Time Blindness

Time blindness is a weak felt sense of time passing. Minutes collapse when you are absorbed and stretch when a task is aversive, so starts, stops and estimates drift without a clear inner clock.

It is different from the planning fallacy, which is optimistic forecasting of a future project. Time blindness is the experience of time while it is happening: "I'll just check this" becomes forty minutes, a "quick" task has no felt ending and lateness arrives as a surprise.

Externalize the clock. Visible timers, time boxing and alarms at transition points put time back in the environment. Body doubling and a written definition of done help when the gap is the missing sense that time is moving.