In my experience, usually when you read in an article how people marvel at something someone does and you think "doesn't everyone do that?" the answer is no, they don't.
No, I've never thought of a year as having a shape and neither does anyone I know. If prompted to draw something they'd likely go with a clock-like circle but that's because that's how it's usually visualized (I think every kindergarden or elementary school has a picture showing the four seasons as clock-wise segments of a circle somewhere) but it's not how they "think" of it. If you told them to point to "September" they wouldn't point in a direction, they'd wonder what the heck you asked them to do.
I spent most of my life thinking the idea of thoughts being a "voice in your head" was a metaphor. Surely people who don't suffer from hallucinations don't literally have a voice in their head vocalizing their thoughts in full sentences, right? Thoughts are just nebulous "vibes" that need to be manifested into speech intentionally if you want to express them, right? Turns out no, I'm the weird one. Most people do have a voice in their head and it's usually only considered a problem when there's more than one or you don't like what it's saying.
I also spent most of my life thinking people don't really can see an object they imagine as if it were present and seeing things that aren't there means you're hallucinating. But again, no, I just have aphantasia and there are degrees of "visual imagination" but most people can indeed conjure up somewhat lifelike images (or at least relatively "hi-res renderings") in their mind, often with sound and smell (no, not just vibes, the actual perception of hearing and smelling) as well.
I also always thought "habit" was a fanciful way of saying you condition yourself to do one thing after another, like always putting the tooth paste in the same place after putting some on the brush head. Something that becomes easier after a while because you know the steps and can follow them like a mental to-do list. But no, many people can literally make themselves go through entire chains of actions without having to make deliberate decisions to do so at every point, just by repeating the same cycle of trigger & action enough times. And for them it sticks, too. They don't just do it for a few months and then phase out when they stop putting in the effort because it happens unconsciously. They don't get distracted by an intrusive thought halfway and then forget what they were doing. They don't have to "block the main thread" to do a habit, they have "userland background processes" in addition to the "system processes" like breathing and walking.
I used to think everyone had to do a conscious check on themselves to determine whether they need to go to the toilet, have a snack, drink something or get warm/cold before the emergency alarm kicks in and tells you have to do so right now or else. Again, no, most people somehow are just aware of that, like the desperation meters in the Sims games. If you ask them if they'd like something to eat and they aren't urgently hungry they can just tell you and don't actively need to think about it.
Oh and related to this article: I used to think nobody actually "felt" time really. It's just something that happens and as you grow older you learn that certain events or tasks take up certain amounts of time and when you know what time it was earlier and what has been done or happened since you'll have a good guess what time it is now and you can recalibrate by checking the time in between so your estimates get better. Nope! Tons of people can literally tell you the approximate time without wasting mental capacity on keeping track of all of that. They're able to do a thing, figure that they've already spent half an hour on something they expected to take fifteen minutes and call it quits rather than come out the other end six hours later wondering where the time went -- and when you tell them this is what it's like for you and they say they know what you mean that's only because they're talking about things they do while "in the flow", not literally doing anything.
There's a reason the neurodiversity movement uses the term "neurodiversity": it's not about individual clusters of neurodivergence. A person is neurodivergent or neurotypical. But people are neurodiverse. Always. Some people are time blind, some people have aphantasia, some people have both, most have neither. But across a non-trivial sample size you'll always have a diversity of neurotypes and everyone will be "weird" at least in some way, even if they share the same diagnostic label (or lack thereof). Heck, if you factor in enough variables, divergence is the norm rather than the exception.
Yes, people are very different. A friend recently told me that they, similarly, have no internal monologue, and seem to have aphantasia. Other friends are there on facebook wishing their internal monologue would just shut the hell up sometimes. Mine goes away pretty much only when I'm busy doing something.
Brains are fascinating and it's interesting to discover just how different people are.
I never got all the "don't worry about it, time travel is complicated" in sci-fi. Do people really have that much trouble with it? Or large distances in space, for that matter.
And it turns out, yes, I'm weird for being able to keep and resolve multiple timelines (and not get hung up on paradoxes), and it actually is weird that I can easily comprehend vast cosmic distances.
I had to resist saying "it's just two adjacent timelines offset by an hour" a few times with the recent time change.
No, I've never thought of a year as having a shape and neither does anyone I know. If prompted to draw something they'd likely go with a clock-like circle but that's because that's how it's usually visualized (I think every kindergarden or elementary school has a picture showing the four seasons as clock-wise segments of a circle somewhere) but it's not how they "think" of it. If you told them to point to "September" they wouldn't point in a direction, they'd wonder what the heck you asked them to do.
I spent most of my life thinking the idea of thoughts being a "voice in your head" was a metaphor. Surely people who don't suffer from hallucinations don't literally have a voice in their head vocalizing their thoughts in full sentences, right? Thoughts are just nebulous "vibes" that need to be manifested into speech intentionally if you want to express them, right? Turns out no, I'm the weird one. Most people do have a voice in their head and it's usually only considered a problem when there's more than one or you don't like what it's saying.
I also spent most of my life thinking people don't really can see an object they imagine as if it were present and seeing things that aren't there means you're hallucinating. But again, no, I just have aphantasia and there are degrees of "visual imagination" but most people can indeed conjure up somewhat lifelike images (or at least relatively "hi-res renderings") in their mind, often with sound and smell (no, not just vibes, the actual perception of hearing and smelling) as well.
I also always thought "habit" was a fanciful way of saying you condition yourself to do one thing after another, like always putting the tooth paste in the same place after putting some on the brush head. Something that becomes easier after a while because you know the steps and can follow them like a mental to-do list. But no, many people can literally make themselves go through entire chains of actions without having to make deliberate decisions to do so at every point, just by repeating the same cycle of trigger & action enough times. And for them it sticks, too. They don't just do it for a few months and then phase out when they stop putting in the effort because it happens unconsciously. They don't get distracted by an intrusive thought halfway and then forget what they were doing. They don't have to "block the main thread" to do a habit, they have "userland background processes" in addition to the "system processes" like breathing and walking.
I used to think everyone had to do a conscious check on themselves to determine whether they need to go to the toilet, have a snack, drink something or get warm/cold before the emergency alarm kicks in and tells you have to do so right now or else. Again, no, most people somehow are just aware of that, like the desperation meters in the Sims games. If you ask them if they'd like something to eat and they aren't urgently hungry they can just tell you and don't actively need to think about it.
Oh and related to this article: I used to think nobody actually "felt" time really. It's just something that happens and as you grow older you learn that certain events or tasks take up certain amounts of time and when you know what time it was earlier and what has been done or happened since you'll have a good guess what time it is now and you can recalibrate by checking the time in between so your estimates get better. Nope! Tons of people can literally tell you the approximate time without wasting mental capacity on keeping track of all of that. They're able to do a thing, figure that they've already spent half an hour on something they expected to take fifteen minutes and call it quits rather than come out the other end six hours later wondering where the time went -- and when you tell them this is what it's like for you and they say they know what you mean that's only because they're talking about things they do while "in the flow", not literally doing anything.
There's a reason the neurodiversity movement uses the term "neurodiversity": it's not about individual clusters of neurodivergence. A person is neurodivergent or neurotypical. But people are neurodiverse. Always. Some people are time blind, some people have aphantasia, some people have both, most have neither. But across a non-trivial sample size you'll always have a diversity of neurotypes and everyone will be "weird" at least in some way, even if they share the same diagnostic label (or lack thereof). Heck, if you factor in enough variables, divergence is the norm rather than the exception.