I’m in the midst of reading Wait, by Frank Partnoy, thinking of the treasure trove of ideas for blog posts. While I’ll have to take the author’s advice and hold off on many of them for now, I would like to highlight one: Clock Time vs Event Time, and how it relates to a recent article by Tim Williams, entitled “An Obituary for the Billable Hour”.
Logically enough, Clock Time organizes behavior based on the amount of time it takes to do something, while Event Time organizes it based on completion of a project (or ‘event’). The general rule is that you should use Clock Time when you’re most concerned with efficiency, and Event Time when focusing on quality. Need to meet a deadline tomorrow? Clock Time. Do you paint still-lives as a hobby? Event Time.
While I never thought about it in those terms before, I immediately found myself gravitating toward Team Event Time. I love unit asking, and I like to be able to spend the time required to produce quality. I suspect…