How to Coach Yourself and Others Essential Knowledge For Coaching | Page 102

"I feel agitated and compelled to get the job done to the point of
ignoring hunger, thirst or the need to go to the bathroom."
"I get so disconnected from the world that someone else has to
pull me out. Like they were there with me to keep my mind off of
the ``real world. Oblivious. The physical world and its demands
cease to exist. My own mind and intelligence are the only
limitations I encounter."
"I heard the radio, drank beer, and smoked cigarettes. I was
aware of my surroundings, but yes I was less aware of my
problems."
"I don't know. I was working not looking at me working . . ."
Sense of Time Distortion
When a person is experiencing flow, their internal clock slows
down or speeds up, but the external clock is constant.
Furthermore, people state that hours seem to change into
minutes and vice versa. The sense of time distortion is frequent
in the web environment, such as the following responses from
web users:
"Even though I have a program that audibly announces the time
in a female voice every 15 minutes on my computer, I don't hear
it . . . When I leave my computer from the newsgroup I have a
slightly dazed, disassociated feeling. While in the newsgroup I
have lost all sense of time. What subjectively seems like 20
minutes turns out to have actually been 2 and 1/2 hours."
"Time went by extremely fast. Two hours had passed before I
had ever realized it. I was quite shocked that so much time had
passed without me being aware of it."
"Just that feeling of being totally absorbed in what you're doing,
looking at the clock and saying ``Dang, how can it be 4 a.m., I just
started this project!

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