How do you envision time?

[placebo]

I ALWAYS picture this picture

in my mind when I think of 'time'. Which does nothing for me because it's space time, and well, it doesn't really go beyond that. I just imagine some kind of planet in this little ditch.

Time confuses the heck out of me. I feel like I can never really grasp the concept of time. I feel like time is everywhere, it's like a substance in the air and it doesn't have a direction. I mean, I know we live in linear time, but I never really think about it like that. But I guess as the article says, I never seem to have a problem linguisitically with concepts of time. I get it. I don't get how you mix 'up' and back' to be honest. But I mix up 'early' or 'late' when speaking of time differences between different clocks quite often, and I'm terrible when it's Daylight Savings Time. I'm never sure if I'm gaining or losing until someone tells me.

 

[Ilah]

The future is above me. If I reach my hands up high I touch it with the tips of my fingers. It spreads out vast up in the air.

The present is all around me. It takes a kind of egg shape flowing around me.

The past is under me. It starts at the bottom of my shoes and goes straight down. Two long thin straight beams.

I was a little suprised because I have some things on visualization and they always have the future as being in front of you.

Ilah

 

[Anja]

Past is left and rising, present is level, future is right and gradually elevated.

Days are clockwise, weeks are linear, years are counterclockwise and millenia are linear but more monolithic than weeks.

All of it is paradoxicaly connected and runs within a model of itself, but the model isn't "it." Can't explain it in words!

 

[booyalab]

Years are a circle made of months OR days (Jan 1. far left), and I zoom in for Month/Day detail

I see years similary, except the orientation of January is determined by which month I'm in. I'm like a bug on the face of a clock. Furthermore, the preceding and subsequent years spiral down and up, respectively, from the circle, when I zoom out.

NJs tend to indicate the future in front of them, the present right where they are standing, and the past right behind them.

NPs tend to indicate the future off to the right, the past off to the left, and the present a few feet in front of them.

When questioned, NPs generally say that they observe time flow past them, whereas NJs generally say they are right in the middle of the flow.

I've never thought of time from the NP view, that seems weird. I'm definitely in the middle of the flow.

I'm also on the NJ side when it comes to the other article.

We'll move the meeting up a day -- that is, from Wednesday to Tuesday

this is like something I'd say, even though I would regret the redundancy, because I think about time as consecutive instances, not placement of objects relative to other objects.

 

[Jack Flak]

Hmm. Perhaps, booyalab, you should start a blog titled "You might be an INTJ if..."

 

[Lateralus]

In order to make the spatial images work, they try to associate them with concrete landmarks from their own experience -- like associating yearly intervals with school semesters, so that other events can be associated with specific experiences rather than the intervals themselves.

This is me. I associate time with jobs, school, relationships, and even sports. For anything that happened in 1987, that's when the Cardinals lost to the Twins in the World Series.

 

[Freya]

I did this and even though I am positively an INFJ, I "acted out" time in the same way that NPs do. I picture time from left (past) to right (future) and it is in weekly segments that are connected to eachother and fold up along saturday night. Monday is always the most to the left and saturday is the most to the right. Sunday floats around and is usually next to monday but on the other side, so that the weekly segment is in between sunday and I.

 

[Nighthawk]

I think of time as segments, filled with certain events, feelings, nuances, etc.

 

[Ism]

That's some interesting stuff, though I think I seem to be more in the middle between NJ and NP, based on the descriptions. My vision of time began in front of me, with light blue/white/silvery, warbling tendrils that extended on to infinity. Only the time stream and myself were in this vast space of white, too, if that matters.

Funnily enough, though, my past, present, and future (in that order, coming from the start of the time) were all close together and next to me, despite the other places where I could have put it.

I guess that works with the fact that I tend to work on a smaller scale of things-- everything's under a close-by, compact scope.

 

[Jeffster]

I don't.

 

[Anentropic IxTx]

I think of time in the context of the time-space continuum: an infinite sphere.

 

[Orangey]

Wow, some of you have really complicated pictures for envisioning time. For me, it's just like in a computer animation program...there's a left for back, or past, and a right for future. It moves in a horizontal line in front of me.

I will say, though, that I don't really orient the time scale around the present (for instance, by inserting my present self as the origin) but rather around whatever event it is that I'm thinking of. And when people say they're moving an event up or back a day, I have no problem understanding what they mean.

 

[EcK]

From afar, it seems to be smooth.
It's a bit like an orange. Only greener, but that's another story.

 

[Metis]

I imagined the future farther ahead, the present as a region overlapping, more or less, the front half of my body and the area immediately in front of me, and then the past as being preserved inside my body.


Don't read the answer until you do the OP exercise. Answer:

The Time Machine

Stand up and visualize time as a continuum flowing from future to past. Spatially indicate with your hands where the future, present, and past are, respectively, in relation to yourself. Try to actually FEEL where they are around you by touching them with your hands. After you have done so (for real! --not just in your head!), read this here below...

This is far from foolproof but kinda creepy when it works.
NJs tend to indicate the future in front of them, the present right where they are standing, and the past right behind them.

NPs tend to indicate the future off to the right, the past off to the left, and the present a few feet in front of them.

When questioned, NPs generally say that they observe time flow past them, whereas NJs generally say they are right in the middle of the flow.

https://www.personalitycafe.com/infj-forum-protectors/80685-hints-how-discriminate-between-infj-infp.html​

That supposedly makes me more NJ-like than NP-like, but with a nautilus-like twist at the end. I don't buy it. I'm not a J.

 

[Obfuscate]

i thought of the gorilla in the book congo and thought to myself "that made sense, i am taking the gorilla's awnser"... so amy thought of the past as in front of her because she could see it, and of the future behind her because she could not see it... like she was perpetually being yanked backwards into the future...

so yeah, that's my awnser also...

 

[Polaris]

When I perform the exercise, I feel that the past is behind me, the present where I'm standing, and the future in front of me.

 

[The Cat]

Its just a jump to the left...

 

[1487610420]

fleeting

 

[Lib]

Entropy. Time is entropy, flow of energy. It is constrained by the heart function. So it'd be logical to have higher rate of entropy in one's left part of the body.

 

[The Cat]

And a step to the right....