The Time Hack

Final figures and analysis

The year is up and the numbers are crunched.

As the about section explains, the Time Hack was a year-long experiment aimed at exploring whether our perception of time is influenced by our actions.

Throughout the experiment, which I carried out during the whole of 2011, I participated in a new and unusual activity each day in an effort to alter my perception of time. Click here to learn more about the parameters of the project.

Research suggests a person’s perception of how much time has passed between two points and how well memories are recorded onto an individual’s brain are partially dependent on the amount of new experiences that person has during any given day. The Time Hack aimed to explore this idea.

With this in mind, I timed each of the experiences on a stopwatch and pit those recorded times against my estimation of how long I perceived each experience to have lasted for. For a complete list of these activities and a comparison between the times, see this spreadsheet.

Breakdown and final totals

The following information and graphs represent an analysis of the actual times and perceived times of each activity, which I recorded throughout the project.

In total, I engaged in 344 activities throughout the year, which I had never participated in prior to the project, over the course of 365 days. 

Twenty-one days worth of data was compromised and/or lost, which is why there were 344 activities analyzed here as opposed to 365.  

During those 344 days, I spent 305 hours, 13 minutes and 42 seconds (or 18,313 minutes and 42 seconds) engaging in activities I have never before experienced. 

According to the total sum of my perceived times during those 344 days, however, I believed those activities to have lasted for 319 hours, 57 minutes and 11 seconds. This difference in time alludes to the idea that I experienced an extra 14 hours, 43 minutes and 29 seconds during 2011.

Put another way, I squeezed 4.6% more time out of my year through these activities. And put yet another way, that’s about 2 minutes and 34 seconds of new life each day, while engaging in the activities for 53 minutes and 15 seconds on average.

For more charts, figures and analysis, continue reading this post here.