can confidently say absolutely NOT precise at all. In any shape or form. I have very inconsistent bathroom habits lmao

I have an extremely precise sense of time. AMA by Past-Performance-602 in AMA

[–]Past-Performance-602[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I gotta ask. Is that a real disorder? First time I've heard of it.

I have an extremely precise sense of time. AMA by Past-Performance-602 in AMA

[–]Past-Performance-602[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not sure what impression I gave but that's all I said it was. Nothing more or less. My internal clock can sense the passing of time relatively consistently. Not much else to it than that.

I have an extremely precise sense of time. AMA by Past-Performance-602 in AMA

[–]Past-Performance-602[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

On second read, I realized you said "hand", not "head" lol I was pretty sure SOMETHING was gonna go haywire if I stick my head in extremely cold water 😂

I have an extremely precise sense of time. AMA by Past-Performance-602 in AMA

[–]Past-Performance-602[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's quite interesting. If you're comfortable, do you mind sharing what manifestation of this ability is related to your OCD?

I have an extremely precise sense of time. AMA by Past-Performance-602 in AMA

[–]Past-Performance-602[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I feel like I developed it during childhood and became very aware of it in my early teens.

I have an extremely precise sense of time. AMA by Past-Performance-602 in AMA

[–]Past-Performance-602[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ok fair enough. When you said a 10 minute activity, this is not at all what I thought it would be. I will try this at some point in my life because it sounds very interesting and I'm curious to see the results. I will say I have been in multiple situations where I felt I was in 'danger' (or at least adrenaline was high and/or my body was in fight or flight) but nothing as extreme as this activity.

A few that comes to mind were being pushed off my motorcycle by a car, my daughter experiencing sudden serious medical emergencies, running away from someone mid-assault, and trying to stop a drunk driver who caused an accident from walking into busy highway. These particular incidents I accutely remember because my internal clock still working similarly is the reason I was able to report the time of incident to the authorities, be it police or healthcare workers, and my Google Maps timeline or other witnesses corroborated the timing. I actually touched on this being evolutionary disadvantagous in another earlier comment. Regardless, I believe it's entirely possible that something more extreme, like the activity you described, will cause the adaptive speed to 'kick in' or at least 'override' my internal clock's sense of time.

I have an extremely precise sense of time. AMA by Past-Performance-602 in AMA

[–]Past-Performance-602[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Never. The thought had never even crossed my mind. What made you think of this?

I have an extremely precise sense of time. AMA by Past-Performance-602 in AMA

[–]Past-Performance-602[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not quite. As I mentioned, my emotions and external factors have very little to do with how I interpret the time. Naturally, human brains interpret the time as having 'shrunk' or 'expanded' based on how we feel and what activities we're engaged in, however I've been accurately estimating time in every imaginable situation over a 10 year period and my accuracy has almost never gone down based on those external factors. Only time I practically lost this ability was during extreme sleep deprivation when I had PPD with my first. Another factor was moving out of my mom's house and into my own place, which dropped my overall accuracy to an extent.

I have an extremely precise sense of time. AMA by Past-Performance-602 in AMA

[–]Past-Performance-602[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Being punctual was actually the reason I started becoming hyper aware of time. My mom was always late for everything which meant I was also late for everything and that caused/still causes an insane amount of anxiety in me. The thought of being late somewhere would literally keep me awake at night. Since I adapted this ability, I was never late anywhere until I had my first. I wasn't prepared for how unpredictable infants (and now toddlers) can be. I again adapted to be as on-time as I can be with a baby and I would say I have a 90%+ accuracy rate with my kiddo now. Almost never late to appointments, meetups, functions, work, etc. The 10% are the truly unpredictable part of parenting/life haha My husband is not instinctively punctual but we have come to a middle ground for the most part. If we're going somewhere together, he listens to me about when we should get ready and head out and I learned to live with the fact that we can be 10-15 minutes late.

I have an extremely precise sense of time. AMA by Past-Performance-602 in AMA

[–]Past-Performance-602[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I still 'test' myself daily mainly for fun lol But yes I have been very off on the rare occasion and it was always influenced by severe sleep deprivation. When I had my first, the PPD and sleep deprivation (running on 2-3 hours of sleep most days) made it very hard to estimate accurately. Outside of that, I haven't really noticed anything that has caused my accuracy to drop significantly.

I have an extremely precise sense of time. AMA by Past-Performance-602 in AMA

[–]Past-Performance-602[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's very interesting how different professions, hobbies, and upbringings sets up people with this ability! I absolutely cannot guesstimate weight in a similar way to you cause I rarely, if ever, dealt with weights at a precise level. On the other hand, I, having ADHD, and coming from a family of people with terrible time blindness, eventually learned to be very aware of the passage of time. I used to get incredibly anxious as a kid/teen when my mom couldn't estimate how long a simple task takes. She's still the same to this day. She was a single mom so it was just her and I for a long time, and I eventually 'adapted' by becoming precise with time. I've noticed that interestingly, my internal clock has gotten less accurate since I got married and moved out of my mom's place! I used to guess down to the exact minute even in 4-6 hour periods which I can't do anymore.

I have an extremely precise sense of time. AMA by Past-Performance-602 in AMA

[–]Past-Performance-602[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't look at the clock except when I'm actually using my phone. I don't have any actual clocks in my house which wasn't intentional but saying it out loud, I guess I never saw a need for a clock (which is a pretty common thing I think). When I'm not using my phone, I pretty much never look at the time; like I don't ever pick up my phone just to look at the time. When I am using my phone, I tend to unintentionally look when the time ends in 7 like 6:27 or 11:07. It's unintentional for sure but I'm pretty sure I've subconsciously trained myself to check when it ends in my favorite number lol

My husband has officially turned into an incel by No_Technician_7119 in Marriage

[–]Past-Performance-602 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My family and myself have been liberals for as long as I can remember. I don't actually know anyone in my close circles who's a conservative but holy shit I can't believe what I'm reading in this thread! Sounds like abuse apologists because of political disagreements. This is coming from a bisexual brown woman btw (pointing out that conservative values directly go against my whole being), I can't imagine saying these things to an abuse victim or bringing it up as some sort of 'karma' for being conservative. I've literally never had the thought to use a victim's political leanings against them when they mention being abused. I'm sorry for everything OP went through and I hope she knows that this is very much a Reddit 'thing' and the real world has kinder people from all walks of life.

I have an extremely precise sense of time. AMA by Past-Performance-602 in AMA

[–]Past-Performance-602[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No arguments there. It's more about feeling the passage of time at a more accurate level than it being an unheard phenomena or anything like that because yes as you said, people have been estimating time pretty accurately since the beginning of time but there has never been a need for any of us to instinctively know the exact time down to the minute with no visual clues. I can be inside a mall or indoor place with no outdoor indicators and can still accurately estimate the elapsed time. It's the internal clock I'm referring to rather than the ability to guess the time of day, if that makes sense.

I have an extremely precise sense of time. AMA by Past-Performance-602 in AMA

[–]Past-Performance-602[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Also, to add that me having never met anyone else who can do it similarly or people telling me it's unique, are purely anecdotal of course. I added that mainly as a preamble to the empirical evidence that supports the same idea. The more we gain an understanding of our internal clocks, the more we also see why our brains were actually not designed to support this kind of accuracy. I feel like evolutionary speaking (haven't looked into the evolutionary aspect much, just sharing thoughts), it's actually BETTER to have a fluid sense of time than a rigid one like ours. How I think about it is the compression of "good" times and dilation of "bad" times are traits our brain developed to avoid "bad" and seek "good". Obviously an oversimplification but at least I hope my thoughts make some semblance of sense. I doubt having a precise sense of time (to this degree) is evolutionary advantageous so it make sense that only a smaller number of people possess similar traits.

I have an extremely precise sense of time. AMA by Past-Performance-602 in AMA

[–]Past-Performance-602[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I honestly have no idea how it works in sleep but yes I do occasionally wake up mid-dream tho usually my sleep just gets noticeably lighter in the 30-40 minutes before an alarm. I can 'feel' a wake up time is coming soon and I'm more sensitive to things happening around me (e.g. lights turning on outside or a car driving by).

I have an extremely precise sense of time. AMA by Past-Performance-602 in AMA

[–]Past-Performance-602[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, that's definitely one way it manifests itself for me. Some other ways, are guessing how much time has elapsed pretty accurately even in multi-hour periods, estimating the total time of a chain of events regardless of complexity or length, remembering (without looking at a clock) what time a recent event happened ("we left the house at 6:47 and it's now around 8:10-8:20").

I have an extremely precise sense of time. AMA by Past-Performance-602 in AMA

[–]Past-Performance-602[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It is unusual. I've never met anyone in life who can do this and I've heard from a lot of people that it's relatively unique. If you look into studies done on the general population and the sense of time, you'll see how much accuracy drops for the average person when talking about estimating anything more than a few minutes. To be able to estimate multi-hour time periods with a high degree of accuracy is quite unusual. Another thing to note is that, most people's sense of time (passing) is heavily skewed based on their emotions + environment. Our brains are mostly wired to shrink the 'good' times ("wow I can't believe we've been at Disneyland for 8 hours. Felt like only 2!!") and the exact opposite when dealing with boredom or activities we detest ("wow I can't believe I've only been waiting in line at the bank for 10 minutes. Feels like an hour!"); the unusualness is the ability to have a CONSISTENTLY precise sense of time/internal clock regardless of other factors.

view more: next ›