i have a pet theory that conversations with other people - including but not limited to therapy or coaching sessions - should happen in multiples of 90 minutes. 60 minutes is not enough time and i think it's a shame that we settled on 60 as the default chunk
Conversation
when i let conversations - again including but not limited to coaching sessions - reach a natural end that end is often after either 90 or 180 minutes (not always, for sure)
90 minutes is about the length of a REM cycle, and also about the length of a movie 🤔
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my coaching sessions started going noticeably better once i insisted on having them be 90 minutes long instead of 60. 60 almost always felt rushed but 90 feels spacious. there's enough time for like a whole emotional arc to play out (length of a movie!)
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also i tried 120 minutes a few times but the sessions would often naturally end early. would be very curious to hear other people experiment here and report back
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now i'm looking up the history of the hour and wow is it complicated. the etymology in english passes through "canonical hours" for prayer and there's an interesting bit here about prayer times being at multiples of 3 hours 👀
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hour#Hist
this looks a little bro-sciency (which is not necessarily bad) but apparently the keyword i want here is "ultradian rhythm"
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Recommendations for cool things to look into or read on this subject:
- Edo-period Japanese variable hour clocks
- Jacques Le Goff's "Church Time and Merchant's Time"
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