Lots of different 'maps' in my head....

[LNY1986]

Having an interesting conversation at work this morning.....

I asked people what their time 'maps' looked like? As in how they 'see' the months of the year, the days of the week etc, in their own heads? My 'map' of the year is like a big anti clockwise daisy chain loop, and each month within that large chain as its own mini chain, I can see clearly where we are today, Sept 28th, I am at the 9pm position heading down toward 6pm, which is New Year, where the chain starts again. The chain is blueish white in winter months, and golden coloured in the summer, presumable due to the seasons.
I can also shrink this year right down so it becomes part of an even larger loop, which symbolises this century. It starts at the bottom left in 2000, and finishes up at the top right with 2100.
When I think of myself in 2050 I can see clearly where this is, strangely though this bigger century chain goes in the opposite direction (clockwise!)

I have similar chain for days of the week.

These maps have been with me forever, I cannot ever remember NOT thinking like this, even as a tiny child.

I have ALWAYS just assumed everybody thinks like this.

Yet... EVERY single colleague (6 of us) all laughed at me and thought I was totally nuts!! And they all said they just look at a calendar and they don't need to 'see' where they are in time? Omg, I was blown away, Like, how do people 'see' where they are haha?!! And where they are going in the future?

And now I am sat back at home and suddenly now feel like I am either really weird and freakish, or super intelligent?

My question is this, am I alone in having time space maps in my head, or does anyone else completely get me?

(2 of my colleagues I know are avid MN users, so they will no doubt recognise this as me if they read this haha!!!)

I relate months to various things but I doubt in as complicated a way as the OP. Perhaps the OPs view should not have been shared.

I've got this. It's a type of synaesthesia.

I see the days of the week and months in an oval too. It might be significant that that many posters see it as an oval. Did we all see it as children written like this maybe a tool that was used in schools years ago to teach weeks and months ..

This is so interesting to read!!

I have absolutely nothing. No time picture in my mind at all. A total blank space where you're all describing these things. I look at a calendar so I can visualise how far away things are.

I have no map like this at all. But I think I need one. I often have no idea what month it is, or what day it is. I regularly have a thought process that goes something like:
"So her birthday is in March so that's, is that soon? Where are we now? Er. June? No September. Concentrate Dappled. Nearly October. OK, so March is ages away. Christmas is sooner. But still ages. Is it ages? I want a cup of tea"

This is really interesting. I have this too but none of the ovals - lots of you have ovals - more like an endless, undulating line which gets more depth and detail if I look at it closely to see what the days and hours are doing.

I have slight time blindness, so I have to organise everything military fashion to cope. I buy the same brand of diary a year to structure the day out. I can't cope adapting to a new layout!

I see the year as a line going left to right as in the presentation of the diary.

I struggle to judge how much time is left to events in the future. Like I know I am going on a plane soon, but no idea how much time left until it happens.

You have Spatial Sequence Synesthesia! I have this too! Only found out about four years ago! I thought everyone saw years, months and days of the week like me! Look it up!

It can also be called Date and Time Synesthesia

Yes, I have this and like you, assumed everybody did. My colleagues also think I'm nuts.

I have maps (non connected chains) for days of the weeks, months of the year, numbers, and the view point of the chains in my mind change depending on where we are in the week/year, etc.

My mind has also linked colours to days of the week, months, words (Monday is blue, January is red, etc).

I was 30 when I realised most people do not think like this 🤣

I don't have any pictures in my head - it's words only here! (aphantasia) I had no idea though that the way people think was so, so different from one to another or that anyone thought in a different way to me. Well apart from ds who used to experience nouns as colours.

When I first heard about synaesthesia dd1 was a toddler. Curious, I asked her if she thought numbers had colours, she said yes and reliably and consistently told me which were which. Didn't take me too long to figure out it corresponded exactly to Number Jacks!

I'm amazed you have a clock face, although it does make sense. I have a long 'ribbon' I suppose? Which stretches out and behind for the past. Decades are different coloured sections - 70s yellow, 80s dusky pink, 90s white - 2000+ are a bit vague and not really differentiated. 60s black, 50s murky green. Then I can see the months ahead and behind, and future years / decades curling round (it turned left after 2010, then 2030 turns right).

Mine isn't anywhere as exciting as some of the descriptions on here. I just have a huge spiral with all the years past behind me and those to come ahead.

I want this (stamps feet) my brain is so boooring

Yes, I have this too, around dates, days of the week, time of day and lots of different number patterns (straightforward counting and arithmetic, but also weights, temperature scales etc.).

I can place an event in the past, present or future on the scale (a mixture of loops, boxes and straight lines) and then recall it exactly whenever I need to.

I've had this for as long as I can remember; I tried to draw it out once, but it was far too complicated to fit on a sheet of paper. To start with, it's three dimensional and increases or decreases in size depending on the importance of certain events and closeness to 'today'. I zoom in and out when I drill down into the detail.

@Gatekeeper you were asking for drawn versions...

I have a book called 'Wednesday is Indigo Blue' about synaesthesia (it's excellent) and took some pictures of the pages from the chapter on exactly this topic... do they help

@natura thank you!!. It's incredible and I am so envious of others having this ability

I have nothing at all like this and amazed that a) other people do and b) there are some similarities between people's experience of this even though it sounds as though most of you have never talked to anyone who has the same experience.

Wow, what an interesting looking book @natura

I have this (except clockwise) daisy loops that twist and turn around on each other and I can zoom in or our depending on where I am in the year. Numbers follow a similar shape like a 3D looping pattern in space.

I too received baffled looks at a party when I explained how I visualised the calendar.

The illustration above isn’t exactly how I see it, but is in the same ball park.

My husband on hearing it just said, “that explains a lot”

My map is like a ladder, so we are 3/4 of the way down the ladder now. I can look back and see what happened when throughout the year. The next ladder is waist January 1st and I can see it now

I have a similar image in my mind to this when thinking of the year, months,days
In my mind it's a anticlockwise circle similar to a rollerdex?
Can lightly see the end of the previous month but boldly see the current month title... then rows of square days.
I am terrible at knowing how many days in each month and even the order of the months so this imagery in my mind does see to help me see time clearer and organise my week in my head.
If I'm visualising the upcoming week or previous week it's almost like a list with days write in bold.

I have a very boring horizontal timeline (the past is on the left, the present is in the centre, the future is on the right) although the months are in seasonal colours. The present is more zoomed in from my perspective.
I have read that there is a correlation between the direction of time in mental calendar imagery and the direction of reading in the language you learn to read first. So someone who first learned to read in Hebrew is more likely to picture time as running right (past) to left (future).

I was well into adulthood when I realised that when someone says they are moving a meeting 'back', the majority are using the convention whereby this means they are moving it forward in time, i.e. postponing it.
From a discussion about the forward / backward convention, I learned that DH sees time as a road with the future stretching out in front of him. I have no idea what he does when he needs to visualise the past; uses a rear-view mirror?

Thought this was weird, then remembered I have a week diagram - which is children holding the names of the days of the week on banners and standing in a sort of off-oval ring - I know where it comes from though, it was in a picture book I had as a child.