Not saying I agree with GP but there are 2 distinct notions of time. One is related to durations, and the other is absolute time (aka wall time). Clocks measure wall time, not durations. Cellular processes probably don’t care about wall time.

Wall clock time is pretty much only measured in practice as some offset relative to some repeating process, though (e.g. hours since start of day). Cells certainly have processes that repeat on a daily basis, at different offsets from the beginning of the day; they may not actually be measured by counting ticks (the jury's still out on exactly how they do it, I think?), but the effect is similar.