Inspire your coworkers with the Comet Countdown Clock!

Background:

Workplaces will occasionally have “countdown clocks,” like “X days without a workplace injury” or “Y days until our product is launched.”

The Issue:

Sometimes, it’s hard for companies (and employees) to take a long-term view of things—everyone is just focused on the next financial quarter’s profits, or short-term stock value.

Proposal:

In order to encourage add long-term perspective, we’ll add some more “countdown” clocks for more far-reaching events. These could even be speculative, like “5 years until the planned manufacturing expansion in Southeast Asia.”

We could even track the time for more distant events. For example, “214,621,870 days (best estimate) until the Yellowstone Supervolcano erupts.” See Figure 1 for another example.

***Fig. 1:*** Along with a normal wall clock and a “days since last accident” counter, we’ll add the “Comet Collision Countdown Clock,” which tracks the time until a hypothetical comet causes humans to go extinct and (presumably) dinosaurs to return.

Conclusion:

A version of this could also be used at restaurants, to increase table turnover. A neon sign reading “FORTY SEVEN MINUTES AND THIRTY-THREE SECONDS REMAINING TO EAT DINNER!” would be helpful to encourage patrons to eat efficiently and free up their table for other diners.

PROS: Encourages people to take a long view of their company’s future. May also help increase restaurant table availability.

CONS: None!