This is my raw notes from reading this wonderful essay from Gurwinder.
Platforms commit a “heist of time” by accelerating our subjective sense of time. We then underestimate usage and fail to notice the loss.
Evidence and effect: the “30-minute ick factor”: many users intend a quick check and emerge 30 minutes later without recall of the interval.
Why time feels shorter:
Time perception has two parts: online awareness and retrospective memory (both drop while scrolling - nothing is recalled from long sessions)
Retrospective time scales with memory density: the more distinct memories, the longer a period feels in hindsight.
“Lethe effect”: continual exposure to exciting or alarming content creates desensitisation. Once “alarming” becomes routine, routine is non-salient and quickly forgotten.
Stealing time from casinos to feeds: “Gruen effect”make people forget their original intention inside a maze.
Curvilinear, cornerless paths reduce right-angle decisions that would trigger awareness and exits.
Small cubicles limit global awareness and create FOMO through overheard cheers (agitation with partial understanding)
When attention is constantly switching between concurrent tasks, it imposes a “switch-cost effect” that can make people lose track of time
General ideas
Abstinence helps: quitting social media dilates time perception and improves mental health within weeks. Caveat: time often shifts to other apps.
The core problem is curvilinear mazes of experience. The remedy is deliberate “right-angle turns.” Beware of verbosity compensation from ChatGPT & Claude (they ramble and equivocate in their responses, validate users’ delusions and raises many complementarity questions , creating a verbal Gruen effect)
Practical recommandations:
Favour long-form reading (books/essays), single films, complete podcasts over feeds & highlights.
Notification purge: remove all non-human (good luck, but you got the idea) and non-critical push alerts.
Natural stopping points: disable autoplay and infinite scroll where possible; use reader modes and page-by-page navigation.
Intention gate: have clear long term (I do annual detailed objectives, that I review at least quarterly), then check regularly if actions alig (“will this action go in my desired direction?“). Act deliberately.
Oddball injections: Schedule a weekly novelty weekly novelty block (new route, restaurant, rearranging a room. (Note: I also find rituals very gratifying, and a good way to ensure going in the right way)
Memory banking: end the day with a three-sentence narrative of what mattered. Increases retrospective time density. (blogging could work)
Friedman filter: when a flow feels cornerless, create a right-angle turn (stand up, change rooms, or pick another task with an end)
30-minute ick factor: underestimating time spent online.
Chronoception: perception of time shaped by awareness and memory.
Holiday paradox: vacations feel short during, long after.
Lethe effect: desensitisation from constant stimuli erases memory.
Gruen effect: maze-like layouts detach you from intention.
Switch-cost effect: multitasking fragments time perception.
Labyrinth vs. story: feeds erase emplotment (no beginning, middle, end, and posts are semantically unrelated); stories anchor memory.
Oddball effect: novel stimuli dilate time perception.
Memento mori: reminders of mortality to sharpen presence.
Right-angle turns: deliberate interruptions that restore awareness.
What are your personal curvilinear mazes: flows where you lose time without noticing?
Where can you introduce right-angle turns into your day?
How do you keep memory density high in daily life (rituals, stories, narratives)?
What’s your own version of a memento mori (phrase, objects, or reminders) that helps you remember to remember?