Occurs when an individual carries on with an activity they were doing recently in the past (a few minutes, several hours, the day before, etc.) in present time without realizing that they already completed the activity; the individual almost immediately recognizes that they are not doing what they originally had set in mind to do, but instead are repeating a previous activity and/or routine from before. The individual usually has to back track and/or reorient themselves in order to continue with their original task after realizing that they were momentarily living in the past instead of focusing and acting or reacting in the present. A natural phenomenon that can occur when an individual is neither paying attention to nor actively focusing on what exactly they are supposed to be doing and instead allow muscle memory to momentarily take over and carry out the task for them, despite realizing thereafter that the task was done incorrectly because the body was not performing the same task that the individual was trying to accomplish.
I was just trying to finish this math problem when suddenly I had a life-lapse and had to rework the problem because I forgot what I was doing.
by War&Ruin September 1, 2018