Project plans still use the old measurements. "Phase one, a week. Phase two, three to four weeks." Then we sit down on a Sunday afternoon and phase one happens before dinner.
I haven't decided if this is good. The estimates aren't wrong — they describe how long the work used to take, in the previous configuration. What's wrong is the conversion rate. A week used to be five attention-days threaded through a calendar full of other things. Now a Sunday afternoon is six attention-hours where the calendar has been emptied on purpose. The unit "week" still works for the rest of life — laundry, the dentist, when the rent's due — but for this kind of work it's drifted out of register, like a word in a translated novel that the translator chose to leave in the original.
Cadences inherited from the old units don't survive. Biweekly meeting. Quarterly review. Annual planning offsite. They sound like the wrong tempo as soon as you say them out loud. Monthly newsletter is on that list. So is daily standup, which is too fast for any unit but useful as a heartbeat.
The new units don't have names yet. I notice myself reaching for "a session" and "a sit" and "a sweep." All three describe a thing that begins, finishes, and is bounded — but bounded by attention, not by clock. The clock keeps running while the session goes on; the session is over when the session is over.