Part of the problem is that the sin of eating from the Aitz HaDa’as Tov v’Ra, according to Kabbalah, was multi-faceted. The actual eating of the fruit was the last stage, not the first stage.
It went like this, as explained in Drushei Olam HaTohu, Drush Aitz HaDa’as.
Adam HaRishon investigated the tree to try and understand the evil associated with it. His goal was to subdue and overcome it, thereby rectifying Creation and beginning of the Messianic Era. He thought he could do this since he had been created on a near-perfect level, much higher than we are today.
However, he had overestimated his spiritual ability, and rather than fix the evil of the tree, he was attacked by it. When someone looks at something with intention, a bond is created that allows a person to influence or be influenced by what they are looking at. In this case, evil influenced Adam, and it greatly lowered him and the world spiritually to the physical level it is currently on.
Until that time, the snake was not even in the garden because he was not spiritually elevated enough. Once Adam’s looking transformed the world and made it more physical, the snake could now enter the garden and approach Chava. That is when the Sitra Achra came down and spiritually entered the snake, possessing it.
After that, the snake approached Chava and took advantage of her incorrect understanding of the prohibition. God had only prohibited the eating of the fruit, but Adam had added not touching the fruit to that without telling Chava. She thought she would die just from touching the fruit.
The Sitra Achra knew this and pushed her into the tree. When she didn’t die from only touching the tree, the Sitra Achra convinced her that she would not die from eating it either. Her perspective changed, the fruit now appealed to Chava and she ate, and then compelled Adam to eat as well.
Before that man had never used Creation for his own purpose. Now he had, and it changed the way everything looked. All of sudden they had realized that they were capable of abusing Creation, and one another, and they immediately took measures to reduce that danger.
But the dye was cast. All that remained was to be judged for their sin and then expelled from the Garden into the world beyond it. It is the world we inhabit as we wait for history to be righted and Paradise to return.
But the point is that the sin began with Adam’s looking at the tree and ended with their eating from it. That took time. If one hour of a day of Creation equals 83.33 years in a millennium, then 15 minutes is a quarter of that, about 21 years. The question is, at what point did Adam and Chava cross the point of no return, because it is probably the point in our history when history tips in favor of Moshiach and redemption.
Does something in our history correspond to Adam’s illicit looking? How much time transpired from the time that he did look and lower Creation and the moment they actually ate, and what does that correspond to?
Maybe these are answers we can only know once Moshiach is finally here. The equation of b’ittah may be impossible to solve with precision because we may still lack part of it. But that may change very soon as time runs out nevertheless…