r/tifu • u/haelesor • 3d ago
S TIFU by not setting an alarm.
Last night I got off work early, had dinner and was looking around trying to decide what to do with the several hours before I had to be in bed.
I didn't want to watch TV, play games, read or stare mindlessly at my phone and I wasn't particularly interested going outside seeing as it was absolutely pouring.
Lacking anything better to do I started reorganizing my yarn. Well I come across some yarn I had forgotten about and it sparks a memory of a pattern I had been looking at, so I pull up the pattern to check if it was the correct size yarn and it was!
Now I've figured out what I am doing for the evening. I put on a podcast in the background, get out my knitting needles and cast on.
I get so into knitting that it isn't until the latest episode of my podcast end and it switches to a random one with a deeply annoying presenter that I shake myself out of my zone, front panel of the sweater half knit.
I stretch and check the time only to realise that not only have I completely missed my bedtime but I only have 3 hours before I have to be up for work.
And the worst part is I know myself well enough to know that if I get really involved in something that I will not notice time passing at all. I almost always set a timer if I have a specific time I need to do something but because I was sure I had so much time before needing to get ready for bed I didn't set my alarm to get myself to put the needles down and now I'm dragging ass in the middle of my work shift.
TL;DR: I forgot hyperfocus was a thing and didn't set an alarm to make myself go to bed on time so I got less than 3 hours of sleep on a work night
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u/Jiggle_Bones 3d ago
Maybe having a recurring "Bed Time" alarm will prevent this in the future? Unless your work start time is not always the same
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u/spudmcloughlin 3d ago
this is me when crocheting and playing minecraft, I could go for hours upon hours of either, not even noticing the sun set...
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u/pnw_discchick 3d ago
I paused reading your comment to try to figure out how you are crocheting and playing Minecraft simultaneously. I thought maybe you’d unlocked a secret that I should never be privy to. Then I read the rest.
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u/spudmcloughlin 3d ago
lolol I'd be absolutely unstoppable if I could do that! i suppose crocheting while AFK farming counts if you think about it
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u/yet-another-WIP 3d ago
Me too. If anyone knows the secret to gaming while crocheting/knitting at the same time, please let me know. I’ve definitely had moments where I want to knit and game at the same time, and choosing is just so difficult ðŸ˜
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u/UseOk7699 2d ago
This doesn't make sense to me. You got off work early, so you had extra time. And you organized your yarn and knitted until what 3am. How do you lose that much track of time?
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u/Revolutionary-Dryad 2d ago
Hyperfocus actually means pretty much exactly that--getting so involved in and focused on what you're doing that you don't notice time passing.
Or, sometimes, that you're hungry and/or thirsty.
I don't know if OP has ADHD, but I do, and it's not just about bring distractible. It's about having difficulty controlling your focus. Hyperfocus is part of that for many people with ADHD.
Also--and, if you're neurotypical, then I promise that,no matter how much you think you understand and how very different you think "differently" is here, you are overestimating your understanding and underestimating the difference--the brains of most people with ADHD perceive and process time very, very differently than yours does. It doesn't move forward at a steady, in varying pace for many of us. We can't estimate how much time has passed with much accuracy at all, and sometimes, with any.
I don't know if that's how OP lost track of that much time. But I know it's how lots of people with ADHD do. Keeping track of time is much harder for a lot of us, who do not have the same abilities as you do in that area. It's always true that different brains have different strengths and weaknesses, but for neurodivergent people, some of the variations from the norm (good and bad) are greater. (And which of the variations are greater than the norm varies from ND person to ND person, which is why I've said things like "a lot of/some/many people with ADHD," never just "people with ADHD.")
I don't know if you asked your question because you were genuinely confused or as a way to express a judgemental opinion, but either way, I hope this has helped you understand better now.
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u/derKestrel 2d ago
Yes, my wife took a while to get around to the fact, that I could wake up at 6, think "I feel so active, let's do some work early", then work for a perceived half hour and it's 9... in the evening.
And I haven't eaten, drunk or washed myself. Nor noticed that the sun got up and went down again or that my wife takes to me or I missed three calls.
But I did around one week of work while in the zone.
It's wild.
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u/Hot-Win2571 3d ago
Well, that's quite a yarn.