TIME MATTERS

I was once invited to speak on time management at a youth event in a church in the city of Lagos. The event was scheduled to start at 9pm, so I ensured that I was there about an hour to the time. I also had another event that night, which would last through the night; it was a musical rehearsal for a concert the choir I belong to was going to host. With this in mind, I wanted to ask that I be allowed to speak first so that I leave for the rehearsal. To my chagrin however, people began to arrive for the event at about 10pm. The climax was when the head pastor arrived around past 11pm, while the Praise and Worship was going on. Meanwhile another guest Speaker at the event was also there earlier than the scheduled time. I felt really bad, wondering how people could be that careless about time.

Time is a period for an event. Events are allotted time for the purpose of order and time is allotted by man. Value for time describes how important time is to people and projects people’s individual level of integrity. For instance, at the event referred above, I could not help but refer to the people’s attitude to time of the event when I was speaking, but they waited to see if I would keep to the duration given for my presentation. I ended my presentation exactly at the end of the duration and the Moderator commended that. I would have acted like a hypocrite if I had allowed my emotions to rise above reason. That experience taught me a lot about the need to place high premium on time as a value.

Most times people want to discuss time management; however, personal discipline on time begins with time consciousness. Being time conscious means placing every event within time and ensuring that such event is carried out within that time. It also means knowing that every event we are involved in is connected to other people and their own events. Time consciousness propels you to have a plan and stick to that plan. It is when there is time budget, with every event having its time slot, that one is able to manage time. Time budgeting gives an idea of the time available for an occasion, which time is then divided among the various tasks; this allotting of time to the various tasks, then helps you manage the events within the time allotted. So the sum is, time consciousness leads to time budgeting, which leads to time management.

How then do you develop time consciousness? The first step to developing time consciousness is having respect for other people’s welfare. Respect for other people’s welfare portends that you should consider others as you go about your normal businesses. It means placing other’s concern above yours, knowing that what you do would in a way affect what they do.  For example, if you have to attend to a Customer in a sales shop, you do not imagine that coming to buy something in that shop was the only thing in the customer’s itinerary that day. You should therefore attend to him when he enters the shop, without allowing anything to distract you. No one will be pleased to enter a shop and the salesperson was still busy chatting or watching television without turning to know what he needed. Respect for other people’s welfare is respect for other people’s time; it is the foundation for time consciousness.

Time consciousness is a mirage if you are not humble. Humility is about having proper estimation of yourself. It is not valuing yourself lower than you are worth; it is valuing yourself the proper way. One reason people do not respect other people’s time is because they feel that they are of higher status than those people. For instance, some politicians in our environment keep people waiting for hours at events they are expected to attend. In many cases, the people would have been asked to be seated before the scheduled time, presuming that ones the politician arrives the event would start as scheduled. What usually happens is that it would still take many politicians in my environment another two hours to arrive. Normally events do not commence until they arrive. When they arrive, the event will then be fast-tracked so that they can speak and leave, keeping the people behind again.

Surely you have people older than the politician in that audience. You also have business executives who are equally busy people in that audience. Besides these groups of people, everyone in the audience has one thing or the other they should have been doing, which they had left to be at that event. The politician may be a guest to the event, but his position should not be a reason to treat other’s time the way he deems fit. Everyone deserves respect for their time; it is humility that teaches you to consider the other as well in handling your affairs.