Why Does Time Slow Down During a Pandemic?
For most people across the world, quarantine is well underway.
During the start of their respective lockdowns, many people reported that they felt time slowing down to almost a halt. There were jokes about March lasting forever. There were jokes about March being its own decade. For a lot of people, at least the first week or so of quarantine saw time ‘slow down’ more than it has in a long, long time.
What causes this phenomenon? Why did March seem to last forever? Why is 2020 set to be the ‘longest’ year in our lifetimes? There are two main hypotheses that I have put together…
Time slows when our ‘normal consciousness’ is interrupted
If I were to take you all of the way back to mid-February or January of this year, did you get up to much? Maybe you had a pleasant holiday here, maybe a romantic meal with your spouse there, a birthday thrown into the mix too. Apart from that, for most people, the answer is probably ‘not much’.
In any non-extreme period of our lives, routines and habits are what gives our everyday lives structure. It saves an awful lot of mental bandwidth deciding that you are going to the gym on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays rather than waiting for motivation to arrive and acting on a whim.
