In A Tale for the Time Being, we saw how quickly time moves through ideas as a continuum between generations, but in Andy Weir's The Martian there is a different emphasis on how time travels. Not only does the Earth rotate about its axis faster than Mars creating quantitative differences between days on each planet, but also time moves at different rates for Mark Watney throughout his experience in space qualitatively.
One very apparent detail is the length of each of Mark's entries into his status report. When he is busy checking the systems soon after the sand storm, the average number of sols between each update is about three (around page 20). However once life on Mars begins to settle into a routine, Mark's entries begin to get somewhat longer he updates the reader almost every day if not twice in one day (around page 80).
From this information, we can conclude two things. The first is obvious: when Mark is busy, he has less time to update his blog. From this observation, one assumes that Mark probably feels as though his time is flying by as he works productively. The second is more subtle, but as Mark works, time for the reader also speeds up. In a busy chapter, we would see almost three weeks (chapter 2), whereas in a chapter in which Mark waits a lot, we read only a week (chapter 9).
Therefore, these observations suggest that Mr. Weir believe time travels faster when people are busier and slower when there is more time to spare.
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