The total number of hours/minutes it takes to complete a quilt is not useful information to me since I'm not being paid by the hour to make a quilt. I tracked that information for 49 years when I worked at my day job. I did it then because I was being paid for each hour.
The total hours/minutes that it would take me to finish a quilt could have taken me two weeks, two years, or longer. Since I only work on one quilt at a time, I like to say this quilt took me "five months" to complete. Comparing that quilt to one that took me "three months" to complete is the information that I tell people when they ask. Personally, I think this is what people want to know when they ask how long it took to make a particular quilt.
I recently made a fabric wallet that took me two weeks to finish. I hope that the next wallet goes together faster, but it may not because I'm customizing the pattern. A third wallet would only take a matter of days because I wouldn't have to figure anything else out. This is the kind of information that I find useful.