Time Archives - Page 10 of 17 - understand-culture

Punching the Clock

In 1888 Willard Bundy, a jeweler in Auburn, New York, invented a time clock that recorded when each worker arrived and left. His brother founded the Bundy Manufacturing Company a year later. Through mergers in 1900 and 1911, the business became part of the company later named IBM. Americans still punch in and punch out.

In 2024, 55.6 percent of American wage and salary workers were paid by the hour. Federal rules let employers round clock times to the nearest 5 minutes, or to the nearest tenth or quarter of an hour. Rounding is accepted only if, over time, it does not leave employees unpaid for time they actually worked.

The Billable Hour

American lawyers record their working time in tenths of an hour. The system goes back to Reginald Heber Smith, who joined the Boston firm Hale and Dorr in 1919. His timesheet was divided into six-minute units, because, he wrote, “I can more easily add, subtract, and divide on the decimal system.” The American Bar Association published his system in 1940.

Firms now set annual targets. Justice Stephen Breyer has said: “There is tremendous pressure on younger lawyers to produce 2,000, 2,200, 2,400 billable hours.” A Yale Law School estimate found that 2,200 billable hours a year require being at work 59 hours a week.

This Meeting Could Have Been an Email

This meeting could have been an email. Americans say it after a meeting that wasted their time.

In 2019 the scheduling company Doodle estimated that pointless meetings would cost organizations in the United States about $400 billion that year. The figure is the company’s own estimate, based on more than 19 million meetings in four countries.

The Vocabulary of Spending Time

Spend time. Save time. Waste time. Buy time. — Time is counted like money.

Time well spent. — The time produced something worth its cost.

On the clock. Off the clock. On company time. — Paid time and unpaid time.

I won’t take up much of your time. — A promise made before asking for something.

I’ll give you ten minutes back. — We will end the meeting early.

Thanks for your time. — A standard thank-you at the end of a call or a meeting.

Buffett’s Empty Calendar

Bill Gates has told how Warren Buffett once showed him his calendar, which had days with nothing on them. In a 2017 interview with Buffett, Gates said: “I had every minute packed and I thought that was the only way you could do things.” He added: “It’s not a proxy of your seriousness that you fill every minute in your schedule.”

In May 2024 Gates returned to the lesson: “It took far too long for me to realize that you don’t have to fill every second of your schedule to be successful.”

Office Hours

American professors hold office hours, fixed times each week when students can come to their office. At California State University, Long Beach, policy requires one regularly scheduled office hour per week for every three weighted teaching units taught, up to four hours. The hours must be posted by the office door and listed on every syllabus.

The policy adds that the required hour “cannot be met, entirely or in part, by stipulating ‘by appointment only.'”

Even the time for dropping in is a fixed slot.

Eight-Minute Dates

In 1998 Rabbi Yaacov Deyo in Los Angeles invented what he called round-robin dating. Aish HaTorah, the organization that ran the program, described it as “the ultimate in a 8 minute date.” The format quickly spread around the world as speed dating.

Played Off

At the Academy Awards, winners have 45 seconds for an acceptance speech. When the time is up, the orchestra begins to play them off the stage.

Some stars keep talking anyway. In 2001 Julia Roberts spoke for about four minutes while the orchestra leader stood ready to play her off. In 2025 Adrien Brody spoke for 5 minutes and 40 seconds, the longest acceptance speech in the history of the Oscars.

Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule

In July 2009 the investor Paul Graham published an essay called “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule.” The manager’s schedule, he wrote, “is embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals.” To meet someone, you “find an open slot in your schedule, book them, and you’re done.”

Graham argued that programmers and writers need long blocks of time without meetings. A single meeting in the afternoon can break it into pieces too small for hard work. His own solution was to set aside fixed times each week for meetings with the founders he had funded.

The Booking Link

Calendly was founded in Atlanta in 2013 by Tope Awotona. He had worked in sales and found that scheduling meetings with people was a problem. A Calendly user shares a link that shows the open slots in his or her calendar. The other person picks one. By November 2023 the service had more than 20 million users.