We sometimes speak of our need for split-second timing, where a decision or action must be taken very rapidly, and at precisely the right moment. We also occasionally refer to something happening in an instant, usually unexpectedly.

Few nonprofit organisations, however, would see themselves depending on super-fast timing such as might be required for emergency response, medical interventions, crisis hotlines, and high-speed logistics or trading. Consequently, ‘moments’, ‘instants’, and ‘seconds’ are usually precise enough descriptions of the unit/s of time involved for our purposes.

Even where instinctive thought is involved in our decision-making, as in Daniel Kahneman’s System 1 thinking, we would probably measure such rapid thought without referring to milliseconds or nanoseconds.

On the other hand, we expect the technology that we rely on for many day-to-day functions to work at much faster rates than mere humans can achieve. When judging the performance of these technologies we are happy to use finer technical descriptions of their operating speeds.

Neuroscience and three ‘speeds of thought’

The BBC Science Focus advises that by some estimates, we average humans can experience sensory stimuli that are presented for as little as 50 milliseconds (0.001 of a second). Highly trained sprinters have been clocked responding to the starter’s gun in about 150 milliseconds.

At this speed, while the mind may recognise a stimulus, we could characterise such recognition as liminal – because it is situated at the sensory threshold – and so is barely perceptible. Subliminal awareness experiments would need to demonstrate that study participants were able to provide non-random answers to a questionnaire with no reported awareness suggesting unconscious awareness of a stimulus that was present for less than 50 milliseconds.

According to Buhusi et al, time perception is typically categorised in three distinct ranges, each of which is processed in different areas of the brain:

• Sub-second timing or millisecond timing – Millisecond timing engages a variety of specialised local circuits in the cerebellum for fast and fine movement control, or in the auditory cortex, for speech processing
• Interval timing or seconds-to-minutes timing – Finally, planning and motor control in the seconds range engages the cortico-striatal circuits, motor, parietal, and prefrontal cortices, both in animals and humans
• Circadian timing – which operates over roughly 24 hours, and controls functions such as the sleep-wake cycle and the metabolic processes, is based on a molecular clock in the suprachiasmatic nucleus

They note that:

“the relative separation of these circuits explains why one can deal with different attributes simultaneously, but also raises the possibility of conflicts or cooperation between these circuits for time intervals around 1 second.”

Buhusi CV, Cordes S. Time and number: the privileged status of small values in the brain. Front Integr Neurosci. 2011 Oct 31;5:67. doi: 10.3389/fnint.2011.00067. PMID: 22065383; PMCID: PMC3204429.

Need for speed

Perpetual acceleration of processes has become a mantra. Everyone wants frictionless processes. Minimum delay, if not immediate gratification, is driving the adoption of technologies, systems, and processes that deliver as quickly as possible – preferably instantly. Delay for even a moment is frustrating. In some organisations the removal of bottleneck factors has seen the replacement of human workers with automated solutions – because humans are too ‘unreliable’ or ‘slow’.

This hunger for speed bears some resemblance to an addiction. Upon gaining the ‘time saving’ we had sought, we ‘normalise’ that speed, and begin developing a craving for the next enhancement. Ever since the father of ‘scientific management’, Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) said “In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first”, human workers have faced increasing time pressures.

Attoseconds win

Various digital processes and scientific analyses require units of time measurement that are well beyond the average human being to distinguish. A recent illustration of this was the news that physicists who built ultrafast ‘attosecond’ lasers had won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics. They were recognised for the significance of their work in “experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter”.

According to the International System of Units, an attosecond is a quintillionth (0.000 000 000 000 000 001) of a second. Apparently, there are as many attoseconds in a second as there have been seconds since the (estimated) birth of the universe.
(See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units)

Sub-second timing uses

Of what significance are such minuscule measurements to the non-physicists amongst us though? Do we use such tiny fractions of a second in any of the work we do today?

• Computer clock speed is usually described in megahertz or gigahertz. One megahertz equals one million ticks per second (microseconds), and one gigahertz equals one billion ticks per second (nanoseconds).
• Billing for Google’s cloud services uses a timestamp format “… with nanosecond resolution and up to nine fractional digits”.
• Network performance metrics (especially downtime) are normally expressed in a range of time units including days per year/quarter/month/week, but their granularity goes all the way down to milliseconds per day.
• Olympic timekeeping since 2012 has used technology (the Omega Quantum Timer) that can capture one-millionth of a second (microsecond) differences. Pity the silver medallist beaten by 1 millionth of a second, who in an earlier era would have been declared equal first.

The chart below offers a selection of functions that most of us in nonprofit organisations would use each day, where milliseconds are the primary unit of measurement.

Introducing the rontosecond and the quectosecond

The International System of Units (SI) defines the seven base quantities of what is now known as the International System of Quantities. These quantities describe a basic set from which all other SI units can be derived.

Time is one of the seven base quantities, as illustrated in the following chart, and the base unit for time measurement is the second. This system has official status in every country in the world and is used in science, technology, industry, and everyday commerce.

Historically, smaller fractions of a second have been included as measuring equipment became more finely calibrated, and science required more precisely differentiated units of measurement. The division of an hour into 60 minute (or small) parts, and the later division of a minute into a second set of small parts (see header image above), was only the beginning of our attempts to divide time into ever smaller units of measurement.

Most recently, in 2022, the rontosecond (an octillionth or 0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 001 of a second), and the quectosecond (a nonillionth or 0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 001 of a second) were added to the standard by the General Conference on Weights and Measures.

Making the seconds count

When, as nonprofit leaders, you are measuring and evaluating performance and productivity, awareness of both psychological and measurement insights about time will enhance your decision-making and oversight role. As always, good leadership focuses on making the seconds count, rather than merely counting the seconds used.

See also:
Hurry Up and Slow Down
Temporal sensemaking and reflective governance
Temperament and Temporality
‘Time is of the essence’: Temporal factors in NFP Productivity
Fusing experience and expectation in decision-making