How do you experience the passage of time?

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I can work for several hours and feel progressively more tired, but if someone were to ask me (sans watch) whether I had worked 2 hours or 3 hours I would have no idea because I don't feel the passage of time. If you don't have a clock available can you tell how much time has passed?

I feel time very very accurately. I can sometimes tell time down to the minute. I dont feel today is so accurate. I think at the moment it is... 2.42pm. I will go look at my cellphone clock. It is.... 14.43. cripes. That is one weird talent. I am not joking about this.

If I know I need to know the passage of time I can be fairly accurate, but if I do not I have no sense of time - 6am to 12am can go by in a flash.

I have to keep timers and clocks around because I have practically zero concept of passing time.

I understand time intellectually. I know a typical rock or pop song is about three minutes long. I know movies are typically about two hours long. I can figure out what time to wake up by counting backwards from when I have to be someplace, how long it takes me to get there (which I know from timing myself many times), how long to give myself to wake up and get ready (also learned over the course of years from timing myself.)

But I do not understand time viscerally. If I don't keep clocks and timers around, I am "lost in time." When I get up in the morning and have to be someplace, I have to have not only figured how long it will take me to get there and how long in total it takes me to wake up and get ready, but "landmarks" like "I have to have started putting on my clothes by X o'clock." or "I must have finished eating breakfast by a quarter to X o'clock."

I actually make time schedules for morning routines (different schedules for different days because not all my classes start at the same time each day and another time schedule for church) because I can't estimate how much time I need on the fly. I have to have written out my schedule the night before. I keep them taped up on the wall by my desk at home.

And I do homework with timers to keep me on task and to time my breaks so I don't just sit and play all evening.

To live in the world of other people, I require accurate and accessible timepieces in order to function.

I can tell the passage of time, very well. I can usually tell, by how many songs I've listened to on YouTube and how long they are.

Ah yes. I shall explain this yesterday.

I seem to have the fuzzy sense of time like the OP. Maybe it has to do with intense focus or having a non-multi-tasking brain? I can try to watch the clock -- say there's an upcoming appointment -- and the intervals will be from 5 minutes to maybe 3 hours, even if I'm trying to consistently check every ten minutes.

I also have a hard time dating my memories. I can rarely remember what year something happened -- maybe it was last year, or ten years ago -- it all seems mixed up or all the same. It's like the timestamp on the memories isn't there.

Sometimes I can do this--it weirds me out when I'm right.

However, I usually feel time passing more slowly than it actually is. For example, at work I'll think I've been there for two hours and it's only been one hour.

It's not just context-specific, though--it happens in a lot of places and situations. For example, I feel like I've been on the forum for three hours straight--it's only been an hour and a half.

The strangest is when I wake up thinking it's incredibly late and it's actually two or three hours earlier than I "felt."

(*rolls over and goes back to sleep*--sometimes )

I have the same problem and I spent years building a life timeline, dating what I could and figuring estimates of datse by what was happening at the time, like I remember George W. Bush had a small coronary event while jogging so I looked that up and was able to date something in my life by it.

Sadly, I didn't think to back up my work and I lost the whole timeline a month ago when my hard drive died. :-( It was my whole life with all major events mapped out in time and it took me years of work to assemble. I don't have the heart to start over again.

I am glad someone else has had this happen! its sort of like I have a clock inside me, sometimes....

Time is aimless

I seem to record time according to how much happens. If I'm sitting in an otherwise empty waiting room, I get called in instantly. If there's a noisy kid with mom there, it takes forever. Travel times feel shorter if I'm just staring out the window and not doing anything. 3 hours can feel like 3 minutes.

It's cold and dark and long, and made of rock. There's a shiny, viscous substance on the walls. I can't tell if walking down it is leading anywhere or not.

an acceptable if arty description of how time feels to me. i just cannot guess what time it is outside of looking at the sun in the sky or a clock/watch. i can't get up in the morning without an alarm clock. i wish i had the internal clock of those amazing folk who can make themselves wake up at a time of their choice without having to resort to alarms.

The rate at which I feel I experience time varies in a fairly normal fashion. It flies by when I'm doing something interesting or fun, and moves like a snail when I'm bored. In retrospect, it's the opposite of contemporary experience though. Memories of fun and interesting things seem long, and boring things all but disappear from memory.

When trying to guess the time, the only factor that seems to matter is how recently I've listened to this hypnosis track I downloaded a while back that makes me able to give myself automatic alarms, to wake up or otherwise during the day. The alarms work pretty well as long as I'm not trying to make myself wake up after a short duration on very little sleep, and when they're working I can often guess the time more accurately than normal as well.

The question on the rdos Aspie quiz got me thinking about this. It also asks about judging distances, which I also have a very hard time doing.The summary relates it to dyspraxia. I am clumsy and I can see how a deficit in estimating time and space would cause problems. However, aside from that I think I have problems in a larger sense. I can't tell you how tall a tree is or the volume of a room. A far as time, when I was working yesterday, it occurred to me if someone had asked me how long I had been working, I would not be able to tell them. I would be able to know time had passed of course but I don't have an instinctual knowledge of how long. I also can not estimate how long a task will take unless I already know from experience. I think maybe it's because I live so completely in my head, which is a vast space without boundaries ( ).

I think I'm fairly normal as far as telling time goes, meaning that I have a hazy idea if I'm not focused on anything in particular, and pretty much no idea if I am focused. If I'm not into something absorbing, I have a fairly good internal alarm clock that reminds me to test my blood sugar roughly every hour. When I'm absorbed by something I can let 3 hours go by, but usually not more than that. Without the discipline of having to test my blood sugar I think I would probably have little sense at all of the passing of time.