I remember being out in service and hearing the story about a new publisher who was out in service for the first time. She took a stopwatch with her and started it when the householder opened the door, and stopped it when the conversation was over. After the morning was through, her biggest question was, "How on earth does anyone get pioneer hours?"
But that story got me thinking. It would really be impossible to get more than an hour or two per month if you actually counted the time spent talking to people. And the methods used in the US virtually guarantee that very few people will be met per hour. I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that for every person-hour reported, perhaps only one or two person-minutes is spent in conversation with a potential convert. Of course, a few people are more effective than the rest, but on average, I think this is realistic.
Which means, of course, that to find the true number of hours spent preaching, we should divide the reported time by something between 30 and 60. Suddenly that 1.2 billion hours doesn't seem so impressive anymore!