A book about time perception, the central thesis kind of investigating why when we go on holiday we feel like we're there forever, doing millions of activities, but afterwards feel like it's flown by. A feeling I know all too well. It was interesting and held my attention when I was reading it on the train. It delves into self-help a little at the end, too, warning people not to try and have too many "new" experiences, which can be exhausting and mess with our perception of time (advice which I wasn't following).

A bit repetitive overall but fine ( )

This is a really interesting topic, but I had to skim sections of it because I was short on time (lol.) I would love to see an updated version w/ info on how smartphone use affects our time perception. I suspect they contribute to the feeling of time flying.

TLDR - If you want time to go slower, disrupt your routine occasionally and do lots of different things. The more memories we make, the longer time seems to last. That was mostly what I was here for, since time is beginning to fly by for me at an alarming rate!

I gave up after 100 pages, as the writing style was so boring and hard to follow. This could have been the German translation. ( )

This was very readable, I enjoyed it a lot. The author tackles the subject of how neurologists are studying the issue of how people perceive time. It's an interesting topic, and the author does a good job of presenting it in general terms using examples that are clear and intriguing. Topics include how time is linked to memory, and how it is linked to the ability to imagine the future.

A few quibbles - the author is British and makes some assumptions about how people perceive time that seem very culturally rooted and she doesn't quite seem aware of that. She writes about how rare it is to talk about distance in terms of time ... which is so, so typical in the U.S. ("How far away is it?" "Oh, about 2 hours.")

On a more individual note, she has framed the book around an example of going on vacation -- while you are there, it seems like your time is rushing by (which I agree with) but when you return home, it seems like you have been gone for a very long time ... which, I don't know about that at all. Whenever I get back from vacation, it feels like I was gone for only a flash, almost like I never left. By the end of the book, as she has linked this example to more specific things, I felt like I had a somewhat better idea of what she was talking about (like it is true that one tends to do more exciting things than usual during a vacation, so you have having more memorable times in general) but I will still never describe it as lasting for a long time. ( )

I think learning about how people think and how they use their brains is endlessly fascinating. That is why I am such a big fan of Oliver Sacks who writes about diseases of the brain that he has studied throughout his career as a neurologist. Claudia Hammond has written a book about what is really just a small part of how we use our brain i.e. how we perceive time but there is lots to sink your teeth into. I have spent the last couple of days asking people one of the questions that is posed in this book. The question is "Next Wednesday's meeting has had to be moved forward two days. What day is the meeting on now?" When I read this I said to myself "Monday of course" and I was astonished to read that some people answer that question with Friday. I've now asked 6 people this same question and 4 have answered Friday, 1 has answered Monday and 1 answered Saturday (which is just plain weird). Supposedly the people that answer with Monday see the future as approaching them while the people that answered Friday see themselves as approaching the future. Who knew?

That's just one of the fascinating nuggets that I picked up from this book. My biggest complaint about the book is that I found her writing to be very repetitive. She deals in a chapter about why time seems to progress faster as we age but in almost every chapter up to that point she tells us that people find time goes faster as they get older. She alludes to the fact that she will be discussing it in a future chapter a number of times. Is this to keep our interest? Does she think we might forget that this is a common perception? Claudia Hammond is a broadcaster by trade so maybe that has something to do with this constant repetition, like the old adage about public speaking about telling the audience what you are going to say, then say it, then tell them what you said. Maybe that's important in an oral presentation but I don't think it is in a book.

That said I would encourage anyone interested in how our minds work to pick this book up. You will come away with at least some idea of what makes us "tick". ( )