Introduction

Can time become noise?

What happens when time speaks so often that we stop listening to it?

Do we really need a small moment of temporal silence?

We usually think of time as something abstract or invisible, but today it constantly signals us what to do, when to react, and how fast to move.

Between these lines, you will find a journey that attempts to better understand time in our lives, preparing you to face its noise, the temporal noise.

This journey explores how our contemporary environment is filled with time signals: clocks, notifications, reminders, countdowns and how this constant exposure changes the way we feel, experience, and understand time. It looks at the moment where time stops guiding us and starts overwhelming us.

But why is it important to discuss this topic?

Because in everyday life, time no longer feels neutral or quiet, it feels loud, fragmented, and demanding.

ZigZag Booklet

I chose a ZigZag / accordion booklet as the final format.

this format limits speed and scrolling, so the reader must physically move through the content, creating pauses.

This format directly supports the concept, it resists acceleration instead of reproducing it.

PDF

Sources

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/parenting-from-a-neuroscience-perspective/202303/time-perception-how-our-brains-shape-our

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330731954_On_the_Politics_of_Chrono-Design_Capture_Time_and_the_Interface

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810018300904?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronemics?utm_source=chatgpt.com

/https://ics.uci.edu/~gmark/chi08-mark.pdf

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691814001590#!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2685813/

Essay

Can time become noise?

What happens when time speaks so often that we stop listening to it?Do we really need a small moment of temporal silence?

We usually think of time as something abstract or invisible, but today it constantly signals us what to do, when to react, and how fast to move.

Between these lines, you will find a journey that attempts to better understand time in our lives, preparing you to face its noise, the temporal noise.

This journey explores how our contemporary environment is filled with time signals: clocks, notifications, reminders, countdowns and how this constant exposure changes the way we feel, experience, and understand time.

It looks at the moment where time stops guiding us and starts overwhelming us.

But why is it important to discuss this topic?

Because in everyday life, time no longer feels neutral or quiet, it feels loud, fragmented, and demanding.

And the first thing to do in order to answer the first three questions and to take the first step in this journey is to understand how we perceive time.

Time perception

Do you feel like time is slipping through your fingers as you age? Have you ever been in a situation where time seems to stand still? The enigma of time perception has been a subject of interest for centuries, yet it continues to fascinate scientists and philosophers alike. Our understanding of time perception has evolved over the years, and we now know that our brains play a crucial role in shaping how we experience time. As we age and gain new experiences, our perception of time undergoes changes that can alter our sense of reality.

Time perception, the subjective sense of how long an event or interval lasts, is influenced by several factors, including attention, emotion, memory, expectation, and context. Unlike the ticking of a clock, time perception is not constant or objective. It can vary from person to person and from situation to situation, making it a challenging study area for researchers.

Why does time seem to speed up as we grow older?

One of the most common perceptions of time is that time speeds up as we grow older. We feel like the days and the years have started to go by in a blur while we fondly remember our long childhood days when time just seemed to stretch on forever. Why this is so is still unclear, but a range of interesting theories exists.

Researchers suggest this might happen because the rate at which we process visual information slows as we age. This is because the networks of neurons in our brains become larger and more complex, and our nerves accumulate damage, causing resistance to the flow of electric signals.

As Rory Maizels puts it, „When we are young, each second of actual time is packed with many more mental images. Like a slow-motion camera that captures thousands of images per second, time appears to pass more slowly.”

Experienced Duration Versus Remembered Duration

The way in which we make time estimations is influenced by various factors, with the most significant one being whether we are informed beforehand that we will be required to estimate the duration of a specific task. These experimental approaches are known as prospective paradigms, in which participants are aware of the time estimation task and are typically instructed to provide their duration judgment immediately after the task has ended. In contrast, in retrospective paradigms, participants are not informed in advance that they will be asked to estimate event duration.

As retrospective judgments depend on memory traces of the event rather than direct perception, it is not surprising that people usually exhibit better time estimation performance in prospective tasks than in retrospective ones.

The Way We Estimate Duration Changes With Age

Estimating time can be challenging, unlike measuring distance, which can be done physically. Instead, we use mental shortcuts, or heuristics, to estimate time. These heuristics change as we age. For example, young children tend to think that more exciting or action-packed events last longer.

In contrast, adults tend to believe that boring activities last longer because they rely on “sampling heuristics,„ where they keep checking their watch and taking samples of time, leading them to believe that the activity is taking longer than it actually is.

Time perception is a complex and fascinating subject studied for centuries, yet there is still much to uncover about how our brains shape our sense of reality. As we age and gain new experiences, our perception of time changes, which can alter our understanding of the world around us. By continuing to study and understand time perception, we can gain a deeper appreciation for the way our minds shape our experiences of the world.

Overload / Noise

When attention is repeatedly divided by external time signals, the subjective experience of time begins to change. Alarms, notifications, countdowns, and deadlines fragment attention and interrupt ongoing activities, creating a state of temporal overload. Psychological research shows that when cognitive load increases, people experience distortions in duration perception: time may feel rushed, compressed, or uneven. Instead of perceiving time as a continuous flow, individuals experience it as a sequence of interruptions that demand immediate responses. In this condition, time no longer functions as a quiet background structure but becomes an active source of pressure. Over time, this constant exposure to time signals can reduce the ability to focus deeply and reflectively, transforming time into a form of noise rather than orientation. This shift illustrates how overload does not merely affect productivity, but fundamentally alters how time itself is perceived and lived.

Body & Mind

The perception of time is closely connected to emotional and bodily states, making it highly malleable rather than fixed. Research in psychology demonstrates that emotional engagement can accelerate perceived time, while stress, discomfort, or boredom tend to slow it down. When individuals are overwhelmed by external demands or time pressure, the body often reacts before conscious awareness emerges, through tension, fatigue, or anxiety. These bodily responses influence how long moments feel and how quickly time seems to pass. In environments dominated by constant time signals, the body is repeatedly pushed into states of alertness or urgency, disrupting natural rhythms such as rest, focus, and recovery. As a result, time is not only cognitively distorted but also physically felt as pressure or exhaustion. This connection between mind, body, and time highlights that temporal overload is not just a mental experience, but an embodied one.

Time as Designed System

After understanding how we perceive time, now it is time to know more about time itself.

Time is not neutral. It is actively structured, designed, and experienced through social systems, interfaces, and digital technologies, a process often described as chrono-design. Throughout history, societies have developed tools such as clocks, calendars, and schedules to organize work, production, and social life. These systems create shared expectations: when we should wake up, when we should eat, and when we should work or rest. In contemporary life, this designed system produces what I refer to as time signals, the devices, applications, and interfaces that constantly tell us what time it is and what we should do next.

We start the day with an alarm announcing the time, and immediately dive into a limitless stream of notifications, informing us what happened during our sleep and when every event took place. A clock hanging on the wall reinforces the message: now you have to move, now you have to start the day. While preparing to go to work or university, the smartwatch on your wrist is checked repeatedly, not only warning you about being late, but also keeping you attached to notifications, because this world often forces us to be always connected, always online, always available.

You leave your house to face the world and discover what kind of day it is, but before even thinking about it, your thoughts are interrupted by the need to check your watch again, deciding whether you can walk calmly to the bus station or if you have to run to catch it.

Let us be optimistic and say you did not miss the bus. Still, the calendar must be checked to know when every single event of the day will happen, and deadlines must not be forgotten, because these time signals control not only priorities, but also the speed at which we are expected to react to our day, our week, or our month.

Let us continue being optimistic: you are not stressed, and you are finally focusing on what you want to do. Yet in the middle of this moment of concentration, your phone performs its favorite activity, distracting you, by reminding you that your doctor’s appointment is in one hour. Suddenly, you have to hurry again.

This is a short scene from a single day that nearly all of us are living. In this example, it is difficult to say whether time signals are positive or negative.

What is clear, however, is that they shape how time is perceived, felt, and lived.

When time sends signals too often through alarms, notifications, reminders, schedules, and alerts, it begins to feel less like guidance and more like pressure. Every notification or clock check interrupts our ongoing experience, breaking our attention and fragmenting our focus. Instead of gently orienting us in our day, these signals demand immediate reactions, invite urgency, and condition us to expect constant alerts. This overabundance of time cues can lead to stress, distraction, and a loss of sustained focus. In psychology, attention is known to be a limited resource: when it is pulled in many directions, our sense of time becomes disjointed and shallow. As time speaks more frequently, we may stop listening to it in a reflective sense we react instead of experiencing, we respond instead of paying attention. In other words, time stops being something we live through and becomes something that constantly interrupts the flow of life.

We can say when these time signals become too frequent and too fragmented, they create what I call temporal noise, similar to acoustic noise, but experienced mentally and emotionally.

Instead of helping us orient ourselves, time signals start to compete for attention and increase stress.

This concept helps frame temporal noise not as a personal failure, but as a systemic design issue.

Design & Politics

Time signals do not emerge accidentally; they are designed, distributed, and enforced through social and technological systems, making time a political issue as much as a personal one. Deadlines, notifications, and schedules shape behavior by creating urgency and prioritizing certain actions over others. Temporal Motivation Theory explains how perceived deadlines influence attention, motivation, and decision-making, often pushing individuals toward short-term reactions rather than long-term reflection. In digital environments, these temporal structures are embedded in interfaces and algorithms that encourage constant availability and rapid response. This shifts responsibility onto individuals while obscuring the systemic design choices behind time pressure. As a result, temporal stress is often framed as a personal failure of time management, rather than a consequence of engineered time systems. Understanding time as a designed and political dimension reveals the need to critically question who controls time signals and whose interests they ultimately serve.

This leads to the need to ask whether silence from time signals is still possible, or necessary.

From temporal noise to temporal silence

A small moment of temporal silence, a period without external time cues, may seem unnecessary at first, but it can be profoundly valuable. Silence doesn’t mean the absence of time; it means experiencing time without noise. When we eliminate interruptions like notifications, alarms, and alerts, we allow our attention to settle and our perception of time to deepen. Research on mind-wandering, meditation, and sustained attention shows that when external signals are reduced, people become more aware of their internal rhythms, thoughts, and body states. This kind of quiet experience lets us reflect on how time feels rather than how it is measured, and it opens up space for presence, creativity, and calm. Without moments of silence, we risk living in a constant state of reactive urgency, where time is something to respond to rather than something to inhabit.

In this sense, temporal silence isn’t just a luxury, it is a way to reconnect with our own experience of time.

At the end, I think i can leave you with this Question:

Do we need moments of temporal silence? and if so, how do we find them?