Ramblings of Tungsten

I highly doubt, in fact I know, I am not the only person to note how much a work day can drag at times. Certain days always seem longer than others depending on a variety of work related factors such as too much work, too little work, uninteresting work, scattered assignments, and so on. That being said, almost without fail, certain segments of the day just drag no matter what.

Since I started work in the nine-to-five world I, and countless others, have noted how much faster the first half of the day moves as compared to the latter half. And, just as many people have noted how quickly lunch seems to fly by but once 2:00 PM or so hits the day couldn’t feel longer or slower. I for one always feel like the early early morning is at 4x speed because I never seem to make it out the door on time no matter how early a start I manage to get.

Well a long time ago an old co-worker, and good friend, of mine developed a chart that mapped this time distortion phenomena. Here is a recreation of that chart:

a larger version of the chart is available

Based on this theory, it also stands to reason that if we extrapolated a similar chart into the weekend we would probably see the average minute drop to mere seconds (perhaps as low as 2 or 3) right up to the point where the post Friday or Saturday hangover kicks in at which point the average likely minute shoots up to an unprecedented two hours (7200 seconds) thus making one long for the 2:00 PM drag of the work week. I took it upon myself to test this theory over my recent birthday weekend and with the help of some “well meaning” friends I was able to experience this dramatic hangover induced time distortion first hand.