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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Your sense of time
This matters because the felt sense of duration is stubborn, and waiting until it corrects itself means waiting a long while. So treat the padding as a rule you follow rather than a belief you hold. Plenty of people run their whole calendar this way, quietly certain each time that it is unnecessary, and quietly on time.
The sun and moon were given phases so that you might know the number of years and how to calculate time (Quran 10:5). Calculation is offered as the instrument, above the impression.
يونس
هُوَ ٱلَّذِي جَعَلَ ٱلشَّمۡسَ ضِيَآءࣰ وَٱلۡقَمَرَ نُورࣰ ا وَقَدَّرَهُۥ مَنَازِلَ لِتَعۡلَمُواْ عَدَدَ ٱلسِّنِينَ وَٱلۡحِسَابَۚ مَا خَلَقَ ٱللَّهُ ذَٰلِكَ إِلَّا بِٱلۡحَقِّۚ يُفَصِّلُ ٱلۡأٓيَٰتِ لِقَوۡمࣲ يَعۡلَمُونَ
It is He who made the sun a shining radiance and the moon a light, determining phases for it so that you might know the number of years and how to calculate time. God did not create all these without a true purpose; He explains His signs to those who understand
Qur’an 10:5read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
An experiment found that induced anxiety made time seem to pass more quickly, while fear did not. It is a small demonstration of a bigger point: the felt passage of time is pushed about by your state, in specific directions, so it is not a reliable instrument. That was a laboratory study in a general sample rather than a test of padding your schedule.
Sarigiannidis I, Grillon C, Ernst M, Roiser JP, Robinson OJ. (2020). Anxiety makes time pass quicker while fear has no effect.. Cognition doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Behaviour can change while the intuition behind it stays exactly as wrong as it was.
Choosing the dull useful thing over the bright easy one starts with a pause, not with willpower. If the pause never happens, nothing downstream of it gets a chance to happen either.
Some people do not really perceive time passing. It is more like weather, something you are inside of, and then it is suddenly six o'clock.
Time speeds up inside something absorbing and crawls inside something dull, and for many people with ADHD that swing is much wider. Which means your sense of time is least reliable exactly where you need it most.