More and more I’ve been noticing that people like to waste my time. Well, I say “my time,” but it’s not just limited to me—and I wouldn’t be arrogant enough to think that it was. I know just about everyone leads an incredibly busy life, and I hardly think that anyone has time they’d like to spend waiting for people when they can be doing other things. But still, people have their time wasted almost every day.
In truth, there are very few people who respect the fact that other people have lives and things to do. I count myself among the guilty at times; I’ve been late to some of my classes or group meetings and have forgotten to give important information to people in a timely fashion.
It’s almost impossible not to waste people’s time on occasion. Sometimes there’s a big family emergency or some mystery project suddenly decides that it needs to be due tomorrow. It would be insane to demand that everyone stop living their own lives so they could make sure that they were respecting everyone else’s schedule.
But still, it would be nice if people were a little more considerate. Send an e-mail if you are going to be late to a meeting. Always aim to get to class a few minutes early—your professors do have things that they’d like to teach you, after all. Try to have as much information as possible ready to give people when they need it, and make sure it’s correct. More importantly, if you don’t know, say so. If you say you’ll get something done at a certain time, do everything in your power to do it.
I think the most important point, though, is that if you have wasted someone’s time, you apologize to them. It’s not necessary to rattle down a big long list of excuses that only trivialize the fact that someone had to wait for you. A simple “I’m sorry” will suffice in most circumstances.
It’s either that or invent a way to “bank” time.
