Berkeley Time

Every activity or function at my church starts at least 10 minutes late (except for Sunday services that start on time, even though most members trail in over the next 10 minutes). Of course this has become an old joke - "Is that 6pm Mormon time?" someone might ask. And lots of groups have this little joke - I've heard people refer to "Jewish Time", etc. So when I got to Berkeley and heard people saying that everything starts 10 minutes after it's scheduled, and calling this "Berkeley Time", I assumed that they meant that, as in most organizations, everyone shows up late to everyting. But no, they told me. If you are scheduled to teach from 1pm to 1:50pm, that means that you really teach from 1:10pm to 2pm. If you show up at 1pm, the previous class will still be in there.

At first, I thought I was being punked. Show up ten minutes late to my classes? Riiiggghhht. When I found out it was for real, I just wondered, why?

This convention applies to everything, not just classes. Meetings, workshops, seminars, and everything else start at ten minutes after the hour. After being at Berkeley for two months, I've come to the surprising conclusion that this system really helps people to be on time. There are always a few people who just don't get it and always show up at the posted time. But at the meetings I've been to, almost all of the people are there a few minutes before the meeting starts.

My theory is that this funny timing convention gets people to things on time because it changes how they think about the 10 minutes before the meeting: I know that a meeting scheduled for 1pm really doesn't start until 1:10pm, but in my mind the time between 1pm and 1:10pm is really meeting time, so I don't mind using it to walk to the meeting and I leave my office at 1pm and show up a a few minutes early. If the meeting really started at 1pm, I would feel like any time that I had to use walking over there before 1pm, was MY time, and I would leave at the last second and almost always be late.

So there you have it. Another example of how framing matters.