28 Days of Asking: Day 2
What am I doing when I forget to check the time?
It’s 53 degrees in Miami this morning.
Feels like 46.
For most of the country, that’s nothing. Here, it might as well be 30. People are bundled up like it’s a snow day. The shock is real, not because the number is dramatic, but because it’s so different from our status quo.
I woke up slowly. Then stepped outside and felt the cold hit my face before I was ready for it.
Yesterday I was in flow.
A dance class in the morning with 90 minutes of movement that didn’t ask me to perform or optimize. Just move. Let the body lead.
Then sauna. Then plunge.
Then home, where I meal prepped for the week while music played and the afternoon stretched out.
No rushing. No checking. Just one thing flowing into the next.
I didn’t look at the clock much. Which brings me to…
Day 2: What am I doing when I forget to check the time?
This isn’t about productivity. It’s not about flow states, peak performance, or hacking your schedule.
It’s simpler than that.
It’s a clue.
The things that pull us in so completely that we stop managing the clock—those things are telling us something. Not about what we should do for a living or how to structure our days. Just about what draws us in when we’re not watching ourselves.
Yesterday, time disappeared in movement.
Not because I was working hard. Because I wasn’t thinking about what came next.
Dancing. Heat. Cold. Chopping vegetables.
None of it was impressive. All of it was absorbing.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi built a whole framework around this—flow states, optimal experience, the conditions that make time vanish.
But I don’t think you need the framework.
You just need to notice when it happens.
Today, the cold (and Monday) shocked me back into clock-time. Appointments. Tasks. The week ahead.
That’s fine. That’s life.
But I want to remember what yesterday felt like. And I want to notice when it happens again.
Here’s what I’m sitting with today:
When did time last disappear for me? What was I doing? And what does that tell me about what I’m drawn to when I stop managing?
If you’re following along—think back over the last few days.
Was there a moment when you forgot to check the time?
Not because you were busy. Because you were absorbed. What were you doing?
I’ll be here every day in February, asking out loud.
You’re welcome to ask alongside me—or just watch what surfaces.
The "forgot to check the time" lens is way more useful than most productivity frameworks. I've noticed my own versions of this happen most when I'm deep in problem-solving or tinkering with something technical, not neccesarily the stuff I think I "should" be doing. The movement-to-meal-prep flow you described sounds ideal, it's rare to find that kind of seamless transision between different types of activity.