Time Zone Bias & Why It Matters?

Time Zone Bias

In the past, you interacted with people in a small geographic area near where you lived and worked. Occasionally, you'd call, write, or visit relatives somewhere else. But for the most part, your connections with people happened in the same time zone that you lived in.

But that's changed and continues to change. Now we have to stop and think about the implications of the time zone differences between where we live and the people we want to interact with.

The implication being that where you live, work, and how you form relationships is changed by the amount of time you spend working and interacting with people online. And the more time you spend interacting with people online from around the world, the more you need to stop and think about your Time Zone Bias.

Time zone bias is a preference for (and sometimes a projection of) our immediate time zone needs on other areas of the world. ie: it's when you think in terms of your local time zone even though you interact with people across a variety of different time zones.

A Business Example: Your boss lives on the East Coast of the United States and you live in California. He needs you to interact with him on a regular basis and insists that you start work at 9 am Eastern Time. Easy enough, right? But that's 6 am Pacific Time. His bias for his local time zone has an impact on your lifestyle and ability to live a "normal life" by late industrial age standards.

Another Business Example: when you produce and distribute content to a global audience but only think of the implications to your local audience. Like sending this email newsletter at 11:30 am EST on a Monday just in time for lunch break while ignoring that it's almost midnight in Vietnam. It's something I think about a lot as I aim to scale my audience globally.

A Personal Example: During Covid lockdowns your parents decide to host family Sunday dinners over Zoom. They want to eat around 6:30 pm. The problem? They live in New York; you live in Oregon and the thought of eating dinner at 3:30 pm on a Sunday is unpleasant.

Stop and think about this for a moment. Have you been recently impacted by time zone disparities? What were the circumstances?

For many people now working remotely and living far away from family and friends, these "occurrences" of time zone bias are becoming more common. Think about what that says about the direction that global society is heading in as a result of this "thing". Think about how cultural norms are evolving because we now more commonly interact with people across time zones.

The point: The changes that digital life creates within society are profound and consequential to how we live, work, and form relationships. You can still live in a location-constrained bubble. You can lack the awareness of the time zone dysphoria from working and interacting with people across the world on a daily basis. But it's becoming more common that you interact with people across time zones on a regular basis.

Imagine having a teammate willing to work a non-traditional 8-hour shift. From 12pm - 8pm, 3pm-11pm, 1am to 9am... etc. Imagine doing it yourself? How might this impact your relationships? As an example, I recently had a colleague whose kids would wake up for school when we'd hold our end of day call. They'd sometimes pop in and say good morning while I'd be ending my day.

How would this impact his home life and friendships? How should it impact how I interact with him?

This is another line of demarcation between location-dependent and location-independent social classes. Remote work will slowly change our cultural norms and expectations around time zones. And the norms, customs, and even policy expectations will split along these social classes because one group of people will need to adjust to global time while the other doesn't.

This is something to keep an eye on as remote work teams become more globally integrated.

Rapid Fire

• Pivot Idea: The Airbnb for Medical Tourism ? - by jeff tang (substack.com) - The concept of medical tourism is really interesting - might the remote work class begin relocating for medical reasons (a cousin concept to medical tourism)?

• 🔮 Top 40+ Remote-First Trends for 2023 (and beyond) - This was a pretty damn interesting collection of writings and is worth your time to skim through. "Work-from-anywhere increasingly becomes work whenever" - A relevant point related to the topic above.

• How to create a city | Financial Times (archive.is) - "Entrepreneurs are planning autonomous ‘charter cities’ as an answer to Africa’s rapid population growth"

• The rise of the midlife digital nomad (archive.is) - "According to a 2022 survey by data platform Statista, the 40-59 age group now accounts for 35 per cent of the ­digital nomad community worldwide, with Americans making up the overwhelming majority at 52 per cent, and the British coming in second at 8 per cent, well ahead of other Europeans." The demographics of nomads are changing. That has important implications for the digital transformation.

• Brazil and Argentina to start preparations for a common currency | Financial Times (archive.is) - More signs of multipolarism - other Latin nations are expected to be invited to thus common currency. In the short term, it doesn't matter. But in the longer term, will they adopt neutral assets as a means to back their common currency? Bitcoin, gold, commodities, etc? What will that mean for the rest of the global economy?

• In Davos, Leaders Fret Over Fragmenting Global Economy - WSJ (archive.is) - These leaders worry that if they don't cooperate on policy, the competition that emerges from a multipolar world will create a scenario where new geopolitical factions rise to rival legacy factions. ie: the leaders at Davos fear they're on the cusp of losing power.

• Rising Interest Rates Hit Landlords Who Can’t Afford Hedging Costs - WSJ (archive.is) - Trends converge. Office vacancies caused by remote work in an environment with rapidly rising interest rates and floating rate mortgages create an unpleasant circumstance. If these pressures continue and force sales of office spaces, it will drive property valuations down further and impact city tax revenues even more. Location-independent vs location-dependent policy disputes will bloom in these conditions.

• Inside CNET’s AI-powered SEO money machine - The Verge - What mediocre writers everywhere fear most has come true.

• Russell Napier: The world will experience a capex boom (themarket.ch) - "We will see a boom in capital investment and a reindustrialisation of Western economies,» says Napier. Many people will like it at first, before years of badly misallocated capital will lead to stagflation."

Extras

The Periodic Table of Commodity Returns (2013-2022) (visualcapitalist.com)

The Documentary - The price of citizenship - BBC Sounds