236. Time Worship

<p>When <a href= "https://medium.com/s/story/what-i-learned-about-productivity-while-reinventing-google-calendar-c3b507fa7f12"> I was working with Timeful</a> -- the productivity app co-founded by behavioral scientist and <em>Love Your Work</em> guest, <a href= "https://kadavy.net/blog/posts/dan-ariely-interview/">Dan Ariely</a> -- we had a great feature. You could put todo items on your calendar.</p> <p>You could estimate how long a todo item was going to take, and then you could drag that todo item onto your calendar. It would be right there on the timeline, along with any other events you had planned for the day.</p> <p>This todo-items-on-calendar thing was a handy feature. It makes sense, really. Too many of us have a todo list a mile long. We know what we intend to do, but we have no idea when we’ll actually do those things.</p> <p>When Timeful built this feature, and I finally got to use it regularly, I made a discovery. We’re really bad at estimating time. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. Our vision is distorted by our “time worship.”</p> <h3 id="ourperceptionoftimeiswarped">Our perception of time is warped</h3> <p>My own faulty time estimates went both ways. I might think it would take me less than fifteen minutes to respond to an email. I’d be shocked to discover that it took half an hour. I might think it would take an hour to draft a blog post, and I’d be pleasantly surprised to see I could do it in only ten minutes.</p> <p>Instinctively, we know that our perception of time is warped. We know the saying that “time flies when we’re having fun.” Our perception of time changes. It changes according to our mood, our personality, or the number of events that happen within a certain amount of time.</p> <p>But if our perception of time is so warped, why is time so important to us? Why do we treat time as if it’s the only thing that matters? Why do we practice “time worship?”</p> <h3 id="thewaywemeasuretimeisarbitrary">The way we measure time is arbitrary</h3> <p>It turns out, the way we measure time is pret