You forget of course that this equation is entirely based on the idea that the
programmer has any
sense of time, whatsoever. I am
one of those people. I do not
wear a watch, because nine times out of ten, I don't CARE what time it is. I go to
sleep when I'm tired. I wake up when I'm not. I am
flexible, and I am against anything
regimented or scheduled.
For people like me, your concept of time is silly. That is simply mechanical time, not actual time. Real time moves in fits and starts, not in a continuous flow. Perhaps that's the easiest way some people can understand time, as hours, days, minutes and seconds, but that's not how time moves at all. When you're in the probability class that you hate, even that mechanical clock seems to move half as fast. You'll look at the clock.. stare at the desk... look at the clock again, and what seemed like it should have been 5 minutes was only 2. To exemplify the converse, anyone who has spent time with someone they care about know that time also rushes forward, and the days fly by and you hardly notice.
I have trouble remembering what day of the week it is. It doesn't make me absent-minded, although, I am that. It is exemplary of my disregard for the rigid mechanical time that humans invented.
My time-frame estimate equation -
The number of hours I work on a project = (percent interest I have in the project) * (number of working hours available)
Or, for short,
WH = %I * H
This reflects that I only work as much as I am motivated. If I am absolutely thrilled about something, I will work constantly on it until I collapse. If I think it's boring as hell, on the other hand, that will make the time frame 1 / %I longer.