Episode Details

Ten minutes standing in a queue feels far longer than ten minutes walking, because waiting is a psychological state rather than a simple duration. From the attentional gate model of internal timekeeping to Marc Wittmann's research on boredom and self-awareness, the brain's clock speeds up when attention has nowhere else to go. The service industry has spent forty years engineering around this, from David Maister's 1985 waiting propositions to elevator mirrors and Houston airport's longer baggage-claim walks that cut complaints by increasing total travel time. Key sources: • David Maister, The Psychology of Waiting Lines (1985) — https://davidmaister.com/articles/5/52/ • Harvard Business School, faculty listing for The Psychology of Waiting Lines background note, 8 pages — https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=21299 • Richard C. Larson, Perspectives on Queues: Social Justice and the Psychology of Queueing, *Operations Research* 35(6), Nov — http://faculty.smcm.edu/acjamieson/f12/171439.pdf Episode 6589 — myweirdprompts.com/n/6589 (permanent short link: myweirdprompts.com/273622) Listen on Android: MWP FM Player — myweirdprompts.com/apk