In the UK version of the TV show The Traitors, contestants were given five minutes to find as much gold as they could, put it into cages and hoist them before the time ran out. There was a catch though – they weren’t given any information about when the five minutes were up.
Instead, they had to use their internal sense of time to decide when to end the task. Stopping the task too soon meant they collected fewer gold pieces. Stopping the task too late would mean all their gold would be discarded. Accurate timing was therefore the key to success – but interestingly, they chose to end the task after just three minutes.
Why are we so spectacularly bad at judging time? Can you time a minute or an hour perfectly without using a clock? You may be surprised to realise you are not as good at this as you think.
