Week 1 Session: The Clock and the Feeling

Week 1. Measured duration and felt duration are two different quantities, and the gap between them is what this course studies.

15 February 2027

You start by proving to yourself that the gap is real. Not by reading that it is real, which takes a minute, but by measuring it on yourself, which takes a week and is harder to argue with afterwards.

Maister sets up the vocabulary and Block and Zakay show you how carefully the psychology has to be done. Read Maister for the propositions and Block and Zakay for how much of the field’s confidence survives a meta-analysis. They disagree about how solid the ground is. That disagreement is useful to you.

In the workshop#

You build the instrument you will use for the Wait Log. Two columns and a scale: clock duration, felt duration, and what you were told while it happened. We test it on the room, badly, and then fix it. Bring a phone with a stopwatch.

The point of building it yourself is that you find out what the third column is for. Most people leave it blank the first time and then cannot explain their own numbers.

But wait, there’s more#

Look at a pedestrian crossing with a countdown timer next to one without. The countdown does not change how long the lights take. It replaces an unknown duration with a known one, and that is the entire intervention. Stand at each for a few cycles this week and notice which one you check your phone at.