My Time Management Web

Chapter 18 - Tardiness

It goes without saying that tardiness is a no-no in any professional establishment. Even if you are standing at a booking office or in a queue and you notice that the person in front of you is taking his or her own sweet time, you might start counting to ten so that you do not lose your temper. Most of us cannot tolerate slowness. Sometimes even if the person who is taking a long time is a senior citizen and is incapable f making haste we produce a range of sounds to show our exasperation.

So we have so much impatience with others, how much patience will others have with us. I believe that there are three groups of people in this world. They are:
1. The people who always are on time
2. The people who make an honest effort but more often than once fail to reach on time
3. The group of people who make a living by selling used toothpicks.
Actually there is no group like the third group. The people who really come in that group are the people who do not make any effort at all to be on time. But then they cannot be considered as people at all and are better off selling used toothpicks and my blessings into the bargain.

I used to find it very difficult to believe that there could actually be people who didnt care two hoots for time. But there are! I dont know about you, but I really believe that people who consciously waste their time and because of them, the time of others as well, are real criminals. They should be made to walk the plank! While the rest of us are struggling so hard to make the maximum use of the time that we have, there are people who dont care a damn about things like being late or making others wait.

I suppose most of us fit into the second category that is the group of people who do make an honest effort to reach on time and do things on time but often fail mainly due to reasons beyond our control. So is there any way out of this? Of course there is and that is what we are going to talk about.

The first thing that we have to do is to develop a deep concern for the time of others. Of course we have the liberty to waste our time.(I consider even that wrong , but opinions may be different). But we have no right to waste the time of others. It is just very, very bad manners to keep a person waiting. It shows inconsideration and selfishness on our part.

Once you instill this thought deep into your mind there is a lesser chance that you will keep another person waiting because we all want other to think and speak good about us.

The second thing that you have to do is understand that if you are late for something that involves more than one person than the severity of the situation ids raised several fold. Like for instance you are late for a meeting that involves , say, 12 people and they are waiting for you reach to begin the meeting.

You might be just five minutes late. That seems ok enough because five minutes is not such a big deal. But a crucial point that you may be missing out there is that it not just five minutes that is wasted. Since there are 12 people who are waiting for you, you are in effect wasting

12 times 5, which is 60 minutes of productive time!

Now that looks bad doesnt it, wasting one hour of productive work?

These two thoughts are enough for any normal person to make some haste and see that there are no unnecessary delays because of that person.

But still in the course of our daily life, we come across what we call emergencies. Unforeseen events take place, like your cr might refuse to start, or the might be a puncture, or some guests might walk in just when you are leaving. Hey, we are only human and catastrophes are bound to happen. Just see to it that others are not kept waiting because of a slight misfortune that you encountered.

If you have a cell phone (every body has a cell phone nowadays) it would be best to call the other person and inform that you are late. S long as you can inform the other person your offence becomes pardonable.

In case you are unable to inform the person then you really must make amends. Do not, and I repeat it, do not take it for granted that the other person will understand. Too many things have been taken for granted in todays world. You have to go out of your way to apologize for being late.

If you are unable to meet the person on the said day, it would be an excellent idea to send the person a sorry note to make up for your mistake. At least in the way the person can know that you did make a sincere effort but things were beyond your control. Such gestures really streamline our relationships with others.

So what do you if you make good efforts to be on time but still do not , because, well because of no reason in particular! It happens you know. You start to get ready to go well in advance and everything works out fine without any catastrophes on the way. But yet you reach the place a couple of minutes late and everyone stares at you in disapproval.

In such cases the solution is to work your time backwards. Sounds strange, huh? Well, let me explain how it works. You should start to calculate the time you need to reach your destination not starting from your home but from the destination itself. You could try writing it down till you become comfortable with such a mental chart.

Your chats will look something like this.


Time needed to reach the office in the elevator: 1 minute
Time needed to park car and pick up things: 1 minute
Time needed to find parking space: 5 minutes
Time needed to drive to office from home: 10 minutes
Time needed to reach car park from apartment: 3 minutes
Time needed to lock apartment: 1 minute
Time needed to dress and get ready: 15 minutes
Time needed to shower and dry yourself: 10 minutes
Now you just have to add up these figures and you will get an exact idea of how long it takes you to get to office. Again there is something left to do. You may have to make allowances for certain things where crises may crop up.

Like for instance the drive to office. It would be a god thing to anticipate a traffic jam and give your self some grace time over there. Similarly finding a parking space can sometimes prove to be more trickier than a treasure hunt. So you could give yourself a couple of minutes extra time here and there if such activities are involved. Again I would like to remind you that the figures given here are just random figures. The figures may vary from person to person.

At the same time I cant help wondering why a person would want to shower for than 10 minutes!

If you work backwards like this, you can get a very accurate idea of how long you will need for something. Then how can you possibly go wrong?

Some tips on making meetings less time wasters.

Meetings have a very bad reputation of being time wasters. How many of us have had to sit through longs hours of meetings and had to listen to people who ramble on and on about issues which I fact need probably five or ten minutes to be decided.

As a result, meetings are seldom looked forward to. I thought it might be useful to you to include some tips on how to make your meetings more time effective. The fact is that meetings are not really all that bad and if meetings are well planned they can prove to be the best way to brief a group of people on matters like policies, progress, and points of action.

Meetings, in which brain storming sessions take place, bring out the best ideas from people on how to solve issues.

So here are 9 tips on time saving for meetings:

1. The participants should be aware of the subject matter of the meeting. Instead of just announcing that a meeting is to be held, it would be a good idea to inform the participants as to what why the meeting is being called and what are the matters that are going to be discussed in the meeting.

2. Try to get the members seated in time, if one or two members are going to be late and everyone else has to wait for them, that is going to upset the pace of the meeting.

3. Try to provide all the members with the necessary papers and equipment for the discussion. Instead of passing round one paper for every one to see, try and make copies, the extra cost is worth the time.

4. Interruptions should be avoided as much as possible, but the members must feel free to air their views once a person has finished speaking.

5. Care must be taken to avoid eating around the bush and digressions. The presiding person must not hesitate to point out if a person is digressing too much. The members too must be cautioned to stick to the point as much s possible.

6. The members of course must display the high degree and patience expected from professionals.

7. A person must give a summary at the end of the meeting, so that the members leave with the knowledge that something was accomplished and it was not just a meaningless discussion.

8. Cell phones of course must be switched of and external calls on land phones mast be deferred.

9. Refreshments if required must be laid on the table prior to the beginning of the discussion and not served in between. If it is a very long discussion and hot beverages like tea and coffee need to be served, take a break it saves more time.