Time-jump
How do we feel more alive while life is moving so fast?
Working model · open to correction
Time-jump is my name for noticing the pattern you’re living inside—and choosing a next move that can change its direction.
Why is this question here?
Source order · no numerical ranking receipt supplied
This view preserves the order supplied by its source adapter. Its position is not a probability or a measure of truth.
How is this answer supported?
You look up and think: holy shit, where did all that time go? You were there. You did the things. But how much of it did you actually notice?
I call the repeating pattern a program: what I expect, what grabs me, what I avoid, and what I keep doing. When I notice it, another move can become possible. That’s the jump I want to explore.
Why Yawn? Because looking at the stuff that runs us can be boring as hell. The gap between what matters and what we keep avoiding is often exactly where the work is. I want that gap to become something we can see, explore, and play with.
If I met you without all my assumptions about who you are, the question I’d want to ask is: What has your attention—and what would you like us to make possible together?
The problem I want to solve is simple to say: how do we help people feel more alive, with less of that feeling that life is racing past? I’m trying to pause and notice more of it myself. The model has to be useful in lived experience.
Yawnbot Dave is the name I’m choosing for this public, revisable map of my thinking. You can enter through a question, follow the connections, and challenge what doesn’t hold up.
Edited from Dave’s two spoken contributions with AI assistance. Unrelated household conversation is omitted. Definitions and framing are an authored interpretation.
What does “more life” mean to you?
Did I notice more of what I was experiencing?
Presence: Self-rated presence, 0–10; note whether the prompt helped or interrupted. This is a report about an episode, not a measure or ranking of people's consciousness.
Did time seem to pass slowly or quickly?
Felt passage: Very slowly to very quickly, 1–7. Keep enjoyment and boredom separate.
What can I recall tomorrow?
Remembered richness: Recall specific details for 60 seconds before reading notes. Mark uncertainty; recall is not necessarily accuracy.
Did I do what I chose, and what happened?
Deliberate action: Planned action versus reported action and observable consequence. Intention is not completion.
Claims and qualifications
Attention, context, and memory can change judgments of time.
Supported, with limits
Effects depend on the task, timescale, and whether someone knows beforehand that duration will be judged. Estimated duration and felt passage are different outcomes; repeated timing tasks can also change estimates.
Kramer, Weger & Sharma (2013) · Mindfulness and short-duration judgments Droit-Volet et al. (2019) · Mindfulness, time judgment, and time experience Lositsky et al. (2016) · Context change and remembered duration Hopkins et al. (2026) · Mindfulness and timing-task repetition
A brief return to awareness may help people experience life more fully.
Open hypothesis
“More fully” needs an outcome: presence, recall, enjoyment, or chosen action. The Yawn practice has not been validated.
Wittmann et al. (2015) · Experienced meditators and extended time Droit-Volet et al. (2019) · Mindfulness, time judgment, and time experience
More conscious awareness always makes time feel slower.
Too strong as stated
Meditation studies have found greater present awareness alongside faster felt passage. Slow time can also be unpleasant.
Droit-Volet et al. (2019) · Mindfulness, time judgment, and time experience Khoshnoud et al. (2022) · Flow while playing a video game Weiss et al. (2021) · Boredom, time, and task appraisal Hopkins et al. (2026) · Mindfulness and timing-task repetition
Pure consciousness, souls, simulation, parallel timelines, and objective cosmic purpose.
Philosophical questions
These are questions Dave is exploring. The research here does not establish literal timeline transfer, an already completed life program, or consciousness moving between bodies.
Evidence
Kramer, Weger & Sharma (2013) · Mindfulness and short-duration judgments
A brief mindfulness exercise shifted subsequent judgments of short intervals toward relative overestimation versus a control.
Short laboratory intervals do not establish longer experienced lives.
Hopkins et al. (2026) · Mindfulness and timing-task repetition
Across three experiments, repeating a duration-judgment task consistently produced longer estimates; brief meditation effects were small, inconsistent, and not reliably distinguishable from repetition.
Published online 17 December 2025, in the January 2026 issue. These brief-practice experiments with meditation novices do not settle effects of sustained training or lived aliveness.
Wittmann et al. (2015) · Experienced meditators and extended time
Experienced meditators reported less time pressure and slower everyday passage; laboratory duration estimates did not differ.
A cross-sectional comparison cannot show meditation caused those differences.
Droit-Volet et al. (2019) · Mindfulness, time judgment, and time experience
Two studies found greater present awareness alongside faster felt passage. Duration judgments differed across seconds and minutes.
Presence, passage, and numerical duration judgments must be measured separately.
Christoff et al. (2009) · Mind wandering with and without meta-awareness
Experience sampling distinguished mind wandering with awareness from mind wandering without awareness of being off task.
This does not show that ordinary distracted people lack consciousness.
Lositsky et al. (2016) · Context change and remembered duration
Contextual changes during a narrative related to later estimates of elapsed time.
The design concerns remembered duration; fuller lives or greater memory accuracy are extrapolations.
Khoshnoud et al. (2022) · Flow while playing a video game
Greater absorption was associated with faster felt passage and less thinking about time.
Losing track of time can accompany engagement. The result does not make fast passage universally desirable.
Weiss et al. (2021) · Boredom, time, and task appraisal
Manipulating expected task length changed reported passage and aversiveness.
Slow-feeling time can be unpleasant; expectations can bias reports.
A small test in your own life
Proposed · no results collected
Fourteen 20-minute sessions, arranged as seven matched pairs. Use the same ordinary activity at a similar time. Randomly assign one session in each pair to a one-minute awareness prompt and the other to an ordinary start.
Notice three sensory details, your current thought, and where your attention is going. Then begin.
- Before starting the comparison, choose one primary outcome. Before each session, name one small intended action.
- Keep activity, environment, total length, and logging similar. Leave 19 minutes for activity after either a one-minute prompt or an ordinary one-minute start.
- Immediately afterward, record presence and felt passage separately, plus enjoyment, boredom, and interruptions.
- Next morning, before reading notes, recall details for 60 seconds and mark uncertainty.
- Compare each pair. Keep results that contradict your expectation. Record sleep and whether reminders were intrusive.
A voluntary personal feasibility exercise; stop whenever you choose. The known 20-minute duration means this compares reported experience, not an unsuspected retrospective duration judgment or independent timing accuracy. Expectancy, repeated measurement, and carryover between sessions can change reports. It is not a clinical study or proof of the general theory.
Try one moveMental models people can share
I think people will start sharing mental models the way they shared apps at the beginning of the iPhone. You could try someone else’s way of seeing a problem, keep what helps, and change what doesn’t fit.
A portable model needs its question, assumptions, evidence, author, version, limits, and a way to correct it. Downloading a model is possible here; automatically adopting it into another person’s Yawn remains unbuilt.
Dave reported that a game’s vehicle concept connected with people, while navigation felt difficult and jerky. The game, build, device, participants, and reproduction steps are not identified, so this is a design lead rather than a verified usability result.
Dave’s example of an AI paying someone $8,000 a month to create useful models is a hypothetical economic sketch, not a funded offer or earnings forecast. More capable AI and more compute may help with some problems; they do not guarantee solutions, value, or income.
Terms and model scope
Dave’s term for helping a real unanswered question find an attributed, revisable answer, a useful next move, and its evidence.
Design hypothesis; search or AI-answer visibility has not been demonstrated.
- Program
- A revisable model of habits, expectations, commitments, and recurring situations.
- Jump
- A noticed opportunity to choose a different action. Its consequences still need checking.
- Timeline
- The path events take over time, plus possible futures we can imagine. A branch is a possibility.
- Lacuna
- Something missing: knowledge, a choice, a resource, a connection, or evidence.
- Yawn
- A bounded, navigable container for an independently maintained orientation: its subject, questions, relationships, sources, and revisions. It can concern a model, inquiry, person, or whole; the record is distinct from the subject it represents.
- Yawnbot Dave
- Dave’s attributed, revisable public model of his thinking. It represents a perspective on Dave; it is not Dave or his human consciousness.
- Prospective duration
- An estimate made knowing beforehand that an interval’s duration will be judged. The answer can be given after the interval ends.
- Retrospective duration
- An estimate reconstructed from memory without knowing beforehand that the interval’s duration would be judged. Knowing the test is coming can change attention to time.
- Felt passage
- How slowly or quickly time seemed to pass. This report can differ from an estimate of elapsed minutes, remembered detail, or enjoyment.
Version 0.1.3 · Public practice is browser-session only; exporting is an explicit local action. No model calls or automatic canonical writes.
Why does life feel like it is passing so quickly?
Partly answered
The feeling during an activity and the story you remember afterward can differ. Attention, engagement, expectations, and changes in context all matter. A short account of a day does not show that you were unconscious.
Why is this question here?
Source order · no numerical ranking receipt supplied
This view preserves the order supplied by its source adapter. Its position is not a probability or a measure of truth.
How is this answer supported?
Still open: Which part feels missing for you: presence now, memories afterward, or choices you wish you had made?
Next test: Choose one ordinary episode today. Record felt passage immediately and recall details tomorrow.
What would change this answer: More remembered detail with unchanged felt passage would challenge treating the two as one effect.
Lositsky et al. (2016) · Context change and remembered durationContextual changes during a narrative related to later estimates of elapsed time.
The design concerns remembered duration; fuller lives or greater memory accuracy are extrapolations.
Khoshnoud et al. (2022) · Flow while playing a video gameGreater absorption was associated with faster felt passage and less thinking about time.
Losing track of time can accompany engagement. The result does not make fast passage universally desirable.
Does being more aware make time feel slower?
Mixed evidence
Sometimes judgments expand; sometimes felt passage speeds up. One meditation study found more present awareness and faster felt passage together. Later experiments found brief meditation effects on duration judgments difficult to separate from timing-task repetition. There is no dependable rule that greater awareness means slower time.
Why is this question here?
Source order · no numerical ranking receipt supplied
This view preserves the order supplied by its source adapter. Its position is not a probability or a measure of truth.
How is this answer supported?
Still open: For this person, activity, and timescale, what changes when awareness is prompted?
Next test: Compare matched sessions with and without one brief awareness prompt; measure presence and felt passage separately.
What would change this answer: Presence improves but passage gets faster or stays the same. That weakens the slowing claim, even if the practice is useful.
Kramer, Weger & Sharma (2013) · Mindfulness and short-duration judgmentsA brief mindfulness exercise shifted subsequent judgments of short intervals toward relative overestimation versus a control.
Short laboratory intervals do not establish longer experienced lives.
Wittmann et al. (2015) · Experienced meditators and extended timeExperienced meditators reported less time pressure and slower everyday passage; laboratory duration estimates did not differ.
A cross-sectional comparison cannot show meditation caused those differences.
Droit-Volet et al. (2019) · Mindfulness, time judgment, and time experienceTwo studies found greater present awareness alongside faster felt passage. Duration judgments differed across seconds and minutes.
Presence, passage, and numerical duration judgments must be measured separately.
Hopkins et al. (2026) · Mindfulness and timing-task repetitionAcross three experiments, repeating a duration-judgment task consistently produced longer estimates; brief meditation effects were small, inconsistent, and not reliably distinguishable from repetition.
Published online 17 December 2025, in the January 2026 issue. These brief-practice experiments with meditation novices do not settle effects of sustained training or lived aliveness.
Am I unconscious when I am on autopilot?
Distinction needed
Ordinary habit or mind wandering does not establish an absence of consciousness. Meta-awareness means noticing what your mind is doing; it can fluctuate while you still have experiences.
Why is this question here?
Source order · no numerical ranking receipt supplied
This view preserves the order supplied by its source adapter. Its position is not a probability or a measure of truth.
How is this answer supported?
Still open: When does noticing help, and when would a reminder interrupt useful concentration or rest?
Next test: Notice one return of attention without judging yourself. Record whether it helped you act.
What would change this answer: Repeated prompts make the activity more fragmented or less useful. More monitoring is not automatically better.
Christoff et al. (2009) · Mind wandering with and without meta-awarenessExperience sampling distinguished mind wandering with awareness from mind wandering without awareness of being off task.
This does not show that ordinary distracted people lack consciousness.
Khoshnoud et al. (2022) · Flow while playing a video gameGreater absorption was associated with faster felt passage and less thinking about time.
Losing track of time can accompany engagement. The result does not make fast passage universally desirable.
Can I change my timeline by changing my attention?
Practical metaphor
Attention can help make a different action available. Actions can influence what happens next within real constraints. This is a branching course of action, not evidence of traveling between parallel universes.
Why is this question here?
Source order · no numerical ranking receipt supplied
This view preserves the order supplied by its source adapter. Its position is not a probability or a measure of truth.
How is this answer supported?
Still open: What actual choice becomes possible, and what result would count as a change?
Next test: Name one small alternative, predict its consequence, try it when appropriate, then compare prediction with what happened.
What would change this answer: The intended action did not happen, or the outcome differed. Preserve that result and revise the model.
What would it mean to experience more of my life?
Choose the outcome
It might mean feeling present, richer memories, enjoyment, or acting with less regret. These can vary independently. A deeply engaging hour can fly by and still be an hour you value.
Why is this question here?
Source order · no numerical ranking receipt supplied
This view preserves the order supplied by its source adapter. Its position is not a probability or a measure of truth.
How is this answer supported?
Still open: Which benefit matters enough to measure—and what cost, such as interrupted flow, would outweigh it?
Next test: Pick one outcome for the 14-session comparison below. Keep the others visible as possible tradeoffs.
What would change this answer: No improvement in the chosen outcome, or a cost you would not accept. Do not redefine success after seeing the results.
Droit-Volet et al. (2019) · Mindfulness, time judgment, and time experienceTwo studies found greater present awareness alongside faster felt passage. Duration judgments differed across seconds and minutes.
Presence, passage, and numerical duration judgments must be measured separately.
Khoshnoud et al. (2022) · Flow while playing a video gameGreater absorption was associated with faster felt passage and less thinking about time.
Losing track of time can accompany engagement. The result does not make fast passage universally desirable.
How do I know whether my mental model of another person is wrong?
Correction remains open
Your model is your interpretation. Their self-report is another attributed source, and observed behavior is another. Confidence is not access to someone’s inner life.
Why is this question here?
Source order · no numerical ranking receipt supplied
This view preserves the order supplied by its source adapter. Its position is not a probability or a measure of truth.
How is this answer supported?
Still open: Which claim came from them, which from me, and what would change my view?
Next test: Ask, “What am I missing about your experience?” Keep the answer attributed and share only what they agree to share.
What would change this answer: Their account or new evidence contradicts your prediction. Record the disagreement instead of diagnosing a lack of awareness.
Does life have an objective purpose?
Philosophical question
This project cannot establish an objective cosmic purpose. Dave’s intuition that there should be one remains a question. We can still investigate what we care about and which commitments survive experience and reflection.
Why is this question here?
Source order · no numerical ranking receipt supplied
This view preserves the order supplied by its source adapter. Its position is not a probability or a measure of truth.
How is this answer supported?
Still open: What kind of answer are we asking for: a fact about the universe, a shared human need, or a personally endorsed direction?
Next test: Name one commitment you would choose under uncertainty and one consequence that would make you reconsider it.
What would change this answer: Evidence can challenge a particular empirical claim; some metaphysical claims have no agreed test. Mark that boundary instead of inventing proof.
How do I explore a suspicious pattern without turning it into certainty?
Evidence discipline
A pattern can suggest a hypothesis. It does not establish a hidden cause. Dave’s speculative questions belong beside alternative explanations, source quality, and disconfirming observations.
Why is this question here?
Source order · no numerical ranking receipt supplied
This view preserves the order supplied by its source adapter. Its position is not a probability or a measure of truth.
How is this answer supported?
Still open: What observation would distinguish this explanation from coincidence, incentives, error, or a simpler mechanism?
Next test: State a specific prediction in advance and name evidence that would lower confidence. Avoid accusations about identifiable people without support.
What would change this answer: The predicted evidence fails to appear, stronger sources disagree, or a simpler explanation fits better.
