TRENDING SCIENCE: What day of the week is it? COVID-19 and the illusion of time Experts claim that the coronavirus pandemic is disrupting our ability to think, learn and recall. Fundamental Research © Rtimages, Shutterstock We have more than enough apps to remind us of days, times and the tasks needed to be done then. Despite all this technology, time becomes a blur because our internal clocks have gone haywire! Is it Saturday already? I thought it was Friday! Do you find it more difficult to concentrate? Is it taking you longer to complete your activities? Are our brains actually working slower during the COVID-19 pandemic? Psychology behind losing track of time “It is a perfect storm between changes in environment, loss of social anchors and increases in cognitive stress,” Elissa Epel, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, told ‘CNN’. “And then on top of that, most of us are not getting the quality sleep that we used to.” Our bodies depend on physical and social cues, like going to and coming home from work or school. Such routines keep us on track, but now they’ve disappeared because there’s no regular structure. “We’ve lost all of the routine of a typical week, and that means having weekends as a boundary or as a separation or something to look forward to,” Prof. Epel said. “Now the weekend is the same as a weekday.” Days simply lead into each other, and weekdays into weekends. “When we had our routines, you don’t really think about that stuff,” explained Lynn Bufka, associate executive director for practice research and policy at the American Psychological Association. “So while your commute may be tiring, there’s not a second dialogue in your head, trying to figure out what has to happen this day.” Another reason is that we’re juggling several responsibilities, like trying to meet deadlines while homeschooling children or caring for babies and toddlers. “Our working memory is a limited resource,” Prof. Epel continued. “We can easily tax it by trying to engage in too many activities at once or trying to multitask in our mind.” This is why it takes great effort to remember simple details or carry out tasks with the same effectiveness. “When (people are) attempting to multitask, it makes it more difficult to encode the information that’s in front of them,” said Inger Burnett-Zeigler, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Northwestern University in the United States. “Then the information is not stored and they can’t remember what they were doing or what they were saying a moment or a few moments later on.” Mistaking Sunday for Monday, for example, can also be a sign of stress, leading to unstable sleep patterns. “Often if you’re feeling stressed or you’re feeling anxious, those thoughts and feelings can show up and either make it more difficult to fall asleep or more difficult to stay asleep,” Prof. Burnett-Zeigler added. Making life feel a little more normal Experts recommend maintaining a normal routine and rhythm as much as possible. Some strategies are going to bed and waking up at the same time, taking regular breaks, exercising, eating healthy, socialising in real time through videoconference, phone or text messages, as well as limiting news consumption and screen time. Keywords COVID-19, coronavirus, pandemic, time, health
