A weird video where I talk about how I read time on clocks

I think it could be summed up as 'you don't care what time it is, you care about where you are at "in the hour".'

FWIW, I had to teach myself to read an analog clock a few years ago as I always had issues parsing it. I've heard it's common for people with ADHD or other developmental differences. I didn't realize how handy clocks were until I started using the visual "time timer" (designed for special ed) which highlights the "fractional" bit of the minute hand that you mentioned. https://www.timetimer.com/ If you're looking to do a video on this phenomenon, I wouldn't be surprised if there's similar "learning clocks".

Erik Granlund

The thing that I never liked about analogue clocks is that as the minute hand points closer to the top of the hour, its feels more logical to interpret like this: "real time is 3:55, so a quick glance shows the hour hand pointing nearly at 4, and the minute hand at the 11." Sometimes I have to correct myself because of this.

Posting this here, just in case my perspective/verbiage ends up being useful ;) Okay, you've got me - now I'm thinking about my relationship with time... When I read a digital clock, it's as you described - the numbers are essentially an abstraction, and my dysfunctional brain has no idea how to properly respond, leading to lost time and poor judgment all around. I feel as if I somehow already knew this about myself, albeit subconsciously, and that this is likely where my preference comes from (though to be fair, aesthetics are also important!). When I read an analog clock, the following happens: I see the hour hand and notice its position relative to the circular body (or frame) of the clock, then which number is nearest (that is, if I don't already know the hour, and I usually do). Note that, unless I really need to know the hour, I'm not actually reading the number - I'm only noticing its position relative to the frame. In the next instant, I then notice the minute hand and compare its position to the body of the clock. So, I'm not visualizing all of this as a piece of a pie, or even two overlapping pie charts, but rather two sets of spatial relationships, and thus, the time is near-instantly inferred. Knowing this, I'd describe my relationship with time as "spatial" in nature, rather than numeric (at least when it comes to clocks), and as someone who is a little dyslexic when it comes to numbers (and only numbers, and especially with mental math)... this makes sense to me. (It's also funny how we commonly, and ever so naturally, associate time with movement: "moving/travelling through time", "half past eleven", "time marches on", etc. Also, we often refer to time as a physical thing, aka "losing time", "not enough time left", "I need more time to make sense out of this tangent", etc. To reduce time to a bunch of numbers and calculations feels... well, it's not very romantic, at the very least.) If it helps, I am definitely more of a visual learner, rather than simply hearing information, but I am absolutely at my best when I can learn by doing something. Perhaps I'm a... "spatial learner" - someone who needs what I'd call "tactile cues" (or at least something that mimics physical space, aka visual cues with *context*) in order for my brain to fully process things. There's always time for metacognition, baby! EDIT: After a quick search, "visual-spatial learning" is a thing! Of course it is. Crap, look at the time - the big hand is all the way over there, and the other one... yikes.

I am a delivery driver with a certain amount of stops per hour I have to do. ALL DAY I am converting the digital time to a percentage of the hour I’ve used to make sure I’m on pace. I find my watch with a analog face to be a much more useful reference in keeping track of my day because it is like a weird progress bar.

As for research, while I'm not immediately familiar with any about reading clocks, I know there's some out there for how people who speak different languages value colors differently. For example, speakers of a language in which orange was traditionally named a shade of red instead of its "own" color might not have trouble actually seeing orange, but they might have trouble communicating that or realizing the significance of communicating that. In a way, "analog clock face" is sort of like a mini-language, and the way it's expressed influences the ways in which those fluent in it conceptualize time.

Valerie.Z

I bet that would all be different if there were 100 minutes in an hour. The progress bar thing as a percentage would work for you. The analog clock is showing you a picture of the time. The digital one is showing you the name of the time. Fun fact: I have a smart watch on one wrist, and a fitbit on the other. I have analog watch faces on both. I'm old!

Ian Cooper

I've got an analog day-of-the-week clock by my desk. They're designed for people with dementia, but it's done absolute wonders for my sense of where I am in the day and in the week. One sweep of the hand is 7 days, with clear lines for the midnights, and markers for 6am, noon, and 6pm And in response to looking at my watch too much at the weekend (some years ago) I got myself a single handed 24 hour analog watch. One hand sweeps round once per day. I find it elegant, very pleasing, and very relatabe.

Brian Makepeace

School definitely got me into visual time. I haven't looked at an analog clock in awhile, but you're right. When there is a hard time deadline, I put an imaginary hand at the spot and visualize how long I've got left. I always had one looking for the end of class too.

I think of time visually similar in the way that you do, Alec. One metaphor to communicate this concept might be to describe analog clocks like a flexible, repeating progress bar, similar to what computers throw up when copying or downloading a file.

Leo Herzog

Great video! A bit dated, but you may find this academic paper interesting and relevant. https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/793/78868.0001.001.pdf

Eric Barch

I think Vy-let hit it on the nose with the term "spatial" as opposed to "visual." I'd be willing to bet that Alec has a good sense of direction and is skilled in estimating distances and other spatial/location type tasks. At least his description of how he perceives time seems to be more of a "where" feeling than a "when" feeling.

It's so cool to hear about this! I've always had a pretty particularly spatial understanding of time, cyclically at various scales. The year and the week both "feel" like big spatial tracks --- here at new year's, we're at the north end of the year, for example, heading counterclockwise to the west. The day itself feels like a ring upright, with noon at the top, and the morning in the east (and I'm literally just now realizing that that corresponds with the path of the sun. ha!). And the progression of the hour, itself, "feels" like a progression around the clockface. It's felt like that, for me, since I've had a conception of what hours are. It's kind of unsurprising, given how I think of most things visually and spatially. But a couple of years ago, I realized that when I see a numeric time, I *start* by translating that into the minute hand. The minute hand in my mind's eye *is* my conception of that time, full stop. By extension, I think that's why the typical hour hand doesn't make sense to me. Because the day is a single loop around a circle to me, with the zero point at the bottom, whereas the hour hand takes two loops with zero at the top.

Vy-let Cybra

This is very interesting and I hope it ends up as a main channel video at some point! My personal experience: I learned about time in the late 70's and early 80's, and had a good mix of analog and digital clocks in my life. I have always preferred digital and conceptualized time as numbers. But if I have to look at an analog clock I very much prefer the one on the right in this video, with the minutes marked, so I can clearly see which minute we're in (because, as I said, I think of time in numbers). I think I spent so much time staring at this kind of clock as a kid in school and wishing for the class/day/whatever to JUST BE OVER that it led to me counting down the minutes. I also have always had difficulty with the hour hand. Even watching this video, 3:45 looks like it should be 4:45 to me. Fuck you, analog clock! What I learned about myself from this video, aside from the fact that I prefer analog clocks to have minute markings, is that while I think about time in terms of numbers, I also visualize it in terms of an analog clock! So when I think of the time numerically I'm also forming an image in my head of a minute hand's position, basically. So I guess my internal processing is kind of a hybrid of analog and digitial. And finally, I hate when second hands don't land directly on the marks, so that analog clock on the right was trolling me the whole time! I even considered whether it was a parallax issue (which should improve as the hand approaches vertical) but, no, it's just misaligned.

Circuitmike

I get it. It's relating time to distance. And distance is easy to visualize. When I was in elementary school, they taught how to read an analog clock. I can read an analog clock in a very dim room. But I need either a lighted digital clock or plenty of light.

Robert McCullough

Also you mention speedometers and it made me remember a point to make, which is that for most purposes it doesn't matter whether you're going 44 or 45 mph, so having a digital readout showing that precise of a speed is just kinda unnecessary. Also once you get used to your particular gauge cluster, the fact that it's not the same as others matters less. Same thing with time, most of the time when you're looking at a clock you aren't counting down the seconds or even minutes, you just want to know roughly where you are in the range, so an exact readout just isn't necessary.

Sammy Newton

I think a way to make a Connection here is the various ways people view general data in math and science: Sometimes it's on a graph (rectangular, polar, 3D), sometimes it's in a table (Fortran style), sometimes arranged in labeled structured formats like a "dictionary" or other mapping, or some combination. I've always had a good sense of reading both analog and digital clocks. I have both in my home, and though I prefer digital I think a digital wall clock would be uglier so I don't have those. I would like to find a 24 hour analog clock for funsies. Being able to get different shapes and visualizations out of the same data is nice because sometimes the aesthetically pleasing ones are also very useful.

Sammy Newton

Would showing a clock face without numbers be helpful?? Common on some wrist watches. Often with a jewel at the 12 o’clock position.

Jimmy Dorff

I'm on the digital side of the argument. I fully grok (and have for ages) what you are saying about how you using the distance around the circle to represent duration. I just can't do it myself. There was a point where you said that it was clear that the minute hand was two-thirds around the circle - at which point I had to pause and use my hands to divide the circle up to see that it was. I just can't easily translate that position like you obviously can. I just wanted to point out that finding digital easier is not necessarily because we haven't seen how the analogue clock maps duration to angles - but that the knowledge may not help us.

Jarrod Lowe

Go with the progress bar analogy, I think that's useful, and visuals can show that idea pretty well. I think it could be interesting to consider the different reasons people use clocks and how that influences which type of clock is useful. For example, I'm guessing to a large extent specific times are not super relevant to you, so having more of a progress bar feel is more helpful, since time is continuous and discrete digits can be misleading - you can even connect this to the whole idea that things sell for 19.99 rather 20.00 simply because the discrete digits make it seem significantly less at gut instinct. However, I think people who have more set items in their schedule that have to happen at a specific time may prefer the digital version, perhaps if - I know it takes 13 minutes to drive there, let me subtract 13 from the goal time, rather than, let me take a little more than 1/5 of a circle away. That may also be an efficiency thing - if you don't mind being too early, analog's probably fine, just overestimate the fraction of a circle. Anyway, I'm very interested to see what research you pull up for this!

C.J. Smith

Excellent description of how you interpret clocks - it helps me to see analog clocks in the way you do, and it's a very useful way to see them. I've always been entirely the opposite - I can visualize the 60 minutes in an hour, and it's like a numerical progress bar. For 47 minutes: | _ | _ | _ | _ | X | _ | 0 . 1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5 (where X is most of the 4 block) The analog clock math is where I get stuck - first, I get the 2 hands mixed up. Long hand is minutes, right? Now, which one is longer - some artsy ones have long hours and short minutes, and when they're across the face from each other, I can't tell if it's 3:45 or 9:15. Now that I know the minute hand is the one a couple notches above 9, I have to stop and multiply 9 by....5, right? So that gives us 45, and which way around do we go again - is that 47 or 43? It's closer to the 12 so it must be 47. And now I know the analog time. (Analog clock means it's an analogue of an hour/half day right?) SImilarly with analog speedometers, I've always been frustrated by them, and am so happy that builtin digtal speedometers are easier to get these days.

Stephen Gillie

Hello fellow hour/day ratio fan! I have EXACTLY the same relationship with time, and it is mind boggling hard to explain to people who don't see it the same way. I have...emotions, about our 12h/60m time system, and have done some work to move myself to a system where the time is represented as a percentage of the day. Interestingly, this is how MS Excel stores time internally so.....big surprise there given that my job is as an Excel expert. What's fascinating to me is that despite my percentage clock having a digital readout, I have the same relationship to it that I have with an analog clock, because I have an intuitive sense of how much of the day has passed, and roughly where we are. I don't know that I'd recommend trying this, but it's been a VERY interesting experiment.

Skoddie

In today's episode - inside Alec's brain!

Big Car

Just wanted to share: Around about high-school I had a tremendous amount of anxiety. (Not diagnosed, and very likely due to numerous factors) I forget the "why", but somewhere during my freshman year I stopped wearing my watch and consciously *stopped* actively paying attention to the passage of time. Within a very short time, it was like night and day and my anxiety was effectively gone. These days, I *frequently* lose track of time, occasionally in epic fashion, but that I can more easily ascribe to "being in the zone", whether that be work or play. I do wonder though, now that the *rest* of my life is much more stable, if I ought to return to wearing a watch to help avoid unwanted lapses in time? Thanks for the insight!

CloudHackIX

I don't do that. Now, I don't have any _problem_ with analogue clocks. I have several of them around the house, and I use them occasionally. However, I do prefer digital clocks. I have a wristwatch with both an analogue and a digital which was my main watch until relatively recently, and I would never look at the hands. On multiple occasions I forgot to set the hands, and I just would not notice. I don't feel like there's any overhead for me. If I read 15:35 on a clock, my brain just accepts that as is. I don't have to "translate it" to get a sense of what it means.

Kristian Høy Horsberg

BTW have anyone commented how badly is the hours needle pointing on the left Westminster clock? At 45 minutes it's pointing straight to 4 in stark comparison to the clock on the right side.

Radek Věchet

I realized this over 40 years ago when I got my first digital watch. I was late for class at the local community college because I was using that watch, instead of the GRAPHICALLY better analog time keeping device. I said a the time that if digital time keeping had been the first to be developed, some one would have created analog time devices as they show progress in a graphical way. I also said that and still feel it happens that when you ask a person what time it is and they look at the watch on their wrist, if their watch is analog and it is 12:19, they will tell you it's twenty after 12. If they answer 12:19, you can probably bet their watch is digital. Because of that, I started converting digital clock time I read to analog in my head. And I do that almost unconsciously to this day. All the clocks on the walls in my house are analog. Only digital time keeping is on my clock radio, my microwave oven, my stove, my TV, my computer and my smart phone, and of course my car.

Allen Boogaard

I think I'm the same as you, Alec. This video just made me realise that all 5 of the clocks in my house are analogue (UK English, deal with it ;-) ) and none of them have numbers or lines to mark the hour. It's the position of the hands in relation to each other that gives me a "sense" of the time. I'd never thought of the progress bar analogy, but I guess learning to tell the time in the early 80s, I didn't have that comparison. It makes perfect sense though. Also, THAT FLIP CLOCK SHOULD SAY 15, NOT 3! GAAARGH! You were right, it is a whole other kind of annoying.

Brian Farrington

I'm totally with you on this - I have a hell of a time trying to ready my flip clock. Every so often the numbers turn into red hieroglyphics.

i'm definitely in the "processes time as numbers" camp. possibly related i also don't care for progress bars, percentage or a numerical fraction is easier to parse for me and i'll also translate progress bars in my head if they don't have the percentage beside them. as others have said this might be part of the synesthesia - aphantasia spectrum

I think it depends how you use time/clocks and what resolution you need, and which of the 2 you're actually most used to. I remember early in school I liked analog clocks because of the progress bar analogy being a good indicator of "when does this freaking lesson end already", and at that time we'd have lessons starting at 0 or 5 so 5-minute resolution is all I needed which is easy to get at a glance from an analog clock. But then as I grew up I also got into a system with weird lesson start/end times and now the meaningful unit of time was the minute, when a lesson started at 34 then it being 32 or 33 was the whole difference between "I can chill walking to the room/have the time to go to the toilet" and "I need to hurry now", and getting that precision requires the act of "using the hand to look at what exact number it's pointing, then move your eyes to the seconds hand to see if it's 32:50 i.e. 33 - must hurry or if it's 32:05 i.e. 32 - no problem. That's really much more tedious on an analog clock than just reading 33:20 so I started preferring digital ones. Then once you get used to that you don't have to "process" the number anymore, it just comes straight at you - but on the other hand you're not using an analog clock anymore, so the rare times you do then that's when you have to process it. I never had issues with the hour hand when I was using analog clocks regularly, but now I do because I'm not used to it anymore... In current life I also keep track pretty well of the current hour, and that's usually the only thing that matters and I get it at a glance from a digital clock too, the "progress in the hour" isn't important to me. The occasions where I really need to look "consciously" at a clock are still those where the minute matters so as above it's still the digital clock that works best. The ideal is just having both on the same dial, so if you just need "a rough idea at a glance" you look at the analog hands, if you need precision you read the number. There's a reason why it's actually common in aircraft instruments, you've got the dial, often with visible white/green/yellow/red bands to indicate various ranges so you can in a pinch look at the dial and see "I'm a bit close to [range] but not too much", tend to other things if needed, but if you have time you can look at the actual value, see you're at 114 when ideal is 118 and adjust for the exact value when the dial wouldn't give sufficient resolution/readability for that because the range is 0-500. I'm more number-focused so if only one has to be there I'll take the numerical reading.

Kilrah

I process both analog and digital clocks to the same mental representation, so I don't have any problem or difficulty with either of the two types. Minute hand pointing to around 11 is perceived as "a while to the whole hour", the same way as digital number between 50-59, without focus on the exact minute number. There's a bit of difference though, the analog hour is divided to 8 intervals ("a while to/past each quarter"), while digital hour is 6 intervals (tens of minutes, 10-19 and 40-49 are "around quarter"). Something else is if I need minute precision: if I need to leave the house at x:49 to catch a train, it's somewhat easier to be sure I have some time left with digital clock than having to decode analog one to the actual numbers (and I have to look at the correct angle, for example).

M@trixX

Good observation. I think the 'progress bar'-analogy is a good one. The hour hand is actually a good represtation of where the sun is in the sky. Who doesn't 'read' the progress of the day on where the sun is and how much day is left? One step futher: the sun dial. Doesn't work on cloudy days, hence the clock. Minutes and seconds only add resolution, necessary for 'modern times'.

Jaap Verhoeven

Matt, I feel your pain.

Jim Hewlett

Interesting. I had started recently thinking about the arc of the sun which (on the equator) should rise at 6am and set at 6pm. It would be possible now to build a clock which would show 24 hours and have 6am where the 9 is now and set at 6pm where the 3 is now thereby emulating that arc. But we would have to retrain all of our brains.

Jim Hewlett

I completely understand what you mean. When I look at an analog clock, my instinctual concept of what time it is can parse it much better than digital. I think one way to describe it can be as visual shorthand for time. That being said I'm also someone who has to stare at log files with digital timestamps for my day job. I believe because of this I've also developed a similar ability to easily parse digital time, but it's different. It may seem counter intuitive, but to me digital timestamps feel more linear. As though analog clocks break up time into discrete chunks. Maybe it's because I often look at digital timestamps with seconds and microseconds included.

Southbridge

oh this is such a trip. To me, I feel like I instinctively read digital time - and most other numbers - as an encoding of fractional whole. So, time is 00-59, and 45 for example "feels like" mostly-past the hour to me, immediately, at a glance. I'm also extremely uncomfortable with analog speedometers... completely blown away that people "like" them. I absolutely hate them. Digital speedo or nothing, please! I 100% grasp it, and I drive by the speedo (ooohhh my god I hate both speeders and grannies alike -- every road has a speed). I add a few and you get a ticket at +10, okay? So I go +9 at the most 😂 It seems a bit of a direct contrast to your method, as I very clearly and easily read numbers and see their indication of fractional closeness-to-a-number in digital text. With an analog clock, I grasp the minute-hand relative part pretty easily if I think in that sense, but when I look for time, often I'm looking for digits and I end up converting the analog clock to digital to tell someone the time 😂 So I hate 'em! I wonder how many folks read numbers "digitally" (as in: digits), vs. visually/analog. I've had really intense arguments with people about this exact subject as it relates to speedometers. How much I loathe analog speedometers because they take a digital, accurate, precise number, then just "kinda vaguely point to it" with a needle! Even worse... graphical, digital dashes, drawn on an LCD, that graphically show A FREEEEAKIN ANALOG DIAL on it 😩 GUAHH. It drives me so mad 😂

Matt Falcon

So I’ve never really gotten on with analogue clocks. I can work them out eventually but they have never been intuitive to me, this is possibly due to a number of reasons, I have a significant visual impairment, ( so I could never glance at a wall clock) add to this that I’m 80% sure I have dyscalculua (never got formally tested) I do parse time as quarters of hours though, it’s currently “quarter past 10” here for me. And that is shown by 10.15 on my watch and phone clock. I don’t use 24 hour time (despite preferring digital clocks) as it’s harder for me to parse. I am also left handed, which may come into it somewhere.

I suspect there’s two things going on for Alec here: for a bunch of reasons I think he’s a visual thinker (this, photography, etc), so the visual representation of time is going to feel natural; and of course early exposure to analogue clocks means they’re “readable at a glance” rather than “translated to understand”. Personally I’m bilingual, clock wise: I grew up with and can read analogue clocks at a glance, including to estimate “time to go” at a glance without explicit maths, but I’ve also spent so long around 24 hour digital clocks that I can read those at a glance, including “time to go” bring automatic (and I’m less strongly a visual thinker; interconnectedness / topology / network is probably my strongest thinking style). Somewhat weirdly these days I find digital AM/PM clocks hard to read in the afternoon; I can do it, but it requires translation :-) The really interesting thing would be to try to find other visual thinkers with less/no exposure to analogue clocks and see how they react once they learn about them… 🤔 Ewen

Ewen McNeill

Medieaval clocks only had an hour hand Esentually representing the earths travel Analog clocks are are much more organic way to tell Time

I totally agree Its how i think of time as well

The way you visualize time on a clock face sounds similar to what I do when I do math in my head. I visualize the numbers in my mind when I do calculations and look for shortcuts. So for example, if I need to do 12*9, I picture that as 120-12 = 108.

Michael Dunn

I tend to see time the same way. But more generally, when I think of ANY number, I visualize it as a point on a 3D helical "number line" surrounding me. An analog clock is to me just a special case where the information already comes into my brain in a spatial format and I don't have to do that conversion in my head. Visualizing numbers spatially is considered a mild form of synesthesia, and apparently there is research on "time-space synesthesia" (lots of google results), which I think is at least close to what you're talking about. I also visualize progress through the week and the year in a similar spatial form, even though it isn't based on a physical device like an analog clock.

John Hiesey

Well, I'm not saying the progress bar method is the *intended* use-case, I'm saying that that is a useful thing about it. And also keep in mind it's not just progress-to-sixty - it's progress to any arbitrary point on the clock's face. That to me is one of the primary benefits and I don't want you to miss that - it is because I can compare now to then as literal distance that there's value to me, and not having it with a digital clock leads to less temporal awareness. The minute hand was devised to amplify the movement of the hour hand into something more clear - while I think you can say that this is designed to give minute-level accuracy, that doesn't also mean it provides a time-at-a-glance. I honestly think that you're getting tripped up on me saying "this is how you're supposed to read a clock" when that's not what I mean! And frankly... I think there's pretty strong evidence that broadly the clock face isn't meant to grant the viewer to-the-minute accuracy in every circumstance. For instance large clocks viewed from a distance, or clocks without minute hashes. If there's one way I know we process time differently, it's that the accuracy we're seeking to reach with the way we process time is very different. I don't care to know what the literal time is unless and until someone asks me for it. At that point, if I only have an analog clock at my disposal, I'm going to need to do the clunky scrutinizing of what exactly the minute hand is pointing to to spit out the words they want to hear. For all other day-to-day uses of time, everything I do is some sort of comparison, and what matters much more is "how close is now to then?" Since I'm doing comparisons most of the time, an analog clock face is more intuitive, and I genuinely cannot do this without thinking arithmetically if all I have is a digital clock.

Technology Connections

Thanks! At 76 years old and spent my career in computer electronics and Ham Radio I see time as you do. So - on my desk the computer shows the digital representation of time while I have a small analog travel clock. Which does my first glance for time go? The analog clock for reasons you talked about.

Does you mind maybe expect more of a percentage? 30 minutes being 50% could cause confusion. I grew up with both, and have no trouble with either. When I see 45 minutes on a digital clock, my mind intuitively knows that that's 75% through the hour. I almost visualize an analog clock in my mind.

Quinton Wilson

I think where you're getting tripped up on it is by assuming the progress bar method is the intended use case. I...don't. Analog clocks pre-date progress bars by a significant length. That's not to say that you're /wrong/' by any means, but I think the purpose of an analog clock is still broadly accuracy. I'm trying not to seem like I'm trashing the concept. It clearly works for you and your brain. I think it's interesting that the progress bar movement which seems more intentional is compartmented into a pie wedge for you. The hour hand is why I don't think the minute hand is meant to be read as progressive. If it were, it would stay on an hour, then tick as the minute hand completed its cycle, I think. I'd say the hour hand is designed to show relative progression and the minute hand is meant to show the precise point in the hour. That's how I do it, though, and I've long been frustrated that the hour hand moves. "Who would ever want relative progression when you have the precise number?" 😅 While I /can/ read an analog clock quite easily and quickly, I don't prefer to. I prefer digital because I can do the math in my head quickly and rarely look at a clock unless I want the precise time. With that said, I do mentally split the hour into four quarters. If it's, say 9:38, and I have something to do at 10:24, I know I don't need to pay close attention until it hits 10:15. Ultimately, I don't think our brains process it that differently, and I said as much on Twitter. I just prefer what is for me the quickness of seeing the specific digital numbers over the visual of the hands passing checkpoints.

Kevin Kostka

Love the progress bar analogy!

I totally get how you tell time this way, I'm the same way I think. I am reminded of some models of analog clocks that don't have any numerals on their faces, just dots or lines where the numbers would normally go, sometimes they have no markings at all, only the hands on the dial. This may have been a fad from the 1970s. I'm 62 years old so while I've been around digital clocks for about 50 years, I first learned how to tell time on a round clock face as a child. I also sometimes visualize in my mind the entire year on a clock face. Although the layout is kind of fuzzy, in this clock/calendar of my mind, the month of September is at the 12 o'clock position, but this clock runs counterclockwise, also the months and seasons don't share equal amounts of real estate on the clock face so that the fall months are in the top left quadrant, December is at either 9 o'clock or 8, January is at 6, Feb through May are around 5 through 4 and from 4 to 12 represent June, July and August, bringing us back to 12 representing September. I've been looking at the calendar since I was a kid, but couldn't say why.

Mark Hesse

That's a long way to go about saying that you visualize time as how near or far it is from a set time, whereas the digital clock gives no such impression -- there is no visible "end point" with the digital clock.

Don Eitner

As a long haired male presenting person, I think your hair looks very good in this still frame

Will G.

it’s 4am so thank you

Aaron Carson

Hooray, the clock video you teased.

Anicast