Time Management for Unicorns

Time Management for Unicorns

Time and Resource Management
For System Administrators

Giulio D’Agostino
Time Management for Unicorns:
Time and Resource Management For System Administrators
Copyright © Business Expert Press, LLC, 2021.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means –
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First published in 2021 by

Business Expert Press, LLC
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ISBN-13: 978-1-95253-882-7 (paperback)

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Business Expert Press Entrepreneurship and Small Business

Management Collection

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedicated to my family and my wife
 Description
Time is one of the most precious commodities, especially if you're the
system administrator of a ‘unicorn company’ (a privately held startup
company valued at over $1 billion). In the2018 year alone, more than
50 startups around the world attained unicorn status with a valuation of
$1 billion or more, according to data from venture capital trackers like
PitchBook. In this book you will find time and resource management
lessons from senior system administrator Giulio D'Agostino; learn from
more than 20 years experience in project management working for com-
panies like Google, Apple, Salesforce.com and Hewlett Packard.

Keywords
time management; agile; project management; perception; behavioral
psychology; salesforce; system administration; entrepreneurship; privacy;
blockchain; privacy; startup; technology
 Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................xi

Chapter 1 A Brief History of Time.....................................................1

1.1  A Brief History of Time and Calendars.......................1
1.1.1  Ancient Egypt......................................................2
1.1.2  Julian Calendar....................................................2
1.1.3  The Week............................................................4
1.1.4  The Christian Calendar.......................................5
1.2  How Do We Experience Time?.................................10
1.3  Time Perception in Philosophy and Science..............14
Chapter 2 Business Time..................................................................19
2.1  Business Time...........................................................19
2.2  Action Items.............................................................23
Chapter 3 Time Flow.......................................................................27
3.1  The Flow...................................................................27
3.2 Habits.......................................................................37
3.3 Focus........................................................................39
Chapter 4 Time and Project Management........................................47
4.1 Environment.............................................................47
4.2  A Quick Overview on Scrum....................................50
Scenario 1....................................................................54
Scenario 2....................................................................55
4.3  Beyond the Scrum of Scrums....................................57
Chapter 5 Time to Grow..................................................................61
5.1  Time to Grow...........................................................61
5.2  Role of the System Administration............................64
Chapter 6 Time Management...........................................................67
6.1  A Refresh on Time Management Essentials...............67
6.2  A Deep Dive into Time Perception...........................71
x CONTENTS

Chapter 7 Office Time......................................................................75

7.1  The Power of No..................................................... 75
7.2  Beyond Time Management.......................................79
7.2.1 Filtering.............................................................80
7.2.2 Unsubscribe.......................................................81
7.2.3  No Joint Accounts.............................................81
7.2.4  Personal Recommendation................................81
7.2.5  Daily Goals.......................................................82
7.2.6  Time Blocking...................................................82
7.2.7  Offline or Online?.............................................82
7.2.8  Long-Term Goals..............................................83
7.2.9 Meetings............................................................83
Chapter 8 Tools................................................................................85
8.1  Time Management Tools...........................................85

About the Author...................................................................................87

Index....................................................................................................89
 Introduction
Everything we experience, every thought, impression, intention, is part of
a moment in time. The world is present to us in a series of moments, like
frames in a movie or the pages in this book. We seem to have no choice
about this. We experience the moment we inhabit now. Time feels com-
pletely unlike space: We can’t jump ahead, go back, or go forward. Time
is not experienced like space, where we have a choice where to move. The
difference between how we experience time and space shapes the whole
of our existence.
Jorge Luis Borges and Arthur Schopenhauer once said that life and
dreams are pages from the same book; to read them in order is to live, but
to browse among them is to dream.
Videos, music, and books are examples of how we experience time. By
reading this book, you are a creature living in time.
Consciousness exists because of the story of the self, and the dimen-
sion of time is indispensable for the awareness of the self. We know that
our brains experience time through the senses and by doing so create the
illusion of time over and over again, helped by memory and imagination.
 CHAPTER 1

A Brief History of Time

To know how we perceive time and how we experience time, it is crucial

to have a brief journey to the history of calendars. Everyone uses calendars
to keep tabs on significant dates and occasions; calendars would be equal to
maps for direction in space. Dates on a calendar are the coordinates of our
travel through time.

1.1  A Brief History of Time and Calendars

The cycle of day and night regulated the lives of our ancestors. The
story of the calendar begins with the Moon, the Sun, and the Earth,
with astronomy. The cycle of the seasons was known to astronomers as
the tropical year, and it could be measured accurately. The stages of the
Moon measure the lunar month: New Moon, First Quarter, Full Moon,
Last Month, and New Moon again. It is 29.5305888531 days long, but
becoming longer by a little less than a 50th of a second per century.
You will find 12.36826639275 lunar months in a tropical year. The
history of this calendar principally concerns the attempts of astronomers
and mathematicians to force the tropical year and the lunar month to
stick into a plot composed just of whole numbers. Most new calendars,
such as those of Greece, were based upon 2 months; yet, to keep the calen-
dar in step with the seasons, it has been necessary to insert more months
now and then since 12 lunar months are 10.8751234326 days short of a
tropical year. Each of those Greek city-states kept its calendar; however,
along with the insertion of the months has been abandoned to the public
government. Callippus, a century later, made 940 lunar months equal to
76 years, all 365 days. Hipparchus, the astronomy father, suggested a dif-
ferent cycle that made 304 years very similar to 3760 lunar months and
111035 days. The Metonic cycle again became prominent in the ancient
Christian Church, which attached the date of Easter to the phases of
2 TIME MANAGEMENT FOR UNICORNS

the Moon. Nonetheless, it is significant that although the Greeks made

immeasurable contributions, their calendar isn’t one of them.

1.1.1  Ancient Egypt

The culture of Egypt left to posterity a few of the wonders of the world.
The pyramids and the sphinx of Giza, the Valley of the Kings, and
Tutankhamun’s enigmatic tomb still confuse us. The pharaohs search
for immortality, show us Egyptians unique view of time, and search for
immortality. The ancient Egyptians also bequeathed the idea that’s at the
center of our calendar. Contrary to the Babylonians, the Greeks, and
the early Romans, they based their calendar upon the Sun. As the oldest
high-farming culture, Egypt was dependent upon the yearly flood of the
Nile, which brought water and fertile silt to the river’s floodplain. Life in
Egypt was ruled by the seasons, and hence by Sunlight. The Moon played
no part in the calendar. The Egyptians had 12 months, all 30 days, plus
an extra 5 days at the close of the year. These 5 days were given over to
celebrations and were correlated with the birthdays of the best gods of the
Egyptian pantheon. The year was 365 days. They accepted the seasons
would become later and later to the calendar, in a cycle that would take to
finish. The Egyptians assessed the relation of their calendar to the straight
year, not by observing Sirius’s heliacal rising. Usually, Sirius rising was
the ruler that defined Sirius’s first sighting every year in the morning sky
before sunrise.
Until the time of Julius Caesar, the calendar was the sole calendar in
which each month and day was defined by external rules instead of being
determined by priests’ discretion or by the astronomers’ observations.

1.1.2  Julian Calendar

The calendar of ancient Rome was mainly a lunar calendar with an extra,
or intercalary, month occasionally inserted to maintain the weeks more
or less in step with the seasons. You will find 12 months, and they were
termed as follows: Januarius, Februarius, Martius, Aprilis, Maia, Junius,
Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December. In
over 2500 decades, these titles have come down to us almost unchanged,
 A Brief History of Time 3

apart from Quintilis and Sextilis. The Romans were quite superstitious.
They considered odd numbers as blessed and even numbers as unlucky.
So all months except February had an odd number of days: March, May,
Quintilis, and October 31; February 28; and the remainder 29. This gave
355 days, approximately equivalent to 12 lunar months. When required,
at the end of February, and on occasions, February itself was shortened
to 23 days, the month was added. The new moon was the day of the
Kalends (source of the term calendar itself ), the moon’s first quarter was
the day of the Nones, and the Ides fell on the day of the full moon.
The Ides was the 13th, exception made for months in which it was the
15th. You will recall that Julius Caesar was warned to beware of the Ides
of March. The Romans did not count the times of the month in the
way that we do. Instead, they counted toward the following of the three
days called.
In a 31-day month such as March, the “Nones” fell on day 7. The day
before the “Nones” was Pridie Nonas Martias, which translates into “the
day before the Nones of March.” The Nones itself was contained in this
countdown, which is why the fifth is known as the day before the Nones
rather than the second. After the Ides, the dates had been counted down
to the Kalends of the following month, so that March 16 was appointed
ante diem XVII Kalendas Aprilis or even “the 17th day before the Kalends
of April,” although it was known as part of the month of March. The
Romans believed that certain days were more reassuring than many oth-
ers for carrying out significant events such as business contracts, religious
rites, and battles. The priests, led by the Pontifex Maximus (the chief high
priest of the College of Pontiffs in ancient Rome), would inform a Roman
citizen if a specified day was not included in the calendar, and naturally,
they left a fee for each query to add a day to the official Catholic calendar.
The priests decided when months were required; therefore, they had total
control over every aspect of personal and public life throughout the calen-
dar. They had no formal rules to tell them when intercalation was needed.
In any case, they were somewhat dismissive, so that by the time Julius
Caesar became Pontifex Maximus, the calendar had slipped by nearly
3 months in relation to the seasons. To be able to bring the calendar back
into line with the seasons, Caesar ordered that 3 intercalary months must
be added at the end of the year, which we know as 46 BC. However,
4 TIME MANAGEMENT FOR UNICORNS

Caesar’s most important reform was to reject the lunar month entirely
and embrace a solar year whose average length was 365.25 days. He intro-
duced the cycle of leap years, and that we use today. The extra day was
added at the end of the Roman year. Once again, carelessness prevailed.
The intercalation was not employed by the priests every 3 years, maybe 4.
It originated from the superstition that four is an even number, and hence
unlucky. Augustus Caesar fixed the mistake by omitting leap years before
AD 8, and also, the Julian calendar was retained without further change
before the substantial reform of Pope Gregory XIII in 1582.

1.1.3  The Week

From the Bible, the creation of the Earth takes 6 days, and God rests
on the seventh. It is difficult to follow the ultimate source of the 7-day
week, but in the calendar, the 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st, and 28th days of
every month were set aside for rest. After the Exile, the Jewish calendar
adopted the titles of the Babylonian months, and likely, the week was also
introduced into Judaism at this time. There was an 8-day cycle involving
market days. It was only in the second century BC that a 7-day cycle
became predominant, which may have owed to more than Hebrew or
Babylonian influences. Astrologers recognized seven planets (like the Sun
and the Moon) and assigned a single planet to rule each of the 24 hours
of this day, at a constant sequence. The planet that ruled the very first
hour of the day was taken to rule over the whole day, and this gave rise
to a 7- day cycle. The Romans started to name each day following its rul-
ing planet: Saturn’s day, the Sun’s afternoon, the Moon’s day, Mars’s day,
Mercury’s day, Jupiter’s day, Venus’s day. From the Romance languages,
the link is evident. In the Germanic languages, the names of the Norse
Gods Tiu, Woden, Thor, and Freya were replaced by Mars, Mercury,
Jupiter, and Venus.
Jewish tradition initially had no names for the days of the week. It
is not possible to say whether the cycle of times of the week has lasted
without interruption since Roman times. The Gregorian calendar reform,
even though it removed 10 days from the calendar at a stroke, preserved
the sequence of times of this week.
Anno Urbis Conditae is used to refer to a given year in Ancient Rome.
A Roman date would give the names of the two people who functioned
 A Brief History of Time 5

in that year as consuls. The year of the reign of their king or queen dates
British Acts of Parliament. In the United States, presidential decrees are
dated by the year because of the foundation of the republic in 1776. It
appears natural to measure the passage of years from some event. In about
the year AD 530, a monk named Dionysius Exiguus — “Denis the Small”
from Scythia in southwest Russia, introduced the Anno DominiOffsite
Link (AD) era, which is used by certain people to number the years of
both the Gregorian calendar and the (Christianized) Julian calendar. As
many scholars of the time, Dionysius was worried about the exact cal-
culation of the date of Easter, and he built a table of Easter dates for
19 years. At that time, years had been quantified from the start of the reign
of the Emperor Diocletian, centuries earlier. Dionysius determined that
Anno Diocletian 248 was 532 years since the birth of Jesus Christ. And
because Easter commemorates the most significant event in the Christian
faith, Dionysius invented the Anno Domini dating, which was used to
number the years of both the Gregorian calendar and the Julian calen-
dar. Dionysius discovered its first winner in the 18th-century historian,
the Venerable Bede, who used it in his Ecclesiastical History of the English
People. Several versions of Anno Domini were used: Anno Incarnationis
Dominicae, from the year of “Our Lord’s incarnation”; Anno a Nativitate,
in the year following the “Nativity”; Anno a Passione, in the year follow-
ing the “Passion”; Anno Gratiae, from the year of “Grace”; Anno salutae
Humanae, from the year of “human redemption.” Historians and theo-
logians agree that Dionysius made an error in calculating the year of
Christ’s birth. The historical evidence makes it hard to know whether the
Nativity happened later than roughly 4 BC, because that was the year in
which Herod the Great is known to have died.
There’s also astronomical evidence on a date in 7 BC that connects the
Star of Bethlehem with a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, an event that
would happen to be of the maximum significance to astrologers because it
meant that the two planets approached one another at the sky three times
in just 6 months.

1.1.4  The Christian Calendar

In the calendars, years are counted from the birth of Christ, celebrated on
December 25. The other significant events in the Christian religion are
6 TIME MANAGEMENT FOR UNICORNS

the Crucifixion and the Resurrection of Christ. This is the event that gives
each Christian meaning and hope. The Crucifixion and the Resurrection
are celebrated at Easter. From the early Church, these were the events
that led Christianity irrevocably away from Judaism. Also, for almost
700 years, the date of Easter was the subject of debate and potential
schism. The Jewish calendar was a lunar calendar, the month’s begin-
ning was marked with the new crescent Moon; therefore, the 14th day
belonged to the Full Moon.
Additionally, Nisan was the first month of the year, which was orga-
nized such that the new year started at the Spring Equinox. The Christians,
recalling their Jewish origins, continued to celebrate Easter at the time of
Passover. They, just as the Jewish community itself, couldn’t say in advance
when Passover would occur. There were two opposite views: The Jewish
heritage still strongly influenced one group, that is, the Passover must
fall on the 14th day of the lunar month. Their insistence on the impor-
tance of the number 14 led to them being named Quartodecimians. The
other group believed that the party of Easter must follow the events of
the Holy Week, with the Crucifixion on Friday and the Resurrection on
the following Sunday. The Western Church observed Easter on Sunday,
no matter the numerical date of the month. The Eastern Church observed
Easter on the 14th day of the month. This quarrel threatened to lead to a
schism, and it was one reason that in AD 325 led Constantine the Great
to summon the leaders of both the Eastern and Western Churches to the
Council of Nicaea. This council is best remembered for the Nicene Creed,
the significant announcement of Christian belief, but also, it agreed on
the formula for determining the date of Easter.
The council decreed that Easter must be the first Sunday after the
complete Moon after the Spring Equinox, March 21; however, if that
Full Moon fell on a Sunday, then Easter should be the Sunday after. The
final phrases hint at the depth of this disagreement, for it was possible
that Easter could be celebrated at the time of the Full Moon, the 14th day
of the lunar month, which had been the Quartodecimian opinion. Even
after the Council of Nicaea, the issue was not settled. The astronomers
knew of at least four cycles that connected the year, and the lunar. There
was a bi-cycle, which equated 8 decades to 99 lunar months. There was
the Metonic cycle, which made equal to 235 lunar months, 19 years. One
 A Brief History of Time 7

thousand thirty-nine lunar weeks were matched to 84 years by the Roman

cycle. Finally, the cycle devised by Victorius in AD 457 took the 19-year
Metonic cycle and the 28-year cycle of times of the week within the Julian
calendar and created a cycle of 532 decades. Rome utilized the Victorian
cycle, but the Church in Ireland and Britain, which had always looked to
its Celtic roots, preferred the Roman cycle of 84 years.
The calendar of Julius Caesar has been an attempt to make the length
of the calendar year match the period of the seasons. Its simplicity—
including an excess day to February—has been its virtue. The monk
Dionysius Exiguus calculated the year of the Nativity in a manner that
leap years Anno Domini are those that are divisible by just four, and this
is an easy rule to remember. But this simplicity comes at a price: Four
years of the Julian calendar are equivalent to 1,461 times, so the aver-
age length of the year is 365.25 days. This is 11 minutes more than the
suitable period for the tropical season. It may not seem significantly less
long than the time it takes to boil water in a kettle and make a cup of tea,
but each season is 15 minutes, and the discrepancy builds up. After just
128 years, it turns into a whole day. The seasons start on the calendar.
The ancient Egyptians lived very happily with a calendar that allowed the
seasons every 4 years to slip by a day. The Romans and the Greeks were
satisfied to live with the random intercalation required by a lunar calen-
dar. Even the Christian Church had fought bitter internal battles over the
calendar, especially over the date of Easter.
As early as the 8th century, we no longer fell on the day allotted to
Easter by the Council of Nicaea. By the early Middle Ages, astronomers
agreed something must be done, but to alter the calendar was not a mea-
sure that could be dismissed. Successive popes researched the problem and
declined to act. It fell to Pope Gregory XIII to fix the error, to ensure that
future generations wouldn’t face the same dilemma. Pope Gregory XIII
was born Ugo Boncompagni in 1502. He studied law and became a judge
and a lecturer in his native town. In 1549 he had been sent into the
Council of Trent, an ecumenical council that met fitfully to talk about
matters of significance to the Roman Church. In 1565, Ugo became pope
and was elected a cardinal. Gregory sent a letter labeled Compendium novae
rationis restituendi Kalendarium, describing his suggestion for reforming
the calendar. From 1582, aged 80, he was prepared to act. He also issued
8 TIME MANAGEMENT FOR UNICORNS

the apostolic letter “Inter Gravissimus,” which ensured his place alongside
Julius Caesar as a man who might enforce his will on the very course of
time itself. The title of the apostolic letter means “one of the most seri-
ous” and is removed in the first sentence of the letter. In total, this reads
as follows: “Among the most, jobs that are acute continue perhaps but at
the least of these which we have to attend to, would be to finish with the
assistance of God what Trent’s Council has reserved to the Apostolic See.”
In December 1563, the final session of the Council of Trent had com-
pleted the reform of the Mass along with the breviary. The latter included
a provisional calendar reform, intended to fix the calendar’s forecasts of
the dates of the New Moon, which by then were four times out of step
with the real Moon. New discrepancies were prevented by the addition of
a leap day from 1800 onward. Among its most assiduous members was
Christopher Clavius. TThe council had recommended that the pope be
embraced in the Inter Gravissimus. To restore the date set by the Council
of Nicaea, for March 21, was omitted from the calendar in October 1582.
Times of this week’s cycle were not disrupted, but October did not exist
in the year 1582.
In order to draw the average length of the calendar year into closer
agreement with the length of the year, 3 leap years were to be omitted in
every 4 centuries. Every centurial year that was not divisible by 400 would
not overlap the year. This was a smart ploy. The next year that was centu-
rial was 1600, only 18 decades away at the time of the Inter Gravissimus;
also, it might be a leap year in the calendar and the older. Nobody living
through Gregory’s calendar reform would need to be concerned about the
guideline for leap years. Yet, it had the impact of making 400 years equiv-
alent to 14,6097 days, providing an average calendar year of 365.25 days,
just 26.8 seconds longer than the tropical year. This difference would
amount to 1 day in 3,200 years.
As the leap year rule meant the days of the week could repeat every
28 years, the cycle of Victorius could no longer be employed to construct
tables of the dates of Easter. A new way of calculating Easter needed to be
devised, and it took a set of corrections that are arcane to permit for the
fact that the proportion of the length of this calendar year to that of the
lunar month had changed. The dates of Easter in the calendar would also
be changed to repeat every year cyclically.
 A Brief History of Time 9

The calendar was accepted without delay in Italy, Poland, Spain, and
Portugal, all of which embraced it in the Inter Gravissimus, on the date
stipulated. France and Belgium moved into the calendar in December
1582. The areas of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland moved through
1583 and 1584; some regions of those countries waited until 1701. From
the Church of Rome, memories were still fresh in 1582 of Henry VIII’s
split in England. A pope had excommunicated Elizabeth in just such an
apostolic letter as the Inter Gravissimus. The calendar reform met a simi-
lar attitude on the part of the secular authorities. The queen referred the
issue to John Dee, a noted mathematician, who responded favorably.
Dee’s verdict was passed in turn. Dee was endorsed by the Queen and
the Pope. The matter was subsequently referred in March 1583 to the
Archbishop of Canterbury, who had been encouraged to confer with his
bishops and come back with a reply as soon as possible, since the queen
meant to proclaim in May of the following year the adoption of this new
calendar. The queen and her ministers did not obtain the reply that they
had hoped for. The English churchmen’s response was deceptive from the
pope, who had been denounced as the Antichrist. It had been argued that
what was performed by the Council of Nicaea could only be undone by
another council. The Council of Trent was not such a council, and they
could never enter into dialogue since the churches believed that the pope
was Antichrist. There might be no second Council of Nicaea. England
would keep the Old Calendar for another 170 decades, ten days (11 from
1,700) supporting the rest of Europe and celebrating the New Year on
March 25. Letters to Europe took one in the Old Style two dates and one
in the New Style.
The regular procession of leap years is changed only three times at
4100 years. Nearly two centuries may elapse (e.g., from 1901 to 2099)
through which the Julian leap year principle applies. And the Gregorian
calendar will keep a step before a day’s correction is needed again. In the
wake of the calendrical reform, considerations were secondary to the zeal
to throw everything that stayed the citizens of the yoke of the monarchy
and the church. Hence, the Gregorian calendar was replaced by person
with no allegiance to religion.
Astronomers and mathematicians created the Gregorian calendar, and
were lauded as part of the new Age of Reason. It had 12 equivalent weeks
10 TIME MANAGEMENT FOR UNICORNS

of 7 days, plus 5 or 6 festive days at the year’s close. Each month was
divided into years or three 10-day weeks.

1.2  How Do We Experience Time?

As time is something different from experienced events, we do not per-
ceive time as such, but as one-dimensional series of frames. However,
arguably, we do not just perceive events, but also their temporal connec-
tions. So, just as it is normal to say that we perceive spatial distances and
other relations between objects, could we perceive a relation between two
occasions without even understanding the events?
There is then a paradox in the idea of perceiving an event as happen-
ing after another, as several events happen simultaneously while experi-
encing only our line of time. One of the earliest, and most famous, talks
of this nature and expertise of time happens in the autobiographical
Confessions of St Augustine. In his early years, he had rejected Christianity
but was eventually converted at the age of 32. Book XI of the Confessions
includes a lengthy and intriguing exploration of time and its relation to
God. Throughout this, Augustine raises the following question: “When
we say that an event or period is short or long, what is it that is being clari-
fied as short or long?” It cannot be what is Past, as it has ceased to be, and
what is nonexistent cannot presently have some properties, such as being
long. Nevertheless, neither is it what is current, for now, has no duration.
Whatever the case, while an event is still going on, its length cannot be
assessed. Augustine’s answer to the riddle is that what we measure when
we measure the duration of an event or a period, is in memory. While not
following Augustine into the mind dependence of different times, we can
concede that the perception of temporal length is crucially bound up with
memory. It is a characteristic of the memory of this event (and perhaps
particularly our memory of the start and end of the event) that allows us
to produce a belief about its duration. This process does not need to be
described, as Augustine describes it, as a matter of measuring something
entirely from the mind. Arguably, at least, we measure the occasion or
period itself, a mind-independent thing, but doing so employing some
psychological procedure. That there is a close relationship here is entailed
by the plausible suggestion that we stipulate (albeit subconsciously) the
 A Brief History of Time 11

length of the event, once it has stopped, from information about how
long ago the beginning of this event happened. The question is how we
acquire this information’s advice. It might be indirect or direct, a contrast
we can illustrate by two models of time memory described by Friedman.
He calls the first time the “strength version of time.” The longer ago the
event, the weaker the memory trace. It provides a straightforward and
direct way of assessing the length of an event. Some memories of current
events may fade more quickly than memories of distant occasions, mostly
when those personal events were rather conspicuous ones (visiting a sel-
dom seen and frightening comparative when one was a young child, as an
example). A contrasting account of time is your “inference version.”
Following the time, an event is not only read from some aspect of the
memory of it but is inferred from data about relations between the occa-
sion in question and other occasions whose date or time is understood.
The “Inference model” may be plausible when we are observing remote
events, but less so for much more recent ones. Additionally, the model
posits a somewhat complex cognitive operation that is not likely to occur
in nonhuman creatures, such as the rat. In this, a given response will
postpone the incidence of an electrical shock by a fixed time, for example,
40 seconds, called the R–S (response–shock) interval. Eventually, the
speed of reacting tracks the R–S interval, so that the likelihood of reacting
increases rapidly as the conclusion of the interval approaches. It is hard to
avoid the inference here that only the passing of time is acting as a condi-
tioned stimulus—that the rats, to put it in more anthropocentric condi-
tions, are estimating periods. In cases like this, the strength model seems
more appropriate compared with the inference model. The term “spe-
cious present” was introduced by the psychologist E.R. Clay. However,
the best-known characterization of this was by William James, widely
considered as one of the founders of modern psychology. How long is this
specious gift? Elsewhere in the same function, James asserts, “We are con-
stantly aware of a certain duration—the specious present—varying from
a couple of seconds to probably not more than a minute. This duration
(using its content perceived as having one component earlier and yet
another part afterward) is the initial instinct of time.” This sudden varia-
tion in the period of the specious present makes one suspect more than
one definition is hidden in James’s rather vague characterization. There
12 TIME MANAGEMENT FOR UNICORNS

are two sources of ambiguity here: One is over whether “the specious pres-
ent” refers to the aim of the experience, namely, a period in time, or how
that object is introduced to us. “The next is over how we should interpret
immediately sensible.” Several studies suggest that the specious present is
the duration itself, picked out as the thing of a specific sort of experience.
However, “instantly sensible” admits of several disambiguations. We
might perceive as present items that exist. Really, given the finite speed of
the transmission of both light and sound (and the finite speed of trans-
mission of data from receptors to mind), it appears that we only ever
perceive what is past. Nevertheless, this will not by itself tell us what it is
to perceive something as current, rather than as past. Nor does it clarify
the most striking feature of our experience, as of the gift: that it is con-
stantly changing. The passing (or apparent passage) of time is its most
striking characteristic, and in any situation, our experience of time must
account for this aspect of our experience. The first problem is to explain
our temporal experience is restricted in a way in which our spatial experi-
ence is not. Our experience is not restricted to the immediate vicinity
(although, of course, our experience is spatially limited to the scope that
sufficiently distant objects are invisible to us). We can perceive objects
that exist in a variety of spatial connections to us: near, far, to the left or
right, down or up. However, even though we perceive the past, we do not
perceive it, but as the current. Moreover, our expertise does not only seem
to be temporally limited, but it is also such that we do not comprehend
the future, and we do not continue to comprehend transient events long
after information from them reached our senses. Now, there is a straight-
forward reply to this question of why we do not perceive the near future,
and it is a casual one. Perception is a causal process, so to perceive some-
thing is to be causally affected by it; hence, we can only perceive earlier
events, never subsequent ones. We could refer to the principle that there
could be no action at a temporal distance, so that something distant past
can only randomly influence us via more proximate occasions. One tem-
poral boundary of our experience is solved. What about the other? There
seems no credible reason why people should not directly go through the
distant past. To perceive something as a present is to comprehend it. We
do not need to postulate some excess items in our experience that are “the
experience of presentness.” It follows that there could be no
 A Brief History of Time 13

“understanding of pastness.” Also, in case pastness was something we

could perceive, then we would perceive everything in this manner since
every occasion is “Past: by the time we perceive it.” Nevertheless, even if
we never perceive anything as past (at the same time as perceiving the case
in question), we could intelligibly talk more widely of the experience of
pastness: the experience we get as it pertains to a conclusion. Moreover, it
has been implied that a feeling of pastness accompanies memories, more
especially, episodic memories, those of our experiences of previous events.
The difficulty that this proposal is supposed to resolve is that episodic
memory is merely a memory of an event; it signifies the event simpliciter,
rather than the fact that the event is past. An alternative account, and one
that does not appeal to some phenomenological aspects of memory, is
that memories get us to form past-tense beliefs, and it is by this that they
represent an occasion as past. How can we perceive precedence among
occasions? A temptingly simple response is that the perception of prece-
dence is merely a sensation brought on by instances of precedence, as
instances of redness cause a sensation of red. We can differentiate the two
cases; therefore, it cannot merely be a matter of perceiving a relation, but
something related to our understanding of the relation. Nevertheless, the
mere perception of the relation cannot be all there is to perceiving prece-
dence. We first perceive the hour hand at one position, say pointing to
6 o’clock, and we perceive it at another place, pointing to half-past 6. So
I have got two perceptions, one later than another. I might also be aware
of the temporal relationship of both positions of the hand. However, I do
not perceive that connection, in that I do not see the hand moving. By
comparison, I do see the second hand move from one place to another: “I
see the successive positions as successive.” In giving an account of the
numerous facets of time understanding, we inevitably take advantage of
theories that we take to get a goal counterpart in the world: the past, real-
time order, causation, mutation, the passage of time, and so forth.
However, one of the essential lessons of doctrine, for many authors, is that
there could be a gap between our representation of the world and the
planet itself. (It would be reasonable to add that, for other writers, this is
precisely not the lesson philosophy teaches.) Indeed, it is intriguing to
note how many philosophers have taken the view that, despite appear-
ances, time, or any facet of time, it is unreal. In this final segment, we will
14 TIME MANAGEMENT FOR UNICORNS

take a look at how three metaphysical disagreements regarding the nature

of the world socialize with balances of time understanding.

1.3  Time Perception in Philosophy and Science

The understanding of time is essential to our expertise and fundamental
to virtually all our actions. Correspondingly, time perception was among
the earliest themes of experimental psychology and was extensively
studied for well over a century. Philosophers have usually approached
the idea of the timing of experiences by addressing the question of how the
experiences of temporal phenomena could be explained. As a result, the
dilemma of timing was addressed in two distinct ways. Like the questions
introduced in sciences, the first concerns the connection between the sea-
soned time of events and the real-time of occasions. The second strat-
egy is much more specific to philosophers’ debates and concerns that the
phenomenology of encounters: is the apparent temporal arrangement of
encounters. Philosophers are more concerned with the phenomenology
and the metaphysics of time compared with scientists, who often focus
on performance, particularly time-order tasks, and measure the timing of
encounters in milliseconds. Philosophical notions of time consciousness,
which aim to account for how time and temporal possessions figure in
our consciousness as well as contents of extraordinary states, may be clas-
sified into roughly three categories.
The first, the snapshot view, is like a straightforward viewpoint. Many
scientific theories regarding the timing of experiences concur with this
thesis, even when they reject another realistic view thesis. A few philoso-
phers reject the snapshot view because accounting for rectal experiences
has shown difficulty within this framework.
Temporal experiences are the ones that indicate the passage of time.
More recently, philosophers have focused on experiences of movement,
succession, and persistence. Thus consider, for example, an adventure of
motion. If we only experience what is taking place on a snapshot, then
our experience using a moving object consists of the thing in only one
of its just-past (or predicted) positions—the experience of movement is
missing. Additionally, while the picture view allows for a succession of
adventures, this does not yet amount to the adventure of the series. If a
 A Brief History of Time 15

series is something that we can encounter, then it seems that the snapshot
view cannot account for this. Likewise, we could never really encounter
melody if our experience consisted of the notes being played. Instead,
movement, for instance, is only inferred based on our memories of their
previous positions of stimulation and our perception of their current
location. Regardless of this, the picture view does not involve the rejec-
tion of temporal encounters.
Contemporary philosophers, however, take for granted the phenom-
enology related to temporally extended events. Hence, they assert that
we can experience change, movement, and other dynamic events with
the same immediacy we experience colors and shapes. Because of this,
the cinematic version is rejected. Given that the version is not usually
separated from the photo view, the latter can be reversed. The idea that
an experience covers a temporal interval enables experiential contents
that seem (to get a subject) to happen at various times to be parts of
a single experience. In this frame, the experience of a single flash suc-
ceeding another could be described as follows: When we encounter the
last flash, the first flash lingers in our understanding of past or previous
content. Since we are conscious of the two flashes during the same spe-
cious present, we also experience the succession. It does not mean that the
experience itself would be temporally structured in a feeling it has tem-
poral parts just that, to a topic, the funniest contents within one specious
present seem as if embedded in a dynamic arrangement. Saying that the
contents of expertise are temporally extended is much more a description
of temporal adventures than an explanation of them.
The supplied explanations come in two major models, which form the
remaining two groups of the philosophical notions of time consciousness.
The first is your intentionalist version (or intentionalist model), based
on which encounters take place, objectively speaking, in snapshots. In
more concrete terms, our experience of succession is considered to come
about by having two experiential contents appear to be in series on a
single near-momentary experience. It is achieved when the first experien-
tial content is presented as something that only occurred (retained con-
tent), while the other is introduced as current content (primal image).
The competing perspective, the extensionist version, maintains that both
the experiences and their contents are temporally extended. Thus, our
16 TIME MANAGEMENT FOR UNICORNS

experience of succession comes about when two experiential contents that

occur in succession are perceived as the contents of one experience. Thus,
what separates the two models is their stance on the relationship between
the possessions of an adventure and its contents.
As mentioned previously, for reasons linked to temporal phenomenol-
ogy, philosophers have been rather univocal in their rejection of the thesis
of instantaneous contents. Therefore, philosophers reject at least two of
the three theses that include a straightforward view. I think the easy view
could be defended, nevertheless. Such protection comes in the form of
two other perspectives, which, in my opinion, are sound and at least as
empirically well grounded because of their alternatives. The first one, the
quick snapshot view, describes the phenomenology in the framework of
a photo view—at the frame that the thesis of instant contents renders us.
The dynamic snapshot view, as its title suggests, subscribes to the thesis of
instantaneous contents. The majority of philosophers have rebuffed this
thesis as it has been maintained; it contributes to Phenomeno-temporal
Antirealism. Hence, a philosophical model endorsing the thesis needs to
provide a convincing argument of why there is not any temporal phe-
nomenology or demonstrate how the thesis could be harmonious with the
precision of temporal phenomenology. While the cinematic model takes
the first route and has had little success in doing this, the quick snap-
shot view attempts to provide the demonstration of compatibility known.
This usually means that a snapshot can (but does not need to) contain
contents that a frame in a movie does not let (namely, cerebral phenom-
enology). The main difficulty here is, of course, the rectal phenomenol-
ogy cannot be explained in the same manner as in the extensionist and
re-intentionalist models. Because the quick snapshot view maintains that
the contents of our experiences are not temporally extended, it cannot
appeal to the thought that a single experience includes contents that sub-
jectively seem to occur at several times. Instead, the quick photograph
view holds that such contents are not required for rectal phenomenology
to happen. The dynamic snapshot view holds that rectal phenomenol-
ogy can be explained similarly, namely, by appealing to the existence of
mechanics specific to various types of temporal phenomenology. Thus,
our experiences of causality, change, movement, succession, and so forth
would be due to mechanisms separate from each other and subsequently
 A Brief History of Time 17

also separate from general mechanisms such as working memory. It is

where the quick snapshot view differs from Le Poidevin’s place, as he
accounts for rectal experiences aside from motion by appealing to the
memory.
The human brain is not like the measuring devices in classical physics:
There is not any immutable mapping between outside magnitudes and
inner sensations that can be obtained by pure mathematical approaches.
The basis and generality of the linear property of time remain topics of
considerable debate, together with scale invariance variously attributed to
this pulse rate of a dedicated pacemaker, the transfer of rectal representa-
tions into memory, or even the emergent properties of low-level interac-
tions between neurons in the human brain.
However, recent work is identifying instances where distinct sub-
groups of participants, ostensibly from precisely the same population,
nonetheless show substantial heterogeneity even for well-established con-
sequences. One instance comes from the widely reported discovering that
novel stimuli (oddballs) have longer subjective length compared with rep-
licated items. This finding has been found in several experiments using
various techniques and is robust enough to be regarded as a standard
temporal illusion.
 Index
Ability, 28–29, 31, 35, 50, 64, 74 Ecclesiastical History of the English
Action Items, 23–25, 62 People, 5
Anno Domini, 5, 7 Effective process control, 50
Anno Gratiae, 5 Egypt, time and calendars,2
Anno Incarnationis Dominicae, 5 8-hour day, 78
Anno salutae Humanae, 5 80/20 rule, 68
Anno Urbis Conditae, 4–5 E-mail, 42, 49, 77, 79, 80,
Archbishop of Canterbury, 9 81, 84
Environment, 47–50
Beyond time management, 79–84 Evernote, 78
Bottom-up strategy, 29 Exile, week, 4
Business time, 19–23
Filing system, 49
Caesar, Julius, 2–4, 7, 8 Filtering, 80–81
Catholic calendar, 3 Flow, 27–36
Caught in time, 22 Focus, 39–45
Chance of outside disturbance, 47 Freedom app, 80
Change your inner dialogue, Full control of your own life and
31–32 work, 31
Christian calendar, 5–10 Functional workspace, 48
Clavius, Christopher, 8
Clay, E.R., 11 Goal for managing vertically and
Clear mental picture of yourself, horizontally, 29
32 Goal-setting scheme, 85
Coaching your employees, 78 Google Calendar, 78, 82
Confessions of St Augustine, 10 Google Doc Calendar, 69
CRM. See Customer relationship Gregorian calendar, 9
management solution
Crucifixion/Resurrection of Christ, Habits, 37–39
5–6 Hard landscape, 61
Customer relationship management Henry VIII, 9
solution (CRM), 78 Human brain, 17

Daily goals, 82 Ideal time control system, 36

Daily Scrum, 55–56, 58 Important stuff to do, 22
Dee, John, 9 Inference model, time, 11
Delegation, 40 Inference version, time, 11
Development Team, 51–57 Inter Gravissimus, 8, 9
Digital file, 48–49 Internet, 81
Dionysius Exiguus, 5, 7
Do-Not-Disturb mode, 80 James, William, 11
Dynamic community, 65 Jesus Christ, 5
90 INDEX

Jewish calendar, 4, 6 Scrum Master, 51–56

Julian calendar, 2–4 Scrum, 50–57
Scrums. See Scrum
Large Development Teams, 52 Self-development, 44
Latecomer, 44 Significant problem, 29–30
Law of Control, 30 Simultaneity, 71–72
Lifestyle, 28 Slow believing, 33
Long-term goals, 83 Smaller Development Teams, 52
Longtime perspective, 34 Smartphone apps, 37
Lunchtime, your advantage, 42 Snapshot view, time, 14–17
Solution, 67
Marathon budget-planning session, Specious present, 11
63 Spring Equinox, 6
Meaningful work, 82 Spring Equinox, 6
Meetings, 83–84 Sprint Retrospective, 56
Memory trace, 73 Sprint Review, 56
Money, 67 Sprint, 51–59
Multitask job, 35 Straightforward and extremely
Multitasking, 41 functional personal reference
system, 49
Natural results, 86 Strength version of time, 11
No joint accounts, 81 Substantive issue, 28
Success, 85
Offline/online, 82–83 System administrator, 64–65
Optimal Development Team, 52
Telephone, 42–43, 77, 80, 82–83
Past: by the time we perceive it, 13 Temporal illusion, 17
Personal advancement, 44 Time/calendars, 1–17
Personal recommendation, 81 ancient Egypt, 2
Personal tension and unhappiness, and personal productivity, 32
causes of, 32 -based prospective memory, 73
Phenomeno-temporal Antirealism, 16 blocking, 69, 78, 82
Photo of yourself, 32 Christian calendar, 5–10
Physical exercise, 39 framing, 86
Pontifex Maximus, 3 Julian calendar, 2–4
Pope Gregory XIII, 4, 7 perception, 71–74
Positive attitude, 78 philosophy and Science, 14–17
Power of no, 75–79 supervisor, 31, 32
Product Backlog, 51, 55–57, 59 to grow, 61–64
Product Owner, 51–54 week, 4–5
Productive communication, 39 Time in life, 67
Psychological time, 22 Time management, 67–71
plans and tactics, 34
Quality of your relationships, 45 system, 37–38
Quartodecimians, 6 Tools, 85–86
24-hour period, 29, 74
Responsibility, habits, 37–38
Return policy, 81 Understanding of pastness, 12–13
R–S interval, 11 Unsubscribe, 81
 INDEX
91

Vacation planning, 86 You think you’re in charge of your

Venerable Bede, 5 life, 30
Your behaviors, 32
Way of life, 29 Your job, 33
Week, time and calendars, 4–5 Your self-concept, 30–31
Weekly Review, 62 Your space, 47
Weird time, 63 Yourself and believe, 31
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