Canadians may feel a certain level of surprise at the fact that two months of the pandemic have gone by, despite the inherent slog of changing up our routines, and finding ways to pass the time.
You're not alone in not being able to recall what day it is, let alone what exactly you did this week or the prior. The COVID-19 pandemic has twisted our perception of time, and reduced it into a muddled experience.
According to Anne Wilson, Professor of Social Psychology, Wilfrid Laurier University, without a destination in mind for where the pandemic is going, researchers are finding that uncertainty is causing our perception of time to drag out.
Our psychological sense of time doesn't operate the same way as a clock or calendar. Prof. Wilson explained our internal clock mark time by events, patterns, routines in our schedule that signal the different times of the day, week, month and year.
"In fact, when I was teaching this term, I noticed students were using the phrase 'the before times' and now."
With many of us finding ourselves with much more time on our hands, a lack of routine and boredom leads to our sense of time being stretched and squashed together.
"All of our normal ways of tracking time are pretty much gone. And many of us aren't spending much time staring at a calendar, because... you know, what's the point?" she chuckled.
Our memories and experiences of the pandemic are also being muddled because of this. Prof. Wilson compares it to a "watched pot."
"So that feeling of there's not much going on, I'm just sort of sitting around, waiting for something to happen, that tends to feel like it drags on and on, while it's happening, but then because there's nothing to really remember in that time period, it seems like a flash after its actually done."
Without major temporal landmarks to latch our memories to, they end up getting melded together and separated into distinct periods of time: the "before times", during, and after the pandemic.
It's not necessarily a bad thing. According to Prof. Wilson, it can be very good to our mental health to be able to slow down, smell the flowers and live in the moment. However, if the days continue to feel like they drag on, it could be a signal to your brain that something is wrong; a very reasonable response given the situation.
In order to bring back some semblance of time during the pandemic, Prof. Wilson said it was best to work in unique events and routines into your daily schedule. A biweekly grocery run does little to remind you that two weeks have passed. In her own experience with breaking the monotony, her family has been playing board games, and dressing up once a week.
