A Monday Is a Tuesday Is a Sunday as Covid-19 Disrupts Internal Clocks | Hacker News Reader

A Monday Is a Tuesday Is a Sunday as Covid-19 Disrupts Internal Clocks

scientificamerican.com

87 pointspseudolus95 comments

I'm having the Groundhog Day experience: every day is the same. I'm having difficulty determining how long in the past any given event occurred, presumably because normally that process is aided by time anchors (e.g the week before spring break). That said, it feels as if this "every day is the same" situation is better somehow. Less cognitive load in figuring out "what to do"; less effort expended planning future activities; much easier to work consistently on projects (all sorts of home improvement projects that have been on the todo list for years are now completed). It feels like being 12 years old to some extent.

I was feeling the same way until I started jogging in the mornings. It fires my mind up and the endorphins help keep the mind sharp throughout the day.

Just started this today.

Prior, I had been jogging in the evenings, but my asthma had been getting really bad the past week (probably because the grass is pollinating) so I figured it'd be worth switching it up.

Today I've been much more productive, and was more productive earlier in the day, which is nice.

I also hope it helps me fall asleep earlier. Prior, I was falling asleep at roughly 1am and feeling a bit dazed in the morning.

Heh, in Canada we had “Victoria Day” last week where we light a bunch of fireworks.

This year there were calls to Toronto Police that night several times an hour with “sounds of gunshots”.

And more on future nights as people lit off the rest of their fireworks.

The article touches on this, but it's very important to be aware that your retrospective perception of time is highly dependent on the number of new experiences you have in a given time frame. Years went longer when you were a kid because so much of the world was new to you.

If you want the weeks/months/years to feel more dense then the answer is to do new things as often as possible. Learn something new, try something new, read something new, go somewhere new. Going to a new park or hiking a new trail is a great way to bookend a week that will help keep your weeks feeling like weeks. Making new recipes and trying new foods can also help, if less so - I've personally slowly been trying every variety of coffee available to me over the course of the lockdown. So every few days I have a new memorable thing engaging multiple senses, and I'm learning to appreciate the nuances of something I used to largely mindlessly consume. I also have certain activities pegged to certain days to try to keep some perspective of the week as it moves, e.g. study Wednesday, board game Friday, D&D Sunday, etc.

All this had definitely helped me control my retrospective perception of time. Managing my prospective perception has proven to be far more challenging, if anybody has tips there I'd be appreciative.

Or maybe we're just reverting to how things should be. Maybe our internal clocks were disrupted by the artificial five-day eight-hour work week.

No, this feels unnatural to me. I miss going to an office and interacting with people face to face instead of over the phone.

I’ve been spending most of my time cooped up in my apartment like a hermit, ordering food online and going outside on weekends. Every day feels the same. The sooner this ends the better.

As opposed to the usual grind of commuting and spending 8 hours a day in the office? I really don't get it.

I'm back in the office today after 2.5 months of remote work and it really bums me out. 1 hour of my life daily spent on my commute because colleagues aren't disciplined enough to communicate/work remotely and need a babysitter looking over their shoulder.

People's feelings of sameness everyday and of time dragging goes beyond the 9-5 schedule. I'm at home all day every day. After hours time doesn't matter because I have limited options for what to do and who to do it with. Same with the weekend. I am home doing the same things I did at home last weekend and the one before and the one before.

Yes, I'd rather spend my working hours in an office surrounded by people instead of alone in my apartment.

Maybe you're looking at it the wrong way. It's not about needing a babysitter. My coworkers and I get lunch together, we banter, we play ping pong. Things like that are not possible when we work from home every day.

Also, have you tried having a happy hour over Zoom? It sucks.

I didn't sign up to be a monk and work in silence and isolation all day.

Here's an idea. Why not eat, banter and play ping-pong with your friends after work? You could also go for a 2 hour drive on your own every day if you miss that commute.

> go for a 2 hour drive on your own every day if you miss that commute

I have a fifteen minute commute door to door. Up until a couple years ago it was a five minute commute.

People's work situations are different. Just because you don't enjoy going to the office doesn't mean everyone feels the same.

I've been able to come to the office still through all of this and it's been a godsend. I have a wife and three young kids at home. Being around and trying to work is just an exercise in frustration for everyone.

I don't think anyone is arguing against you being able to go to the office. Just don't expect me to come and keep you company.

Shoot. Was really hoping to have some company here :)

To clarify, I've been the only person coming in to the office. The other four people I work with have been staying home. Just figured someone might as well use the space. The kids have been coming here every day for lunch as a way to get them out of the house as well.

Yea, you can't generalize. Different people are different. Some people are able to work from their quiet home office and have never been more productive and happy. Others have 4 year olds with no energy relief valve, bouncing all over their living rooms which double as workspaces. Some people are naturally solitary and find stay-at-home a great break from the enforced socialization that comes with working at an office. Some people are extroverts and are going absolutely bananas every day that goes by where they don't see another human being.

Personally, I'm more productive now, but only because I'm not wasting 4+ hours each day on my commute. If my commute was under 30 minutes each way or less, I probably would prefer to be in the office so that I could actually see and socialize with people.

> Why not eat, banter and play ping-pong with your friends after work?

Personally, it's because of the global pandemic and travel and meeting restrictions that have come about because of it.

I don't get it either. This is by far the most productive i've ever been at work and on personal projects. I don't miss spending 60+ minutes in my car 5x a week to sit in a cube with headphones on or sit in a meeting where we all look at a shared screen on our laptops... I start my workday when I wake up and finish working at the same time i'd normally be arriving home after my drive.

Not everyone spends 60+ minutes in a car? My commute is a 20-30 minute bus ride, which is just long enough to mentally separate "home" and "work." Plus since someone else is driving I can do basically anything I want to pass the time, other than reading a book since that gives me motion sickness.

I still have the same meetings I had before, just now I get to stare at a tiny 13-inch screen and squint instead of having it projected onto a wall at a reasonable size.

In general I would like offices to move to "remote if you want so long as you're meeting your work KPIs", but I would hate fully remote work.

In the USA being able to use public transit is very rare and most commutes in major cities are long. I used to have the good fortune of being able to commute by train for 20-30 minutes and had the option of biking as well. I loved that commute but I fully recognize most people are not so fortunate. I had co-workers in the same office who drove 2 hours each way.

It's not just discipline. It's also partly how associative memories work (aka how the brain accesses memories). I have an office in my house that I can work from. It's a privilege to have this much space. But because I don't solely use the office for work its actually harder to focus while I'm in here. As soon as a task starts getting hard, my brain immediately goes, oh, you could play with this toy, or that toy, or do this other thing. Part of why I like to drive into the office is to have better control over the types of things I have access to, and to become conditioned to avoid certain types of distractions. That said, I've worked in openish offices, and found that to be a nightmare. So I'd take my office distractions over the distractions of a full on open office plan any day...

As a side note, it's not just spacial either. There's a body of evidence that shows time matters too for associative memories. Things like measuring test scores show that the brain is much better at testing in a given subject if the test is at the same time as the classwork. This also leads into other theories of learning, which suggest that if you really want to learn something well, do it in lots of different contexts at lots of different times so that you have a lot more neural paths to access said knowledge/ability.

I notice this too. A ton of mental energy gets siphoned due to just corralling and confining my thought processes. I think at work office it's just easier to a) be mentally primed for work b) stay on task and not get distracted.

You're free to go back to the office to chat when this is all over, please just let the rest of us continue to work remotely in silence. The savings on commute time quality of life alone are immense.

That's the thing. After this if I'm required to go back to an office I'm forever going to realise I'm only there to entertain these weird people who think work is about being close to people you sort of know but don't really like.

Pretty much it, anyone complaining right now they want to go back into the office, mostly want to do so socially. Extroverts who need to yap all day.

Huh, almost like humans are social creatures or somesuch...

Dance on that keyboard, office monkey.

Wow you really captured my feeling on this. Several years ago I realized that my work relationships were incredibly shallow and that I was spending an inordinate amount of time on them. The moment I'd move onto the next job those relationships all 99% went up in smoke. I reorganized my life to work remote and stay near family and I am immensely happier for it. The extroverts who just want a captive audience can go stuff it.

I’m finding myself puzzled over why it’s so hot - I started my lockdown on March 11 and have to actively remind myself that we skipped Spring this year.

There is still a month left of spring.

On the calendar, but in warmer climates (I'm in Houston) the perceived Spring/Summer starts sooner.

The summer weather usually starts up around Memorial day, especially in the southern half of the country.

Here in the Bay Area it's been in the mid-90s all week.

you are not wrong. this Monday to Friday 9-5 work hours is created by man. our ancestors either go hunt or gather. do they have this sense of artificial work days/hours? do they have weekend?

Hunter-gatherers spend less time working per Calorie of food than agriculturists.

I had a job that wasn’t bound by time. It was fantastic.

I had work assigned and showed up for the occasional meeting. I’d often get it all done in a few late nights and used the rest of the week to do whatever I want.

When lockdown started we stopped enforcing bedtimes and turned off all alarms. We were in the lucky position where the kids (3 and 5) are young enough not to have any zoom meetings, and I don't have any morning meetings.

Our family shifted to going to bed around 3am and I would wake up around 10am/11am and kids would wake up around 1pm.

We actually had to start enforcing bedtimes again because we noticed we were shifting to a 25 hour day. We got to the point where the kids were up till about 6am before we just went cold turkey and woke them up early so they would get tired sooner.

But our family are clearly night owls. We're now enforcing a 1am bedtime for the kids, and my wife and I are going to bed around 3am, and then we all wake up between 10am/11am.

What’s your plan for when they start school?

Switch back. lol

If in person school actually happens, or the Zooms are in the morning, we'll start shifting back a couple weeks beforehand. We've taken them to other time zones before and they are pretty normal as far as shifting about one hour a day.

I have experienced this myself.... If I wake up by 1pm, that is early in my books. And bed time is about 5am, right before sunrise.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/locked-down-teens-stay-up-all-n...

Do your kids get screen time at night? What kind of lighting do you have in your home? Young kids staying up till 6am sounds pretty odd without a lot of artificial blue lighting. If I have a screen-free evening I'm wiped out pretty early. If I'm in front of a screen I don't even feel tired.

The do sometimes get screens at night, but I'm a big stickler about no blue light after 9pm normally (although now that's no blue light after midnight).

I've changed out bulbs throughout the house so that we can light the whole house in 1850K light at night, and all screens use some sort of red-shifting (screens that can't redshift like TVs get turned off).

But you're right, if they get too much screen is does keep them up longer. But even without the blue screens they will stay up playing with toys under 1850K lights until the very AM hours!

A family of night owls! So lucky!!! I have an ex-wife who was a strict by-the-clock sleeper, and a son who is a natural morning riser. Even in his teens, he regularly says goodnight by himself at 10 pm because he's tired, and wakes up at 7 am. (I love him more than anything, but why???)

This morning I went to bed at 6:30 am. So, yeah. Having your family around to spend time with in the middle of the night sounds like a dream come true to me!

The 1am bedtime is a good idea though, missing all the daylight isn't good for the little ones, or us either.

> Nearly 50 percent of people experienced time dragging during March, whereas about 24 percent perceived it to be speeding up.

For me it's been a paradoxical blend of the two, months seem to drag on forever, but the week blazes by. Every time we get to Friday it feels as if Monday was just a day or two ago.

Bizarre.

A paradoxical blend for me too, but interestingly opposite to yours. Week seem to drag and months seem to blaze

Yeah that’s how it for me. One week takes all eternity compared to what I’m used to a week feeling like. Yet a month goes by in the blink of an eye. Odd feeling and doesn’t make sense

Exactly the same for me. It feels like time is passing extremely fast, but at the same time it's the same "late March" that is being dragged for ages. Last week I told my therapist that it feels like I meet her every 2 hours. It really does feel this way. Suddenly it's monday, suddenly it's friday, suddenly it's monday again.

And I'm living alone with a cat. I can't imagine how this is with people living with a whole bunch of children.

from experience - there're neither weekdays, weekends nor weeks at all anymore, just tireday and lesstireday :)

Actually it’s my kid that keeps me knowing what day it is since she still has classes and we have scheduled chores.

The same reason 30 minutes in a dentist waiting room seems like hours, while a day at the amusement park seems to pass in a flash. Novel experiences and their rate must be involved.

"The days are long but the years are short" - ???

Paraphrasing, but this is a phrase that's often used on uncertain situations. It feels like that too for me.

I think the elaboration from Viktor E Frankl's Man's Search For Meaning is the best piece of writing on this.

"The unemployed worker, for example, is in a similar position. His existence has become provisional and in a certain sense he cannot live for the future or aim at a goal. Research work done on unemployed miners has shown that they suffer from a peculiar sort of deformed time—inner time—which is a result of their unemployed state. Prisoners, too, suffered from this strange “time-experience.” In camp, a small time unit, a day, for example, filled with hourly tortures and fatigue, appeared endless. A larger time unit, perhaps a week, seemed to pass very quickly. My comrades agreed when I said that in camp a day lasted longer than a week. How paradoxical was our time-experience! In this connection we are reminded of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, which contains some very pointed psychological remarks. Mann studies the spiritual development of people who are in an analogous psychological position, i.e., tuberculosis patients in a sanatorium who also know no date for their release. They experience a similar existence—without a future and without a goal."

Thank you, this is a nice quote.

With me weeks fly by, but some days, often Monday, seem to last forever! It doesn't make much sense.

In normal circumstances, the present and the past are always opposite speeds for me.

If I've got nothing going on, the present takes forever, I'm bored. But once a prolonged boredom is in the past, it feels like it was fast -- there's not much to remember.

If I'm super busy, the present goes by super quick. I never get bored and always have stuff to do. But if I look back at a prolonged period of busy time, it feels like it took a long time -- I have lots of stuff to remember.

And then there's intercontinental travel days.

(I try to time them so I arrive around noon at the latest so I can get my bearings and make sure I can reach my accommodation safely no matter what and ideally explore a little.)

At the end of a day like this the memory of having woken up to start that day at some point becomes very distant, like it happened ages ago. At the same time, the day doesn't fly by fast either. I think it helps to interact with the world that much and get out of my head. It reminds me of being a child a little, so many new things to discover and so many things that cannot be readily understood and still trusting that it'll be fine.

The days are long but the decades are short https://blog.samaltman.com/the-days-are-long-but-the-decades...

My wife and I have had several disagreements over whether something happened last weekend or two months ago. It all sort of blends together at this point.

"what a week today has been"

I was taking a sabbatical when this all started, so thankfully I've already begun to perceive time through important milestones like taking the trash out on Tuesday night and giving my dogs flea pills at the end of every month.

Really gives life meaning, y'know?

I'm in the same boat and frankly I'm not sure what's worse to my internal clock: not having anything to do or not having anywhere to go.

Honestly I've felt this. way for a decade - when I moved to the south Bay Area from Canada I no longer had any meaningful weather and it very much disrupts your sense of time and history.

Seasons are great for noting the progression of time.

I noticed this as well. Living in California, it’s like the passage of time seems to have halted since not much outside changes day to day. It’s so strange compared to having seasons, where it felt like each year had a well defined start and end. (Not that I’m complaining; I prefer the sunshine.)

Maybe it's my own bias, but I find it tiresome that people assume that it's the majority opinion that most people don't like working from home and most people miss going into the office.

Random recent report I found that shows working from home might be more popular than some people assume:

https://www.newsweek.com/54-percent-americans-want-work-remo...

"An IBM survey released on Friday found that 54 percent of the 25,000 adults polled would like to be able to primarily work from home and 75 percent would like the option to do it occasionally. Once businesses can reopen, 40 percent of people responded that they feel strongly their employer should offer opt-in remote work options."

The majority of people including me like ocasional work from home, I did that pre pandemic and it was great.

The majority opinion here is that offices - and face to face human interaction - are useless and Mother Nature naturally selected wrong

Destroy all hugs

I miss the office and the routine, but frankly, my days go by much FASTER when working from home. Instead of being stranded away from home for 9 hours, I get to sleep in, and dip in and out of work more frequently. I work later in the day, but it's broken up by various things in the house; feed the cats, wife comes home from work, etc.

Obviously it depends on the day, but some days in the office it would be noon, and the end of the day would feel a positively unimaginable amount of time away.

In the show "Downton Abbey", I think in season 1, Maggie Smith (think royal old lady) says, "What's a weekend?"

https://youtu.be/zhfpBW-nUWk

For very different reasons, we all feel the same now :)

Speak for yourself. Some of us still had to go in to work through this whole thing.

I’ve always used “days are long, years are short” to talk about raising children. Pulling our two year old out of daycare makes you really reflect on how slowly time moves for them when their only concerns seems to be legos and applesauce. But then you look at the two years they’ve existed and it feels like a blink of an eye.

IMO, when I really think about the phrase "days are long, years are short", it seems like what it's saying, or maybe it's a more depressing way to interpret it, is that "you're not doing anything special/memorable in your days" -- hence the days feel long, but after they've passed, it feels short because there wasn't anything in particular that was memorable to the parents. However, do keep in mind that a lot of everyday experience like walks in the parks that are nothing special to the parents, are very special for the kids.

We have a two year old as well, and it certainly feels tough -- it's not like you can travel the world with a toddler (at least, it's out of our abilities range, haha. Some people can do it, I'm sure.), so it's all about living the everyday life (for now, until they're older) and making the most of it. SIP doesn't make it any easier too. Try to at least make the weekends interesting! Park walks are always possible, and a lot of outdoorsy nature type places are possible to go to also, just don't go to the super crowded places.

We're having a really good time! We just welcomed our second son into the family last Saturday. That day WOOSHED by, and certainly memories were made. Fwiw, I don't find the situation depressing at all. I'm loving the slow-fast-hybrid time with our children. It just "is" what it is.

It's good to remember how little toddlers have experienced yet.

If they're crying because they dropped their ice cream, it's understandable since that might very possibly be the worst thing that ever happened to them. (Which is good, in a way.)

A couple weeks ago, my team and I determined it was still March 97th and I'm sticking to it.

Friday night drinks, Sunday roasts and a walk on a Saturday help to keep anything working in sensible cadences, I find.

After a few weeks of oatmeal time, I employed the same strategy. Monday night I call the folks. Tuesday is music night. I'm learning Let It Go on the recorder to play for my niece. Wednesday is reading night. Thursday is movie night. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are all open. Every other weekend is virtual board game night with friends.

I like having something to look forward to. It provides enough structure that the weeks have a rhythm. However, each week is more or less the same. If that ever becomes too much, I'll insert some events with monthly structure.

We've started doing a Skype call with my mom and my brother's family every Sunday evening.

It adds a bit of a milepost to the week, which is nice.

Also, this is the most I've talked to my brother in probably a decade. It's been really nice actually. I hope we keep it up indefinitely.

Day of the week might be a useful sync to keep, but for most people (certainly for me), the time of the day is way more important.

There is a risk that sleep/awake cycles float once rigid schedules disappear. This happened to me once in grad school during a semester when I had a fellowship, so did not have to teach and could just work on the thesis. While first thought was "why should I care, I can still work the same" this quickly resulted in a huge loss of productivity until I forced a correction. An hour or two each way is nothing (in fact may be good as one adjusts to a more natural schedule), but I would guard aggressively against switching to a nocturnal lifestyle. My 2c.

A small sample of retirement. The seasons become your timepiece...

It doesn't say whether these people are working or not, and whether they were working before quarantine. If you were a housewife before quarantine I can't imagine things seem much different. But if, like my brother, you were a mechanic and now you're stuck at home with no real ability to practise your skills then it would feel very different. I am working at home every day and feel absolutely no different in terms of time.

My wife stays home with the kids and she made the comment at the beginning of all this that the most frustrating thing was all the people posting about how hard it was to be home all the time or reaching out to see how she was doing.

From her perspective, very little about her day to day life actually changed.

The main thing we had to adjust to is that we couldn't go to stores anymore as a way to get out of the house. We replaced that with taking walks and socializing with our neighbors.

Monday she went to the fabric store for the first time in three months. She was pretty excited about that.

It was mostly like that for me prior to coronavirus except for the the weekend which provided me with enough novelty to break the monotony of the week.

But yeah stay-at-home destroyed that, everyday is effectively the same, and despite me planning some grand productivity at the beginning of it all, I've basically done nothing.

All I know is we started lock down Mar 15. If Ken Jennings streak started on Mar 15, he is still championing.

Technically he'd be losing today. If they did a show every day. If they only did the shows five days a week, then yes, he'd still be the champion.

It would be interesting to re-do this study on Mental Representations of Weekdays: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Personally I'm on Monday 68

Still in Smarch.

Today is the 9766th of September 1993.

Can't believe that was over 26 years ago!

In case someone didn't get the reference, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

Today is Boomtime, the 1st day of Confusion in the YOLD 3186

Even though I’ve been working from home the entire time, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m approaching the end of summer vacation (43 with no kids so it has been a long time since that was relevant to me)

COVID on My Back

Well I’m running COVID on my back I've been hiding COVID on my back Avoiding maskless spreaders COVID on my back And the victim? Well he won’t come back

I've been running Zoomday Doomsday Whatstheday Blursday Fryday Blursday Zoomday

What have I done? What have I done?

Yes, I'm running Down the WFH track Won't you help me? COVID on my back It will catch me If I dare drop back Won't you give me All the f*cks I lack?

What have I done? What have I done?

The only thing pinning my week down is Twitch streams - certain people broadcast on certain days.

I've just decided that my weekend days are Wednesday and Saturday -- on Wednesdays in particular I get to waste as much time on HN as I want! You don't need to work 5 consecutive days every week, now you can do what works for you.

Is this really important research? I think not. Scientific American used to be a serious science magazine with very high standards. Probably to stay in business, it has morphed into the pop-science tabloid it is today. Sad.

Can anyone explain to science behind why some people naturally prefer to stay up as late as possible? For me I prefer to go to bed very late 4am.The Coronavirus has enabled me to be more productive on my schedule

I think there are many different reasons why this happens. For me, Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome is a pretty ideal match to what happens for me naturally, which is to say that my body seems to be on a ~26 hour cycle. The WFH situation has not made a difference for me being able to keep a schedule that works better for me because: meetings.

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