Think about driving a route that’s very familiar. It could be your comminutes to work, a trip into town or the way home. Whichever it is, you know every twist step turn like the back of your hand. On these steps of trips it’s easy to lose concentration is that you perceive that the trip has taken less time than it actually has. This is the well-travelled road effect. People tend to underestimate the time it takes to travel a familiar route. The effect is caused by the way we allocate our attention. When we travel down a well-known route, because we don’t have to concentrate much, time seems to flow more quickly. And afterward, when we come to think back on it, we can’t remember the journey well because we didn’t pay much attention to it. So we assume it was shorter.
