I have never thought much about this. But my SO points it out to the point where I have become a party trick. Apparently I have the ability, day or night, to pinpoint the time within a few minutes, without wearing a watch. Example one: out fishing (I don’t ever wear a watch, never have) and we went out at dawn last weekend, fished, drank from the themos (coffee, no rum, no scotch etc) and another in the boat said “I wonder how long we’ve been gone”, and I said, (overcast day etc, no sun to speak of) “It’s about 20 past 11”. Other person checks mobile phone - “It’s 19 past 11”.
Okay, 'nother example, yesterday evening, child of DellieM says “Mum, what time is it?” (no watch, no mobile, dark …) “It must be about 7.45pm”. Child checks mobile - time: 7.46pm.
Tonight: SO and I having a couple of beers on back verandah - SO (cheeky sod) says “What time do you reckon it is”, I answer “Oh, it must be about 10 to 10” - answer: correct. :eek:
So, who else has a scary built in time-distance-direction monitor? Please tell me that I’m not the only freak! I might add that though I can guess the time, I turn maps upside down, and get lost in a phonebox, so bad is my sense of direction.
Yes! and it pisses my fiance off to no end. I’m generally good for about ± 3 mins but I can very often hit it right on the head.
Usually, when someone asks what time it is I say something like, I’m guessing it’s about 20 after 8. Then someone else digs out their cellphone, looks at me and says, you must’ve just looked! It’s a great trick, but no one believes that I can actually do it. They all think I’m cheating.
I’ll never get used to NSEW as “cardinal directions”; I mean, I know they are, but I grew up in places where the “main” directions are different and change by location.
While I can’t point north without a compass unless I’m on the street and in the US, I can point you to “mountain” in Barcelona or to “plaza del Castillo” in Pamplona without hesitation even if I’m in a part of town I’ve never visited.
My whole family “suffers” from being asked directions by passersby in the most uncanny locations; thing is, we usually can provide said directions. Happened to me my first time in NYC: there I am, backpack on and showing over my head (if that doesn’t say “out of town” I don’t know what does), someone asks me for directions and it turns out it was for a building I’d noticed from the bus. Happened to my brother in Madrid, before he’d even left the train station.
SiL is a non-map person (I blame it on education, because she can read maps just fine if they’re for a shopping mall); she thought we were joking at first when she’d see us “glance” at the map and get the directions just-so. She used to be quite paranoid (definitely education, her dad is a cop and used to be on the antiterrorism brigade) and she thought we were memorizing the dirs beforehand to make fun of her. Uh, no, we just can read maps.
While I’m not, AFAIK, particularly good at guessing the time, I do have a strong internal clock. I’ll be happily doing whatever and then there’s a sudden strong signal from my stomach… “gee, lemme guess, it’s noon?” Yeap. Right on time.
Yes! You’re exactly what I’m looking for! (whoops! that sounded wrong) but I can do it, and realise I have done forever. My SO said to my ex-H “She’s got this time thing down pat, how does she do it?” To which my ex-H said “Mate, she did it in Africa with zone differences, don’t ask”
Phew! Its not just me that has this freaky ability then. There are at least 3 of us. I used to do it as a party trick too, but now its just very very useful when I’ve gone out without phone or watch.
In college I had an uncanny ability to wake up four minutes before my alarm, no matter what it was set for, and no matter when I went to bed. What was weirder was that if I forgot to set my alarm, I’d oversleep, even if I thought I had set it correctly.
I have a little of both – I’m good with the time to within about +/- 30 minutes, even when I wake up in the middle of the night.
And I can almost always point West (it’s the West I recognize, for some reason); which means I can always orient myself once I’ve done that.
Except in Haifa. That’s one weird-ass city – the main road coming in from the South, along the sea, g-r-a-d-u-a-l-l-y curves East then back South, following the Bay… by then I’m totally lost :o
Oh Lord! I do that too! My alarm clock goes off at 7.00am. It’s an analogue clock with no snooze option. Yet, I wake at exactly 7.55am - (which is perfect). I bring myself out of sleep, look at the clock, without an alarm and say, “Yes, now DellieM, get your lazy arse out of bed”. It’s not failed me EVER.
I’ve got a good internal clock. After half an hour or so of not looking at the time, I can find that when I do, my guess was usually +/- 1 minute. Waking up in the night, I can get it down to a small margin too.
But my main claim to fame, is that even as a shift worker, I have not set an alarm to wake up for over ten years. Back in the mid 90s, I got sick of having to turn off the alarm before it went off, and taught myself to trust the fact that I would unfailingly wake up about five minutes before the alarm was due to go off.
Count me as another with an extremely accurate internal clock. The thing that is great about it is it works regardless of whether or not I think about it. Perfect example: the microwave. I put food in and proceed to completely forget about it. Time goes by and then all a sudden I remember the food. I walk back into the kitchen, and without fail, there is 3-5 seconds left until the food is done.
I have a good internal clock and compass. I’m not as “on the ball” as the OP and some others describe - don’t know if I can tell time w/o a watch, as I am always wearing a watch…
But I always know what direction I’m facing/going (usually I have a very vivid map in my head) and I usually wake up without an alarm clock. Like today, I had gone to bed 30 minutes later than usual, forgot to set my alarm, and woke up 30 minutes past when I should have set the alarm for.
My husband can estimate to within 2 minutes the time it will take us to get home from anywhere, any time of day, any distance. Which, considering the traffic in this area, is nothing short of miraculous.
I just wish I could convince him I’m at least as good at reading a map as he is. We finally had it out: if he wants me to navigate, follow my directions first and question them later, dammit! Because I know I’m right because my dad had me navigating on cross-country trips pre-interstate when I was 8 years old!
I’m usually pretty good at telling the time off the top of my head. I can get it to within a couple of minutes. My dad can do the same thing.
What I happen to be very good at is estimating times of arrival. Driving between home and college for a couple of years gave me time to do lots of the math in my head for rate and time. Now I’ve got a set of fractions in my head with which I can estimate times arrival to within two minutes as long as I have the correct distances.
My Wife has commented a few times on my ability to ‘know’ the time, accurate to the neareast five minute interval.
I think we subconciously pick up on information around us, like how long we’ve been watch TV, or when the sun went down or when start feeling hungry.
It’s not cheating if you subconciously notice the time on the clock in the kitchen then sit down to an episode of startrek that you know lasts 45 minutes and you can tell the time without thinking about it when the episode ends. I’ve seen humans do uncanny things in many differant fields that work the same way as the mechanism I’m suggesting.