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Comment by willholloway | Hacker News Reader

I think the biggest problem with time keeping systems is that they counts up, but our lives are not infinite. For us, time is really counting down.

After trying to reconcile the solar year with decimal time in a way that made sense, I abandoned my effort and created a time keeping system with 1095 units of time of time per year (1098 in leap years).

The units are 8 hours long, because no progress on hard problems is made in an hour.

I call it Maker Time:

The web site is @ http://willholloway.net/makertime.html A JSON API is @ http://makertime.willholloway.net/api/current

Checking the current Maker Time reminds me that I have 1060 - 349 (for sleep) = 711 opportunities to make cool things this year.

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Jan 1 is a entirely arbitrary demarcation that's not actually terribly useful to the way we actually experience time and the year. IMO a better place would be one of the solstices or equinoxes (I'm partial to the spring equinox).

Also breaking the year into quarters, from equinox to solstice would be a better match for to scale we live an think on. Also it's just the right amount of time for a good portion of a large one-man project.

I agree with you cosmically, but January first has real meaning for me because its the start of a new tax year.

Feel free to create your own fork: https://github.com/willholloway/makertime

On the other hand, 6th April is the first day of the tax year in the UK, so that would work out quite well.

It's only the spring equinox on your half of the planet! You'd have to call it the March equinox which is arbitrary again. Or maybe the Northward equinox.

Waxing and Waning? depending the length of the daylight at whatever location is going to control said time standard.

I think that once you attach a finite resource to time, you get an inherent feeling of counting down. For example, attach a battery to a laptop and you start to feel the count down (power left, rather than power used).

For us humans, we could associate it with energy left before sleep, decreasing account balance until next pay day, work days left until project end, pages left until book complete.

I do however like the idea of 711 opportunities to make cool things this year though.

Very nice, I thought i was the only one creating my own personal time system! I really like the counting down part, haven't thought about that. The 8 hour block is nice, but I thought it better to carve up the day in 12 parts, locked to midday, but perhaps local sunset is a better option. If you like a modern fairytale about time go see the movie 'Momo' (in german, but subtitled) or read the book.

I really like this idea of maker time. Counting down in general seems like a good way to encourage me to get things done.

I love this concept, but it's not really granular enough. Although I agree with the premise that 8 hours is 'problem-sized', it doesn't lend itself well to humans. What would I call an eighth of one unit?

Hours.

I still have to be on Manager time (standard time) when I'm interfacing with the rest of the world. But for flow states in a pure building mindset, I switch to Maker Time.

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