Claudia HammondRecensioni

A book about time perception, the central thesis kind of investigating why when we go on holiday we feel like we're there forever, doing millions of activities, but afterwards feel like it's flown by. A feeling I know all too well. It was interesting and held my attention when I was reading it on the train. It delves into self-help a little at the end, too, warning people not to try and have too many "new" experiences, which can be exhausting and mess with our perception of time (advice which I wasn't following).

A bit repetitive overall but fine

This is a really interesting topic, but I had to skim sections of it because I was short on time (lol.) I would love to see an updated version w/ info on how smartphone use affects our time perception. I suspect they contribute to the feeling of time flying.

TLDR - If you want time to go slower, disrupt your routine occasionally and do lots of different things. The more memories we make, the longer time seems to last. That was mostly what I was here for, since time is beginning to fly by for me at an alarming rate!

Not the most exciting book in the world ;)
A plea to rest more - instead of bowing to the constant productivity pressure. As reading is one of the top relaxation options, I totally agree.½

There's not much here.

I gave up after 100 pages, as the writing style was so boring and hard to follow. This could have been the German translation.

Dit boek sloot helemaal aan bij wat ik de voorbije maand las van Alan Burdick, Why Time Flies, maar het is veel beter geschreven. En het overlapt gedeeltelijk ook met dat van Philip Zimbardo en John Boyd, The Time Paradox, maar het is veel minder een zelfhulpboek. Net als Burdick gaat Hammond gedetailleerd in op hoe we tijd ervaren, psychologisch dus, en de vele experimenten die zijn gevoerd rond tijdperceptie, maar ze doet dat met veel meer structuur, en vat alles veel aanschouwelijker samen.
Nieuw was voor mij wel het uitgebreide hoofdstuk waarin ze uitlegt dat we, meestal onbewust, aan tijd een ruimtelijke voorstelling geven, en dat die voorstelling zowel ons tijdperspectief (positief of negatief) uitdrukt als bepaalt. Dat suggereert dat we ook het verleden, en meer bepaald ons eigen verleden, onze herinneringen in ons brein opslaan in verbinding met een ruimtelijk aspect (dat ruimtelijk aspect is trouwens ook met taal verbonden: in het westen leggen we het verleden op een tijdslijn klassiek langs de linkerkant, maar dat is omdat we van links naar rechts lezen; bij Arabieren en Chinezen bijvoorbeeld is dat anders). Dat is een inzicht dat perspectieven biedt tot een beter begrip van de (soms gebrekkige) manier van functioneren van ons geheugen.
En nog interessanter was haar bevinding dat de belangrijkste functie van ons geheugen misschien wel het vermogen is om in de toekomst te kijken: want het is juist op basis van herinneringen en ervaringen uit het verleden dat we ons een bepaald beeld van de toekomst kunnen vormen; een kind tot 3 jaar kan dat nog niet, het leeft helemaal in het nu, maar vanaf dat moment ontwikkelt zich in het brein het vermogen om ervaringen uit het verleden op te slaan en actief aan te spreken, en dat vormt de basis om bepaalde verwachtingen te koesteren. Ook deze connectie tussen herinnering en verwachting zal zeker weer boven komen, als ik in mijn lectuurmarathon over tijd nader ga ingaan op historische temporaliteit.
Zoals gezegd sluit Hammond toch ook enigszins aan bij de therapeutische aanpak van Zimbardo om tijdperspectieven te manipuleren, om tot een beter welbevinden te komen. Maar gelukkig is ze veel realistischer en tussen de lijnen lees ik duidelijk kritiek op het reductionistisch en voluntaristisch karakter van Zimbardo’s boek. Enig minpuntje misschien in Hammond’s boek: ik vraag me af in hoeverre ze haar bevindingen en die van andere onderzoekers niet teveel als universalistisch voorstelt, want wellicht gaat wat beschrijft alleen maar op voor de westerse, moderne wereld, en niet of lichtelijk anders voor andere culturen.

Wilt u weten wat u allemaal kunt doen met uw geld? Zoekt u interessante beleggingsmethodes of investeringen die veel opbrengen? Kijkt u uit naar een manier om veel geld te verdienen of hoe u het meeste waar kunt krijgen voor uw geld? Als dit het geval is, dan hebt u met dit boek de verkeerde keuze gemaakt.

De kracht van geld gaat niet over wat u met uw geld kunt doen maar over wat geld met u doet. Op zichzelf waardeloze stukjes papier of metaal en getallen op een scherm blijken een buitengewone macht over u te hebben. Het maakt duidelijk hoe moeilijk het kan zijn om te bereiken dat geld u niet in zijn macht houdt maar dat u de macht blijft houden over geld.

De psychologie van sparen en geld uitgeven leert ons hoe geld motiverend kan werken en ons gelukkiger kan maken. Geld kan mensen helpen om ongezonde gewoontes op te geven. Geld kan mensen uiteraard helpen om de armoede te ontstijgen maar ook om beter te kunnen nadenken en doordachter te handelen.

In sommige omstandigheden werkt geld echter averechts. Zo kunnen ‘geweldige aanbiedingen’ kortsluiting veroorzaken in ons gezond verstand. Zoals we allen tot onze schade en schande al mochten ondervinden wordt daarvan gretig gebruik gemaakt in reclame en verkoop. De exuberante bonussen van bankiers werken juist roekeloosheid en gemakzucht in de hand. In bepaalde omstandigheden gebruiken mensen geld niet om hun situatie te verbeteren maar rijden zichzelf ermee in de vernieling.

U maakt kennis met de resultaten van maar liefst 263 ingenieuze experimenten over onze ingewikkelde relatie met geld. Deze tonen overvloedig aan dat onze beoordeling van geld niet zuiver rationeel is. Minstens even boeiend is de opzet van deze experimenten door vooraanstaande onderzoekers in de economische psychologie zoals Daniel Kahnemann.

Een deel van de vergissingen die we begaan met betrekking tot geld zijn echter gemakkelijk te voorkomen als we ze kunnen herkennen, zegt Claudia Hammond. Geld geeft immers alleen vervulling als we weten wat we ermee moeten doen en als we weten dat het niet al onze problemen zal oplossen. Ze besluit haar boek dan ook met liefst 32 tips om geld in onze macht te blijven houden.

© Minervaria

Easy to read and interesting. The author does a great job of summarizing and organizing much of the existing research and inserting her own comments and thoughts throughout. I love this kind of non-fiction that reads well cover to cover and that provides the sources on which it's based.½

An entertaining review of the psychology of money and finance with clear explanations of recent research.

A fascinating guide to using psychology when dealing with money, written by a regular of B. B. C. Radio 4.
Claudia Hammond always holds interest on the radio and her writings are no exception.
I was given a digital copy of this book by the publisher Canongate Books via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review.

This was very readable, I enjoyed it a lot. The author tackles the subject of how neurologists are studying the issue of how people perceive time. It's an interesting topic, and the author does a good job of presenting it in general terms using examples that are clear and intriguing. Topics include how time is linked to memory, and how it is linked to the ability to imagine the future.

A few quibbles - the author is British and makes some assumptions about how people perceive time that seem very culturally rooted and she doesn't quite seem aware of that. She writes about how rare it is to talk about distance in terms of time ... which is so, so typical in the U.S. ("How far away is it?" "Oh, about 2 hours.")

On a more individual note, she has framed the book around an example of going on vacation -- while you are there, it seems like your time is rushing by (which I agree with) but when you return home, it seems like you have been gone for a very long time ... which, I don't know about that at all. Whenever I get back from vacation, it feels like I was gone for only a flash, almost like I never left. By the end of the book, as she has linked this example to more specific things, I felt like I had a somewhat better idea of what she was talking about (like it is true that one tends to do more exciting things than usual during a vacation, so you have having more memorable times in general) but I will still never describe it as lasting for a long time.½

Claudia Hammond schreibt im typischen Stil einer amerikanischen Wissenschafterin, die möglichst viele Bücher verkaufen will. Sie verspricht im Untertitel ein "Unlocking the mysteries of time perception", in Wirklichkeit reiht sie Beispiele aus der Literatur, verschiedene Studien und eigene Erfahrungen (Stichwort "Urlaubssyndrom") mehr oder weniger wahllos aneinander und wiederholt ihre Thesen x-mal, so dass sich beim Lesen die Zeit tatsächlich zu dehnen scheint. Im letzten Kapitel gibt sie noch praktische Tipps zum Zeitmanagement, womit sie sich als seriöse Wissenschafterin endgültig disqualifiziert.

I think learning about how people think and how they use their brains is endlessly fascinating. That is why I am such a big fan of Oliver Sacks who writes about diseases of the brain that he has studied throughout his career as a neurologist. Claudia Hammond has written a book about what is really just a small part of how we use our brain i.e. how we perceive time but there is lots to sink your teeth into. I have spent the last couple of days asking people one of the questions that is posed in this book. The question is "Next Wednesday's meeting has had to be moved forward two days. What day is the meeting on now?" When I read this I said to myself "Monday of course" and I was astonished to read that some people answer that question with Friday. I've now asked 6 people this same question and 4 have answered Friday, 1 has answered Monday and 1 answered Saturday (which is just plain weird). Supposedly the people that answer with Monday see the future as approaching them while the people that answered Friday see themselves as approaching the future. Who knew?

That's just one of the fascinating nuggets that I picked up from this book. My biggest complaint about the book is that I found her writing to be very repetitive. She deals in a chapter about why time seems to progress faster as we age but in almost every chapter up to that point she tells us that people find time goes faster as they get older. She alludes to the fact that she will be discussing it in a future chapter a number of times. Is this to keep our interest? Does she think we might forget that this is a common perception? Claudia Hammond is a broadcaster by trade so maybe that has something to do with this constant repetition, like the old adage about public speaking about telling the audience what you are going to say, then say it, then tell them what you said. Maybe that's important in an oral presentation but I don't think it is in a book.

That said I would encourage anyone interested in how our minds work to pick this book up. You will come away with at least some idea of what makes us "tick".½

The problem, for me, with this book is that it never attempts to get to grips with the question, 'What is time?'.

We have a chapter on synisthesia - the mixing of our senses whereby some people see colours when they hear music and associate a specific colour with each day of the week, etc..

We are told that day dreaming is good; it is evolutions method allowing us to prepare for possible futures. Each time we buy a lottery ticket we dream of what we would do were our numbers to come up and are thus more prepared in the (very) unlikely event that such occurs. Next, we are told that we do not use this information well; we skew our use to only the last time that we considered the prospect. In a sentence, the useful nature of day dreams, built up over a chapter, is shattered.

We gain advice as to how to slow down time, if one feels it is running away from one, or speed it up if time palls. Both solutions are more interesting than practical and the whole concept of concerning oneself with the attempt has slightly less value than it would have been to issue each passenger on the Titanic with a tea cup and suggest that they start to bail.

The book is well presented and Claudia Hammond has a pleasing style, although her little homilies, whilst designed to relegate the author to 'no better than the reader', came across as invented, rather than drawn from life. She tells the story of a programme she made for Radio in which she 'remembers' taking part in an experiment whereby one plunges one's arm in iced water to discover how long one can bear the pain. Having mentioned this to a fellow broadcaster, the tape is checked: she watched others, but did not take part herself. Ms. Hammond admits to false memory syndrome (one cannot be mistaken!). I know that I would fight harder for my belief that I had completed the experiment - " it must have been cut out of the final programme", "I must have done it prior to, or post production", are but the two responses that would immediately spring to my tongue.

Quite an entertaining read, but do not expect a wiser perspective upon time.

The concept for the book is appealing, beginning to understand why time flies by when you're having fun as opposed to spending a day clock watching. There are one or two key parts of the book that were enjoyable to read about and I learned about our body clocks from these - such as Michel Siffre who spent two months in an ice cave in complete darkness and also Philip Zimbardo's Time Perspective Inventory was equally as interesting.

Where I became restless in my reading was the repeated references to suicide and conditions of the brain - as it appeared in most chapters it bcame too repetitive. Overall it was an easy to understand read and I was able to skip aspects that didn't interest me. Where I've dropped stars is because I don't feel (as claimed) that the book showed me 'how to manage [my] time more efficiently, speed time up and slow it down at will, plan for the future with more accuracy and, ultimately, use the warping of time to [my] own advantage.'½

I don’t generally read a lot of non-fiction but the description for this book caught my attention, as I certainly feel I am ruled by time (rather than the other way round). Even on holiday, I am always checking my watch and I allow my feelings about what the time is to dictate what I do next. (I hadn’t really given this any thought before, but it seems a bit pathetic now that I have noticed!)

So, I thought, this is definitely the book for me! And yes, I found it fascinating! I loved the insights into our own psyche, and the understanding it gave me of why we behave the way we do around time. And I particularly enjoyed the stories about the experiences of various people who did extraordinary, and fascinating things as part of their researches into their perceptions of time.

This book gave me plenty to think about. Whether it affects my behaviours in the long term remains to be seen, but it has certainly given me a lot to think about in relation to how I can manage my time better.

NF

gift from Jessy (birthday)