Always a Split Second Too Late? Test Your Reaction Time (and Work on It)

Imagine this situation: you're in the lobby of a building. The elevator is hidden from view. When you see it, the door is closing! You run and reach for the button, but when you push it, it's too late. You see the people's "Oh I'm sorry, but not really sorry" faces through the closing doors. Ah, sounds familiar, doesn't it? Or how about this? You're at a store. There's a nice shirt marked 50% off! Wow, such a bargain (literally). But, as is often the case, there's only one left. And as is also often the case, there's another person right next to you who just noticed it too! Here, it's a competition! But you lose. You can't get it. You pretend you weren't actually reaching for it and you're not even interested in it. Sound familiar too?

If this kind of incident happens a lot to you, you might have been the one who always missed a chair in musical chairs. Your friends might have called you "slow" (kids are often honest but mean). You might have lost at Slapjack or "Spot It!" (If you don't know the game, you have to reach for a card quickly when a certain condition is met).

This "slowness" comes from your reaction speed. In these examples, you couldn't react to a certain stimulus fast enough. Let's analyze what's happening in your brain in the elevator situation. First, you see the elevator and its door closing. That's perception. Then, your brain analyzes the situation and decides "Shit, the door is closing, you have to push the button to open it." Then finally, the brain orders your body to reach for it. This part is the response. So: perception → decision making → response. The entire sequence is your reaction.

Now, the decision-making part is a bit tricky. There are situations where you also have to judge "Is it even a good thing to react?" For example, if you see the last piece of cake at a buffet, you might think "wait, people might think I'm too greedy or unsophisticated if I jump on it, do I really want to do that?" Or if you're playing soccer and the ball is there, you might have to decide "Shoot? Dribble? Or pass?" But for now, we're focusing on pure reaction speed - situations where the action is obvious. Like when a coffee cup is about to tip over, you need to stop it, period! So basically, the speed of your perception and response matters in most daily situations. And the good news is, you can actually train it and get better.

But Does It Really Matter That Much? Being a Little Slow Doesn't Seem Harmful Even If You Miss That Elevator.

You might be wondering. In these situations, it may not sound that important. You could just wait for the elevator to come back or take the stairs. You can look for another shirt that's cheap and good quality. You spill coffee, but it's part of life. But the thing is, it could be life-threatening. Have you watched a YouTube video that shows a bunch of situations where a quick reaction really made a life-or-death difference? For example, a baby is about to fall from a balcony and a parent notices and grabs the baby "in the nick of time"? A person notices a piece of debris dropping at a construction site and just barely dodges it?

So having a good reaction doesn't just get you onto that elevator (that's good) - it could also save your life, or save your loved one's life. Now, do you remember I told you you can train it? And for free (no login or sign-up required).

Now, here's what you do: you see the screen (blue). If you wait, it will change to red. When it does, you click or tap as fast as possible. There's no decision-making involved, so your pure reaction time is shown here. And if you keep practicing this, your reaction time gets better. Why don't you at least test your reaction time? Here's a general benchmark: Most people fall between 250 and 350 ms. If you're slower than 400 ms, you're a bit slow (but this can be normal if you're above 50, because reaction time gets worse with age). If you're faster than 250 ms, you're quite good. Athletes tend to react faster and get below the 200 ms mark. It's not just useful to train - it's also fun!

You can also test and train your decision-making ability. With this app (did I tell you this is a web app on this site, and free?), you can set a "distractor". If you do, sometimes green shows up instead of red. You're not supposed to click or tap when you see it. It's more about "inhibition" rather than pure decision-making, but it's still very useful. (Think about a situation where you saw someone and almost said "hey bro" but realized it's your boss and stopped right before saying it!)

I have other apps about reaction speed and other articles about it on the Reaction Speed Training Hub. If you want something more game-like, you can use the Multi-Target Aim Trainer which is really like a shooting video game.

I hope this article was somewhat useful to you, and I also hope you make use of these free web apps I created (Yes, I made them!).