Abstract

The perception of time is surprisingly labile. For example, during threatening events such as car accidents and robberies, many people report that these moments seem to pass in slow motion - as if time has slowed down. However, humans are regularly exposed to other social constructs of time, specifically, the calendar week. In an online survey (N>250), we explored the effect of weekday on social and occupational organisation. Participants selected areas from a digital diary in response to questions including “indicate when you are normally busy during the week”. Participants were also asked several open-ended questions that aimed to explore their current work-life balance alongside activities that cause time to shrink & dilate. Our results revealed significant Time-of-day and Weekday effects supporting existing literature. For example, busyness peaks on a Monday, and declines monotonically across the week. In addition to supporting previous research regarding the importance of weekday for social and occupational organisation, our results have clear implications for the study of time outside the laboratory.