Humans perceptually distort (dilate/shrink) time when discriminating the duration of successive events. This so called "Time order error" is a powerful window into the determinants of subjective perception. We hypothesized that optimal temporal processing would occur when stimulus duration falls within the boundaries of rhythmic attention (4-8 Hz, theta band). In three experiments, we searched for a ‘temporal sweet spot’ by increasing the duration of a Standard from 120-ms, corresponding to an 8.33 Hz rhythmic attentive window, to 160 ms (6.25 Hz), to 200 ms (5 Hz). We found that time distortions disappear for 200 ms events, highlighting the theta band as an optimal processing spot. In contrast, for shorter events, temporal attention, which we parametrized as the interval size between Standard and Comparison events (400 to 2000 ms), governs the process to reduce time distortions. Our results highlight a flexible use of attentive functions in subjective time perception.