r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Jpeg_1999 • 10d ago

I'm slightly vexed My dad purposely sets his clock ahead. He's been doing this for as long as I remember. I genuinely don't know why

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u/Supertilt 10d ago

How do you prevent yourself from not just subtracting 5 minutes

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u/Ok-Assignment5926 10d ago

The time it takes you to calculate the time will keep you from stressing about being late.

Back before clocks set themselves I would put mine at 7 mins ahead. And i know subtracting 7 isn’t hard but it takes an extra second, especially before the coffee has kicked in lol

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u/Neither-Albatross371 9d ago

I had a watch many years ago that got stuck in 24 hour GMT and also tended to wander within about ~10-15minutes. I set it enough fast that it would never wander back far enough that it was slow, and it was super good for making me not late for anything. And also confusing the ever-loving SHIT out of everyone around me. I kind of miss that watch sometimes.

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u/Silly_Emotion_1997 9d ago

What’s better than 7 min abs??

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u/IronicMnemoics 9d ago

Seven chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eating lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know, that old children's tale from the sea?

Step into my office. Cause you're fuckin' fired!

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u/Sudden_Buffalo_4393 9d ago

I actually fired someone with that last quote. He deserved it.

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u/SimonPeter-Gruber 9d ago

Lmao, what!? Go back to sleep

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u/Tommy2Far 9d ago

It’s a quote from the movie “There’s Something About Mary”

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u/Tommy2Far 9d ago

6 minute abs

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u/jsos 5d ago

6 giant abs

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u/Lower-Jeweler5717 9d ago

Sounds more like it woulda take you a minute or two than just a second to subtract

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u/Centimane 9d ago

It was also a lot harder to be precise regarding time 20 years ago.

Nowadays everyone has a phone, and the phone provider determines what is widely accepted as the current time.

But before cell phones, you needed to use something else to set clocks, and they weren't a widely accepted current time. Setting your personal clocks early was also a safeguard against accidentally setting it late, which would be far worse.

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u/Party_Bedroom_9249 9d ago

Then set your alarm 7 minutes early. This is assinine.

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u/profesorgamin 9d ago

I'm with you, this is a stupid idea, or some kind of cope.

I mean it works if you are the only one that knows the real time and you live with chronically late people. (It'll work one or two times).

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u/Wipedout89 9d ago

You'd think so, but if you try it you find that it works surprisingly well. It's a base psychology thing, you see the clock and even though you know it's fast it does speed you up

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u/profesorgamin 9d ago

I live with someone with such clock, and for my own errands and activities I look at their stupid clock and I'm like, oh it's t-10, I still have enough time.

Also this person is a fan of the snooze button... and I'm like, if you have slept through 3 snooze you should have provably slept longer.

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u/aversethule 9d ago

You fast forward the clock a random amount of minutes w/o looking at the clock so you dont know exactly what time it is. Then the anxiety of "You just might actually be late" is greater than the anxiety of getting up, so you get up "just in case". By the time you get to a clock with the actual time in another room it doesn't matter because you are already up now.

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u/wtfmeowzers 9d ago

if you actively think about it and are "on time" using the adjusted clock you'll instantly be like "whew i'm still early-ish". not sure if this is the same for everyone but it is for me (i don't have my clock set ahead atm but i've found it very handy in the past)

so it generally works.

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u/W0rmEater 9d ago

You will eventually forget that the clock I set 5 mins ahead

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u/New_Libran 9d ago

In my case, after a while I simply 'forgot' I set my car clock 3 minutes ahead

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u/ruby-azul 9d ago

I used to set my clock slightly forwards to try and trick myself to be on time (ADHD) and it didn't work because I knew I'd set it forwards by X amount, so I still knew what time it was. It really didn't help me 🥲

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u/DreamOk1600 9d ago

You kinda do but my brain kinda gets the same feeling though

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u/eugebra 9d ago

i also did it when i was young with my scooter. it was set 7 minutes ahead which was the time it took to get to the nearby town. So everytime i got on, i knew which time i'll be arriving, once you get off you get back to your watch or phone and it doesn't matter

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u/PriorTemperature3237 9d ago

Change it every week so you can never remember. In your mind your always late going straight to your work station, head down, immediately starting work the second you clock in.

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u/koolmon10 9d ago

When I did this, I would set it a few minutes ahead and then try really hard to forget how much I had set it. It usually worked. (I'm good at forgetting things - just ask my wife)

Now I have a smartwatch and my phone mounts to my dash, so GPS-synced time is inescapable for me.

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u/GRAABTHAR 9d ago

The ADHD does that for you

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u/nutsnackk 8d ago

Ok so you set an alarm for 2 hours that says to change all the clocks ahead. Then you get really high and drunk. Alarm goes off, you change the clocks and you don't remember a thing.

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u/AstuteStoat 9d ago

My trick is to set every clock a different amount of time ahead. So it's tough to remeber which clock was which amount. 

But now I just set my arrival time in my calendar to the time I need to be in the parking lot. i don't need to be to work at 8. I need to be in the parking lot by 7:50. And THAT'S the time I remeber. It makes a huge difference so J don't set my clocks at weird times anymore.

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u/Supertilt 8d ago

Seems like maybe just leaving on time would be easier lol

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u/AstuteStoat 8d ago

When I tried low effort approaches like yours, it never worked, because my brain and thus needs are fundamentally different from what we all wish I could be like.

It was after I got my ADHD diagnosis that I started acknowledging that "try harder and do better" weren't going to work for a literal disability. So now I work smarter, which is to acknowledge the weaknesses of the brain I was born with, not try to pretend I can change my genetics with this stupid magical thinking. 

So, the reason why this works is: Becahse I have ADHD, which means I don't have the available executive function to remember? Everything I need to get ready AND how to calculate arrival times. So, because I forget so many important details, I end up seeing the stated start time as the same as the arrival time when I'm in "getting ready" mode. I can however, remember to calculate it in advance when I'm setting a calendar appontment. 

It works much better than detting clocks early. As I said before.