What AI does to my sense of time

The sense of time is interesting. You do not experience time as the single vector described in physics books. Your mind constructs a sense of duration out of attention, memory, emotion, and bodily signals.

When you are waiting or bored, you monitor time closely, so every interval feels noticeable and slow.

During an engaging activity, or "flow", attention goes to the task rather than to time, so hours can seem to pass in minutes.

Fear or danger increases alertness and information processing, and a moment can feel unusually long, especially in memory.

Looking back, periods that contained many distinct events often seem longer, because the brain stored more landmarks. Routine periods feel short in retrospect, even if they felt slow while they were happening.

Time feels slower when something lasts longer than you anticipated, and faster when you are pleasantly occupied.

This is something I started noticing as we began using more AI and LLMs. The less we engage our minds in solving problems, and the more we outsource thinking, research, and the other activities that keep someone engaged, the denser the sense of time becomes. If you do not enjoy the task you are generating code for, boredom sets in, and anxiety and discomfort start creeping in. On the other hand, time moves too fast when you actively enjoy the problem you are working on. Run ten agents in parallel, move your attention from one tab to another, and the time passes too quickly.

Just an observation.