It’s a pretty specific feeling to be looking at your calendar and mentally preparing yourself for a string of endless video calls or a meeting that threatens to consume the entire morning. But there comes a time when an email or a written message arrives with a phrase that gives relief: the meeting has been cancelled. The relief you feel is instantaneous, but there is a quite curious phenomenon behind it: the hour that has just been recovered in the day feels much longer and more useful than a free hour that was already scheduled for quite some time.
The big question. It may be something that we feel subjectively, and now that you have read this paragraph you have realized that the sensation that is perceived is true. But now science has arrived to answer the question of why this happens. And it is not magic, but rather it is pure behavioral psychology.
The answer is in a recently published study where the research team set out to understand what happens in the brain when the clock gives us an unexpected break. To do this, they carried out seven experiments involving more than 2,300 participants.
Your conclusions. The first thing that have seen It is precisely that the time “gained” unexpectedly is subjectively perceived as much longer. The researchers explain that this is due to a powerful contrast effect, since the mind was rigidly prepared to not have free time and undergo a cognitive load such as the meeting. When that obligation abruptly disappears, the empty space that remains contrasts brutally with our expectation of saturation.
In short, the brain, faced with the sudden absence of scheduled stress, stretches our perception of those minutes.
What do we do with time? This altered perception of time has direct and measurable consequences on our behavior, since, as the experiments detail, the feeling of “liberation” pushes us to make very specific decisions about how to invest that time.
And because we perceive that we have a lot of extra time, we are more likely to invest it in more extensive, leisure-oriented activities. This explains why, after a cancellation, it is rare that we launch into a harder and more tedious task that we have pending. Instead, that false sense of temporary abundance invites us to have a long coffee, read a pending article, chat with a colleague or do low-intensity tasks. It is as if you were literally tasting freedom.
The modern era. With everything around us, science reminds us that there is a cost to living obsessed with the agenda. Previous research suggests that our leisure time drastically reduces how much we enjoy it and makes us perceive that time passes faster. This is why overscheduling contracts our perception of time, while unexpected cancellations expand it.
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