Felt Time

Have you ever wondered why time seems to fly as you grow older—or drag endlessly when you’re waiting? In Felt Time: The Psychology of How We Perceive Time, psychologist and neuroscientist Marc Wittmann takes you on a fascinating journey into the science—and soul—of how human beings experience time. Wittmann argues that our sense of time is not an external measurement but an embodied feeling, deeply rooted in our consciousness, body rhythms, emotions, and memories. We live time through our bodies, and our experience of it reveals who we are.

Drawing from fields that range from philosophy to neuroscience, anthropology, and art, Wittmann paints a scientific yet existential portrait: time is both the medium of our consciousness and the mirror of our existence. The faster life feels, the more disconnected we are from our own present. The slower it moves, the more deeply we inhabit our embodied selves. His central contention is both elegant and unsettling—time is a function of self-awareness. Understanding how we perceive duration, rhythm, and change means understanding what it means to be human.

The Core Argument: Time Is Not Measured, It’s Felt

Wittmann contends that human beings do not "perceive" time the way we perceive color or sound. There is no organ for time; instead, we feel its passage through bodily processes such as heartbeat, breath, and movement, and through changes in our emotional and mental states. In moments of fear, excitement, boredom, or love, time dilates or contracts—not because the clock hands speed up or slow down, but because our consciousness intensifies or withdraws.

This felt sense of time, Wittmann explains, arises from the insula—a region in the brain where bodily signals, emotional states, and consciousness intersect. Through it, our brains weave together heartbeat, sensations, and thought into what neuroscientist Bud Craig calls the “global emotional moment”—the very feeling of “I exist, now.”

Why This Matters: The Time Crisis of Modern Life

The implications go far beyond neuroscience. Wittmann shows that our modern relationship to time has fractured our relationship with ourselves. As society accelerates—emails, deadlines, and digital pings—the tempo of our inner life lags behind. We become alienated from bodily time, leading to stress, burnout, and the haunting feeling that we are “running out of time.” By studying time perception, Wittmann implicitly offers a path for healing: slowing down, cultivating mindfulness, and regaining synchrony between our internal rhythms and outer lives.

The Book’s Framework

Across seven chapters, Wittmann builds a comprehensive picture of subjective time. He begins with the Marshmallow Test, showing how the capacity to wait—delaying gratification—determines self-control, success, and happiness. He then explores the inner rhythm of the brain and the neurological foundations of our temporal awareness, demonstrating that we live in small “windows” of presence, roughly three seconds each. This is the psychological present—long enough to perceive change and to act, but fleeting enough to make us rely on memory to construct a sense of continuity.

Wittmann then examines internal clocks and biological rhythms—from circadian cycles to the phenomenon of “social jetlag.” He connects these to emotional well-being, demonstrating that our time perception speeds up or slows down with arousal, attention, and bodily states. Later chapters tackle age, happiness, and mortality showing that time accelerates with routine and repetition, and can be expanded by novelty, emotion, and mindful awareness. Finally, Wittmann addresses the philosophical crux of the matter: the self is time-consciousness embodied. Our awareness of duration, boredom, and change shapes who we are.

Why “Felt Time” Is Transformative

By merging empirical research with philosophical reflection, Wittmann makes time personal again. His experiments in fMRI labs, studies of meditative states, and anecdotes—from isolation tanks to performance art—reveal that living fully in time means regaining sensitivity to bodily presence. Whether describing Marina Abramović’s stillness in MoMA or the three-second breath of a mindful monk, Wittmann reminds readers that control over time begins with awareness of the body.

“Because I have a body, I perceive the passing of time.”

In these words, Wittmann summarizes the entire project: time is not an abstract dimension—it’s an experience of change rooted in our corporeality. By tuning into body time, we rediscover presence, slow down subjective acceleration, and perhaps, as the Stoics like Seneca advised centuries ago, learn that life is long enough—if only we use our time wisely.

Why do some people find it impossible to wait, while others can delay gratification for greater rewards later? Wittmann begins Felt Time with this quintessential psychological puzzle, demonstrating that our sense of time is inseparable from our capacity for self-control. Drawing on Walter Mischel’s iconic Marshmallow Test, he shows that how we handle waiting as children predicts our emotional stability, decision-making, and even happiness as adults.

The Marshmallow Test Revisited

In the 1960s experiment, children were offered a marshmallow and told they could either eat it immediately or wait a few minutes to receive two. Some ate right away; others squirmed, sang, and invented distractions to wait. A decade later, researchers discovered that children who waited scored higher on academic tests, displayed better emotional regulation, and adapted more effectively to frustration. Wittmann interprets this through the lens of time perception: patients who can tolerate waiting experience time differently. They do not feel the waiting period as vividly painful; their temporal horizon is wider.

Temporal Myopia: The Compression of Time

Wittmann introduces the concept of temporal myopia—a psychological nearsightedness toward time. For people with high impulsivity, the near future feels overwhelmingly dominant, while distant rewards lose their emotional weight. This distortion explains why impulsive individuals tend to choose smaller, immediate pleasures (the glass of wine, the impulse buy) over larger, delayed gains (health, savings, or long-term success). Similar tendencies appear in ADHD patients, who feel subjective time more intensely—each second of waiting feels longer.

The Emotional Dimension of Waiting

Importantly, Wittmann points out that waiting is not just cognitive but emotional. We don’t measure time—we feel it through frustration, desire, or discomfort. Emotional intelligence, then, is partly the ability to manage the feelings that come with waiting. Drawing on Antonio Damasio’s work on emotion and reason, Wittmann argues that every decision is colored by affect: we value future rewards when we can imagine how they will feel.

Culture, Time, and Patience

Wittmann also notes that entire cultures differ in their time orientation. Some societies—northern European, East Asian—value planning, punctuality, and deferred achievement; others—southern Mediterranean or tropical cultures—emphasize the present, sociability, and spontaneity. Neither is inherently superior: “future-oriented” nations may achieve economic growth but lose experiential richness; “present-oriented” cultures preserve joy but risk instability. The ideal, Wittmann implies, is achieving a personal equilibrium: the freedom to shift between present pleasure and future purpose without becoming trapped in either.

How long does the present moment actually last? According to Wittmann, our consciousness doesn’t live in infinitesimal instants but in temporal windows averaging around three seconds. Within this duration—the psychological “now”—our brains integrate perception, emotion, and action. Anything shorter feels like a flicker; anything longer becomes memory.

Dissecting the Now

Drawing from psychologist Ernst Pöppel’s research, Wittmann describes how the brain unifies sensory data into coherent moments approximately three seconds long. Musically, this is the length of a verse; linguistically, it’s the average line in poetry across cultures. Even infants, in their babbling exchanges with mothers, naturally align their vocal rhythms to this time frame. Beethoven’s motifs or the pulse of poetry embody this neural meter, suggesting that art mirrors our embodied sense of time.

Flow and Presence

Wittmann connects this rhythm to psychological states like flow—the absorption we feel in creative or athletic moments. During flow, self-consciousness recedes, and awareness synchronizes perfectly with this natural temporal pulse. In contrast, when we are distracted or anxious, we fall out of sync: our awareness fractures, and time either crawls (as when bored) or vanishes (as in deep engagement).

Mindfulness and the Three-Second Breath

Wittmann also allies this framework with mindfulness meditation, pioneered in psychology by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Concentrating on breathing restores us to body time—each full inhalation and exhalation cycle lasts roughly three seconds. By linking awareness to respiration, we anchor consciousness in the rhythm of the body, slowing subjective time and rekindling presence.

Presence arises when body and mind align in the same temporal rhythm.

In this framework, the elusive “now” isn’t an instant but a flowing window. To truly live in it, Wittmann suggests, is to inhabit your body’s natural pulse—whether in music, conversation, or breath.

What if your day feels too long—or far too short? Wittmann reveals that this sensation depends on internal, biological, and emotional clocks. He traces time perception to three domains: circadian rhythms that shape our physiology, short-term “psychological clocks” lasting seconds and minutes, and body-based signals that determine our sense of presence.

Biological Clocks and Chronotypes

Everyone’s body runs on roughly a 24-hour rhythm, but our individual chronotypes—being a “lark” or “owl”—affect productivity and mood. Society’s schedules, however, favor early risers. Wittmann cites chronobiologist Till Roenneberg’s concept of “social jetlag”: when your biological rhythm is perpetually out of sync with social time, you accumulate stress, fatigue, and mood swings. Late-sleeping teenagers, for example, live physiologically in another time zone.

Emotion as a Time Regulator

Emotional intensity alters perceived speed. In boredom, seconds stretch endlessly; in fear, time slows dramatically, as if the world enters slow motion. In joy or love, hours vanish in minutes. All these distortions, Wittmann shows, map to changes in bodily arousal: heart rate, temperature, and skin conductance shift our sense of duration. The brain reads these bodily fluctuations as time information.

When Waiting Feels Eternal

By framing “time” as a biological sensation rather than external reality, Wittmann explains why every experience has its own tempo. Activities that align with natural rhythms—conversation, movement, creativity—feel effortless. Those that trap us in passive waiting amplify bodily tension and stretch time unbearably. Recognizing your personal internal tempo, Wittmann argues, allows you to design life around when your body and mind tick best.

As children, a summer lasts forever. As adults, entire years disappear in a blur. Wittmann explores this paradox: why time seems to accelerate with age. His answer is both poetic and empirical: time feels longer when life is rich in novelty and emotion—and shorter when it’s filled with routine.

Memory and the Density of Experience

Wittmann cites studies from Germany, New Zealand, and Japan showing that older adults consistently report decades flashing by faster than their youth. The key factor is memory density. When days are repetitive, they leave fewer traces in memory, and retrospectively, the period feels contracted. Novel events—like a first love or travel adventure—stretch subjective time because the brain encodes more detail.

Variety as the Antidote to Temporal Shrinkage

A life of variety slows felt time. Learning new skills, changing environments, or simply paying attention to the present enriches memory. Wittmann suggests that “a fulfilled and varied life is also a long life”—not physically longer, but subjectively fuller. Emotional engagement, not calendar time, determines the length of life as experienced.

He links this insight to writers like Thomas Mann and philosophers like Seneca, both of whom noted that routine compresses life. The goal is not endless novelty but attentive variety—a different way of experiencing what’s already there.

Time passes more slowly when you live deeply—routine only accelerates it.

For Wittmann, slowing time means cultivating curiosity, emotion, and meaning. If you want your life to feel longer, fill it with moments that matter.

What links boredom, anxiety, and the frantic feeling of “no time”? In Wittmann’s view, all three arise from disconnection between body, emotion, and awareness. He situates this within a new model of consciousness that bridges philosophy and neuroscience: the self emerges through temporal continuity.

The Brain Basis of Self-Awareness

Working with neuroscientist Bud Craig, Wittmann identifies the anterior insular cortex as the neural hub of the self. The insula integrates signals from heart, lungs, and organs with emotional and cognitive processing, creating what Craig calls the “global emotional moment”—the felt unity of body, emotion, and awareness in the present. Consciousness is not located in one part of the brain but emerges as this continuous stream of embodied moments.

Boredom as the Mirror of Self

Wittmann’s analysis of boredom is striking: when nothing distracts us, we face time itself—and, therefore, ourselves. In boredom, the external world ceases to absorb attention, leaving us hyper-aware of duration and selfhood. The insula lights up in boredom just as it does in fear or meditation, linking all these experiences of intensified self-presence. Hence, both terror and tranquility can make time slow down.

Acceleration, Anxiety, and Control

Drawing on sociologist Hartmut Rosa’s Social Acceleration, Wittmann explains how modern life floods us with stimuli yet robs us of genuine presence. When every instant is filled with action, messages, and deadlines, the self thins out—we lose contact with our bodily now. To have no time is to lose oneself, he writes, paraphrasing Heidegger.

The remedy is not radical withdrawal but the mindful control of tempo. Through pauses, monotasking, and emotional regulation, we can resynchronize our internal and external timescales. Only then does the modern human—torn between acceleration and emptiness—recover their temporal and existential equilibrium.

In the book’s climactic synthesis, Wittmann shows that the sense of time and bodily sensation are inseparable. Experiments using isolation tanks, brain imaging, and physiological metrics reveal that temporal awareness depends on interoception—the perception of internal bodily states such as heartbeats, breath, and tension.

The Isolation Tank Experiments

In a sensory deprivation tank, all external change is removed: no light, no sound, no smell. Time should disappear—but it doesn’t. Participants report that time passes slowly, often painfully, because only their bodily sensations remain. The brain compensates for lost input by magnifying internal rhythms: heartbeat, breath, and subtle muscular tension. Wittmann concludes that body time is the foundation of subjective time.

The Insula as the Body’s Clock

Functional MRI studies by Wittmann and colleagues at UC San Diego demonstrate that the posterior insula tracks the accumulation of bodily states over seconds. The longer a stimulus (like a tone) lasts, the more steadily insular activity increases. When the tone stops, the signal peaks—suggesting the brain is summing physiological signals to build a sense of duration. In Munich, further experiments confirmed that people who are more aware of their heartbeat can reproduce time intervals more accurately.

Rhythm, Emotion, and the Unity of Body Time

Heartbeat and respiration link deeply to rhythm and emotion. The insula responds inversely to fast and slow beats, tying tempo in music to internal motion and feeling. As infants, we attune to the rhythm of our mother’s heartbeat; as adults, we find pulses of music or meditation that resonate with our own.

“Because we have a body, we have a sense of time.”

For Wittmann, this is both a scientific and existential truth. Our sense of time reflects the living presence of the body. To feel time fully is to feel alive.