Time, Travel.
Shifting clocks and locations changes perspective. (And I'll be at CCSA!)
Hi Timeless Leaders,
If you live in the United States (with the exception of Hawaii and most of Arizona), on Saturday night you set your clocks forward an hour.
Well you did, or they did it themselves.
Most likely, you had the strange experience of some of your clocks moving forward an hour while you slept, while others stayed in “Standard” time, only to be changed through manual intervention.
It’s an odd but revealing experience that Americans have gone through now, on and off, for over a century. Originating with a war time decision intending on saving fuel, it’s not clear there much benefit in that respect. Many people will argue about whether there are any benefits.
One under-appreciated benefit I’d bring to mind for you today is how effectively it reveals the arbitrary and socially constructed concept of clock time.
Time, of course, is an inescapable reality of the universe. Yet clock-time, and its close cousin, calendar-time, are efforts to place quantitative precision and standardization around celestial cycles that really only have three semi-standard units - the day (an earthly rotation), the moonth, and the year (an earthly revolution).
Our choices for other units - the second, the minute, the hour - trace all the way back to the Sumerians, who cleverly recognized that using a sexagesimal system for counting and nesting lent itself well to measuring the movement of celestial bodies. This is how we got the 360 degree circle. An easily divisible number, we're able to get down to two useful times units that fit well to how we experience short (minute) and very short (second) durations of time.
So as odd as it my seem to group time units into 12s and 60s, it has some basis in the natural world, it’s useful, and it works.
The seven day week the Sumerians endowed us with is less elegant. This construct has more subjective origins, largely deriving from the Babylonian king’s love of the number seven - a number preferred simply because it represented the seven key celestial bodies visible to the naked eye.1
Does it ever strike you as strange how we stick with the seven day week, made even more awkward with our non-standard months? We conjure the names of Roman gods, while arguing about the length of a “work-week” and the joy / stress of a “long-weekend”, all while trying to recall what day of the week the next month will start on, or your birthday, or Christmas? Or you know Thanksgiving’s Thursday, but can you say what date it will be, without looking it up?
Sure, it’s sort of fun that every year is different (we even have leap years!), but for the five months a year that have less than 31 days, does it wind you up just a little to have to change the date? Does it ever bother you that you can never practically reuse a wall calendar, because there are 14 different versions of how the months can be sequenced? What about that wasted space on each month page - the boxes unfilled from the previous or upcoming month?
Why don’t we use a neat, 5x6 grid for each month? Imagine a six day week - a 4 day work week and 2-day weekend, each month a standard 30 days, and then at the end of the year, we all have a bonus 5-6 day vacation week where the whole world parties?
Proposals like this have actually been put forth to revise the calendar to be more accurate, more predictable, more efficient. The Hanke-Henry calendar is one of these2, but there have been all sorts of reform efforts3, some even have been tried! I’m especially amused and intrigued by the 12 year experiment with a 10-day week, implemented during the French Republic.4
At the end of the day though, it seems that modern society is largely stuck in our ways, operating with systems designed by the Sumerians and Romans, and maybe sprinkling in some holidays plunked from a religious calendar so we can celebrate the New Year and other occasions.
And then, every century or so, whether it’s Time Zones in the 19th century or Daytime savings in the 20th, we introduce something new.
Do you think we’ll come up with something for the 21st?
300+ million people changing their clocks this weekend makes me think it’s possible.
I’m Traveling
Just like the commute to work to school feels different the Monday after a time shift, breaking the regular routine and going somewhere new can offer fresh perspectives.
I’m on the road today in fact, heading to Sacramento to spend a couple days at the California Charter Schools Conference. I’m joining a client of mine as we connect with many current and prospective customers and partners. I’m also excited to spend some time with folks in the charter world since it’s almost a decade since I stepped away from that space. I’m sure the discussion will be enlightening, with AI and the new administration’s radical agenda rapidly reshaping our educational sector.
If you’re interested to hear any of my take-aways, let me know. More urgently if you’ll happen to be there, definitely send me a note so we can meet up!
Have a great rest of your week.
Joe
PS. I’m about to bring some pilot testers into my V1 Leadership Development AI planner tool (if you’re waiting for this still, it’s almost ready!) If you’d like to participate, shoot me a line and I’ll add you to the list.
A little bit more history on the Babylonian numbers. https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/why-12-months-year-seven-days-week-or-60-minutes-hour
Hanke-Henry calendar Wikipedia article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanke%E2%80%93Henry_Permanent_Calendar
Article on Calendar reform. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_reform
French Republican calendar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar
Your article "Time Travel" offers a thought-provoking perspective on leadership, emphasizing the importance of focusing on essential tasks and teaching others to do the same. This approach aligns with the principles of essentialism, encouraging leaders to prioritize effectively. Your insights are a valuable reminder of the impact of thoughtful leadership in our fast-paced world.