Time Management

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Isn't Time Management an oxymoron? How can you manage that which does not exist?

OK. So I'm being a bit facetious. But I'm wondering how much my perception of time effects my capacity for planning and if this is a similar issue for others here.

I have long been aware that I really don't perceive time in a typical manner. Past and future are things that have no palpable existence in my reality. I've always fallen back to a Einsteinian space time sort of explanation, but it's more a way of deflecting questions and outwardly reinforcing my weirdness so people back off. But the lack of realness to the past and future really impacts my activities.

I think I figured out that the difference for me and others that do perceive the future as real is that while in a theoretical physics sense, the future does not exist as some linear flow of time, this conceptualization of linear time has psychological force to most people. In their minds, tomorrow is as real as a rock hitting their head. It has so much psychological force that they will adjust their behavior to accommodate their perceptions of tomorrow just as they would move their head to avoid a flying rock.

But my perception of tomorrow is ethereal and lacks sufficient substance to generate any of the psychological force necessary for the type of planning required in this highly structured culture. I make plans, but they feel like tenuous abstractions, little puffs of smoke that get blown away in the breezes of today.

Does this make any sense? Is this an ASD thing, this atypical time sense?

Time does exist, it has its own dimension.

Not really where I wanted to go with the conversation, but time does not exist separately from space and the linear construct of time about which this culture organizes itself is more psychological than physical. Psychological time assumes an absolute frame of reference and people operate on that assumption. Space/time has no such reference.

Since time is in space-time, technically, it does exist. However, you are talking about time in relation to earth and how humans experience it on this planet. It still exists here. It's simply a measurement. It's abstract, but abstractions are capable of existing.

Which is why I said I was being facetious when I said time doesn't exist. What is relevant is that people organize their activities around their perceptions of time. I am wondering how much my perception of time is at variance to most people and if similar time sense anomalies are pervasive among those on the spectrum.



The material existence of abstractions is a topic in and of itself. It is not one that is amenable to resolution.

One angle:

I guess it's a 'trajectory sense' as a measurement or gauge of past events in relation to the "now."

The "sense" would partly be incumbent on the strength of past memories or the strength of one's experience--' the impressionable- ness' it has on your mind-- and I think emotion plays a huge part in this as a factor in memories.

If a lot or most of things from the outside bounce off of you, as not making their way 'into you,' then the memory is distant and available only on recall-- a passive memory-- it would have little influence in the context of the awareness of events- "or time."

If I had this weak memory, I guess 'the here and now' would be the only thing that's in front of my literal eyes- much like an animal. I'd bet today as this very moment in time is as about the only awareness that is in an animals psyche.

Ooo. That's a very interesting description.

I think my perception of time, in the form of observing my past, is a bit different than what most people experience. I’ve read that non-verbal working memory is the foundation of how someone gains a sense of the measurement between items in time.

Non-verbal working memory is where people visualize images in their mind. I can’t do this, at all. I cannot visualize ANYTHING, in my mind. All the information in my head is just there. I can think about items from my past verbally or conceptually, but these items aren’t tied to anything sensory.

My memories and all other acquired information is invisible, odorless, tasteless, massless, and silent data to me. I’m sure that the information is stored categorical somehow… but I didn’t have any conscious input into that categorization process.

My memories are just there, floating in a big pool of senseless information. Given the way information is stored in my mind, I cannot estimate any type of measurement between memories. Something that happened to me at age five is on an equally level as something that happened to me last week. I know the age I was during a memory from my past, but I have no appreciation for the distance between memories from different time periods. Past is just past, and all things in the past are somewhat equal.

I hope that made some kind of sense. I figure this is probably quite different from the internal experience visual thinkers have, regarding their past and time in general.

Josh

Ding!
I've been thinking about this on and off all day and couldn't get the words for it - but you just have.

I know things happened at various times but they're just memories, in the same way that the memory of a house-brick is like the memory of a plank of wood. Both just "are". They're without time associations and exist outside of a time track.

There are time and date labels attached to some memories, like descriptions on museum exhibits, but they're just labels from which I can calculate the distance between the memories and now. Without the labels, they're just memories of events that happened "somewhen" (ie. simply not "now") and are therefore uncalibrated and of equal position in "somewhen".

But I'm a very visual thinker and unlike yours, all my memories are complete with the sensory information present when they were stored.
Except for a sense of time. For that I rely on the labels. If something happened and its memory has no label, then it might just as well have happened within the last second as within the last 10 years. I only know the memory "is", and it's quite difficult to work out "when".

Yes, it did. I hope mine does too.
(I'd tried through several edits to explain it better but stopped because it was actually making it worse )

My standard answers for when things happened in the recent past are "the other day" (which could be any other day besides today, right?) and "a couple weeks ago" if the person asks for something more specific. I just can't judge if it was 2 weeks, 6 weeks, or 6 months. For longer terms, I have references like "when I was little", "when I lived with my parents", "when I lived with my cousin", etc., but to specify how long ago those were requires me to do math based off of a fixed date. (I have to calculate how old I am when someone asks me too.)

I have difficulty planning for the future as well. Even if I know a specific date on which something is going to happen, when the day arrives, I do not associate it with the date and the event.

Imagine what it would be like if we didn't have clocks.

I like to think that without the 24/7 we would open ourselves up to new ways of thinking about time, it'd be all together more abstract, that ideas of time and space would be those we could all explore rather than just for scientists to hypothesise about, time travel would be a whole new concept.

Those are the types of reference I use too - rather vague 'it was out there somewhen' type references. To find out a more accurate 'when', I have to find some memories with date labels and then try to judge if the memory with no date 'feels' like it should be before or after that date. It's a bit hit & miss, because it often feels like nothing different at all and all I know is that it happened in the past. But the digging sometimes turns up other memories which do have dates attached so the 'when' of an event can then be narrowed down a little.
That's the oddest thing, though: my long-term memory of an event is normally very detailed in everything - except time.

I only remember because I've deliberately made a point of remembering it! It's never been something I just 'know' and always has to be remembered - like a new telephone number.

Yep, same here. It's always a slightly surprised case of 'oh - it's today that happens' when the day actually arrives. That's the only time an event takes on any sort of realness: when it's 'now'.
Any plans I make, no matter how carefully or with how much detail, still feel like a quick note on the back of an envelope and never firm or substantial. So when the day arrives that the thing has to be done I'm 'caught out' and need to hastily re-invent plans on the spot.

Time is different things to different people. Some people live in a time warp. Some people live for today, in the present - something I can't do, and other people are very future minded and they live in their imagined world of the future. This is a good thing. If we were all the same, the world would be a boring place to live.

Yup, I think I get what your saying.

Great word "somewhen." I may have to borrow that sometime.

I'd love to claim it as my own, but it actually came from "The End of Eternity" by Isaac Azimov. (good read, BTW)

Lots to think about. While nobody describes the exact same thing, it seems there is a certain disjointed sense of time going on here. So is this an aspie thing?