def METHOD_NAME(self, time_attr):
    """
    Parses relative or absolute time specification, decides how to parse by
    checking if the string contains any timespan identifier.
    See also https://github.com/certtools/intelmq/issues/1523
    dateutil.parser.parse detects strings like `10 hours` as absolute time.
    """
    if any([timespan in time_attr for timespan in TIMESPANS.keys()]):
        relative = timedelta(minutes=parse_relative(time_attr))
        self.logger.info("Filtering out events to (relative time) %r.", relative)
        return relative
    else:
        absolute = parser.parse(time_attr)
        self.logger.info("Filtering out events to (absolute time) %r.", absolute)
        return absolute