Despite the boring name of the article, I am amazed by the phenomenon of time perception and its relation to so many personal factors, like age, emotional state, type of personality and even occupation.

Even though this term sounds like a name of a boring chapter in the Psychology book, we deal with this every single day. Employees that just can’t grasp the idea of coming to work on time, family members that show up few hours later for the function (when the guests that came first are already getting ready to leave), our friend that make his or her spouse mad right in the morning because they are not able to get ready on time…

Perception of time is strictly connected with rhythms of physical processes – heart beat, breath frequency, etc. Evaluation of time is connected with its occupancy – the time spent doing something active and interesting is evaluated as a shorter one, whereas a boring lecture seems endless. The way we evaluate time also depends on setting and intention: when we wait for negative events, the time seems to fly fast; when we expect a positive event to happen, it seems that the time is dragging super slow.

Emotional state. It was discovered that people suffering from depression, tend to overestimate time, whereas people with maniac disorder underestimate time (sometimes even by twice).

Age. Children overestimate time, for adults time segments seem smaller.

Profession. It was established that doctors have the best estimate of time in minutes and teachers – in the length of the lessons.

Personality. Biases in time perception directly depend on the way people evaluate life events and vice Versa. And, of course, it takes only a certain type of personality to be late and certain type to be 40 minutes before the event or work starts.

All those things show that time is what we make out of it despite the socially accepted measurement for… something. For the time in Your life, you’re not responsible in front of anyone except for Yourself. If there are so many subjective factors that influence it, then you literally can’t blame anything on the “objective” situation of “not having enough time”. And I think using it to your advantage by filling it with exciting events, quality time with loved ones and doing what you enjoy the most in general or at the moment – is one of the great recipes for NOT regretting anything at the end of Your time.