Clock Time versus Event Time
Are you a clock-time or event-time person? Each style can influence how you live your day-to-day life.
What I read: “Is it better to live in ‘clock time’ or ‘event time’?” by Shayla Love. Published April 30, 2024.
A while back, I wrote “Stop Measuring So Much” to highlight the downsides of the rampant tendency in our society to measure just about every aspect of ourselves and our day-to-day lives. I wrote the post in large part because of my own lifelong obsession with measuring things.
Throughout most of my life I’ve been obsessed with measuring things or worried about how I might be measured by others. School grades. Annual performance reviews. How much weight I can lift in the gym. What number of words I can write in a day. The list goes on for how I can concoct ways to measure my life or allow others to measure me.
Lately, I’ve begun to halt my lifelong dedication to measurement. I learn to learn, not get a grade. Even during the last years of my corporate life, I really didn’t care how management ranked me. When I exercise now, I go by feel, not number of sets or weight lifted. As I sit down to write each day, I don’t have a specific number of words in mind that will be staring back at me from the screen when I’m done.
I’ve mostly let go of measuring things or falling prey to the measurements of others. I still do find myself falling back into ill-advised measuring now and then, but much less than my former self did.
In that post I make the case for measuring less in our lives to bolster happiness and contentment.
But today I read the article by Shayla Love and another aspect to the measurement obsession clicked into place for me. Love points out that some people live by “clock time” and some live by “event time.” Based on the article, I’d say I lean heavily toward being an event-time person. This might be why I and others like me balk at measuring so much about our lives.
What does Love mean by saying people can have a clock-time or event-time orientation?
Clock-timers rely on an external cue to tell them when to start and finish work, a hobby or a social engagement. If you are a clock-timer, you may wake up every day at 6:30 am, start working at 9 am, eat lunch at noon, go to the gym at 5 pm, and sleep at 10 pm. An event-timer might wake up when they’re no longer sleepy, eat when they’re hungry, and work on a project until it’s done – ending at no predetermined time.
As Love points out, sometimes we have to measure things. We might set a day and time to meet with friends. Not abiding by that timing and just showing up whenever you want would be rude.
However, when planning our days, clock-timers will identify specific time chunks for specific activities while an event-timer might simply navigate through life based on their personal assessment of when to do whatever it is they need or want to do.
When I read the article, it made me also think about the “intuitive living” concept I’ve read about before. Perhaps those who function well intuitively are event-time people.
Intuitive Living means living according to how I feel in the moment. If I feel like having a nap, taking a walk, crying, having a loud sing-along to my fave tunes or doing some work, then that is what I will do.
I’m quite clearly an event-timer who’s been acculturated to be a clock-timer and who’s been in an ongoing lifelong struggle having only relatively recently fully realized and accepted that my event-timer mindset is usually how I function best.
I’ve read articles about how a writer gets up at 6:30am every day to write or always writes until 1,000 words are written. Not me. My writing is typically scattered throughout a day and doesn’t impose word count limits to determine if the day’s writing has been a success. I write as I feel compelled to write.
For a while I had my phone count my daily steps and I’d dutifully check my step count every day. That got old and nowadays I simply try to walk as much as I can, at a brisk pace if possible. I have no idea exactly how many steps I do in a day and that fits with my event-timer mindset more than counting steps did.
As I’ve begun to exercise more again, I now do so more by feel than counts. Rather than three sets of 15 bodyweight squats I instead do them until I feel the slight burn in my thighs that indicates I’ve pushed myself enough to foster some muscle benefit. Interestingly, I’ve discovered I exercise more now that I’m no longer fastidiously following a specific exercise routine or set and rep count methodology.
Throughout every aspect of my life, I’m noticing myself abandoning measuring in favor of the quality of the experience or the internal sense that a task or project has come to its natural conclusion for the moment.
Once one realizes they’re typically an event-timer person, there’s a simultaneous realization that an event-timer mindset pushes against the cultural norm that encourages the measuring of just about everything. Grades. Exercise. Employee performance reviews. Corporate productivity. Length of meditation sessions. Everything that can be measured seems to end up elevating such measurements to a higher quality status.
Indeed, as Love points out, some measurements take on a moral quality with those being clock-timers possibly being judged better than event-timers.
When a scheduling style becomes shared, it can take on a moral quality.
I recall talking to fellow writers in a writer’s group many years ago. I mentioned my seemingly haphazard writing process and a few in the group showed by their facial expressions they were aghast. I was somehow proclaiming blasphemy, seemingly negating all the writing tips and hacks some of them had adopted, many of which require steadfast writing times and word counts.
An overreliance on counting and measuring sucks the fun and utility out of much of what I do. When writing, if I try to abide by time or word counts, I’m constantly aware of the time or word length and it’s distracting. When exercising, holding to certain routines, sets, reps, and speed of execution might make me push through a muscle twinge that is actually sending me a message to adjust, stop, or slow down.
Counts and measurements have another insidious aspect that can encourage quantity over quality. Quality can mean the actual quality of the resulting product or state itself or the quality of the experience while undertaking the effort.
For years I had a bizarre idea in my head that to be a successful writer I had to write a certain number of books. But what’s the optimal number of books to write? Has anyone written “enough” books to satisfy that nebulous metric. Some authors write one or two masterpieces in a lifetime, while others churn out relatively pedestrian but plentiful books. Sometimes quality is more important than quantity, but we live in a society that often worships quantity. Anyone who’s heard or uttered the phrase “look at how many likes my social media post received” is witnessing our culture’s adoration of quantity over quality.
I’ll let you read Love’s article in its entirety to learn about some of the other aspects of clock-time versus event-time. One thing to point out is that Love doesn’t claim one style is better than the other. They’re simply different, and perhaps people of one style can occasionally try the other style to see which approach works best for their mood or situation. There are some things I will continue to count and measure, but I’ve found that for myself the more I remove myself from focusing on counts and measurements, the happier I am. Your assessment may differ once you think about it, but thinking about which style of moving through life you prefer will likely improve you overall life regardless of which style predominates in your day-to-day existence.
You can use this link to access all my writings and social media. My content is usually open and free to all to view, but for those who are able your paid subscription (click the Subscribe button) or patron support is always appreciated.