Is It Better to Know?

Is it always better to know how long it’ll take you to get somewhere? If not, what are examples of times when it would be better not to know?

Your phone says thirty-seven minutes. You can settle into the ride, or you can watch the number, and every red light becomes a personal insult.

Key concepts

Flow: Total absorption in what you are doing, named by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Its first casualty is the clock — people in flow lose track of time, and checking the time is usually what ends it.

Every work — at a glance

The Psychology of Waiting Lines — David Maister, 1985 (paper)

The 1985 paper that named why waits hurt: an uncertain wait feels longer than a known one, and an unexplained wait longer than an explained one.

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What to know

01
The rule is what the time is for. Knowing helps when time is a cost you are trying to bound — a commute, a queue, a wait you cannot shorten anyway. Knowing hurts when the time is the experience, because a clock you keep checking is a clock you are watching instead of living.

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Across subjects

Hitchcock made the opposite case for film. Show the audience the bomb under the table and tell the characters nothing, and you buy fifteen minutes of suspense;

Theme connection

"Are We There Yet?"

The question is a demand to know — and the demand is not always wise. One side says information is a gift: you can choose to ignore a clock, but you cannot un-ignore one you never had. The other says surprise, immersion and wonder all die under a countdown.

Practice — a sample

HISThe Millerites' day passed in 1844 and some set another. That MOST supports a preference for —

A A shared vigil
B A given reason
C A dated end
D A named leader
E A visible sign

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