Increase the value of your time

or not before they get to you.
There is no way of knowing how long you will stand in the cold or whether you will get to your destination on time.
So travellers base their time on a service that is perennially inefficient and wastes a huge amount of the finite number of minutes allocated to you each day and we tolerate it.
Compare this to more efficient transport systems in the world where you know that the 0904 bus will arrive within three minutes of four minutes past nine and gets you at your destination at the prescribed time.
In fact, if the bus starts to run ahead of schedule it will wait at the next stop till the allotted departure time so that everyone who has planned their day around the published bus programme gets on it.
Time is cheap in Zimbabwe. It is treated casually by many and not valued perhaps as much as it should be.
You visit a doctor’s office (not all doctors mind you) and you find that half a dozen people are booked for the same time as you and it is basically a first come first served basis. So you waste time waiting.
A new vehicle registration system was recently introduced (that was ultimately to be a more efficient system) but we have to queue for hours.
If the keynote speaker at a function is late everyone else has to wait for hours. If someone fails to deliver fuel to a filling station, we waste time trying to get to another one.
We tolerate tardiness and indulge in it ourselves. Running late for a meeting? Why is it that we wait till the actual time of the meeting to phone the person who has already got to the venue instead of phoning the moment we realised that we would never make it on time. This is a typical example of a general disregard for that person’s time.
Deadlines are wonderful in that they force you to ship your product. Every week I face a deadline to get this column out.
It is the same every week, it looms at the same moment and every week I have to deliver an article or not publish. It forces me to act.
The flip side of deadlines is that there is a delicate balance between giving yourself enough time to complete the task and giving yourself too much.
I guarantee you that most people wait till the last minute before a deadline to get their act into gear.
I used to lecture a group of students and at the beginning of each semester I would hand out a list of essays and their due dates, some only due eight weeks later.
Yet each term students would wait till the night before to start writing and there would be one idiot who would ask for an extension.
Eight weeks to prepare and get the job done and someone would be asking for more time yet writing the actual essay probably only takes about two hours with perhaps another four for preparation.
Time is only cheap because we make it so. Change how much you value your time and you start to view it differently.
How would you spend your time if you were to be paid a thousand dollars an hour for each productive unit of work?
Make time between meetings to allow time for travel to get there on time. At the start of a meeting set the timeframe.
You may be having a social meeting for lunch but make sure that the other person knows you have to leave in time to get back to work.
Use a calendar. If you need to stick up an annual planner with important dates on then do it.
Use the reminders in your phone. Carry around a diary. I do not care what you use but have an idea of when things are happening.
Look at deadlines and break the stages leading up to the project delivery into mini deadlines.
Call to reschedule the minute you know you cannot make a meeting on time. If you are using a prepaid line cell-phone then top up frequently so you have the airtime to make that call.
If you are on the receiving end of a late meeting engage in the 15-minute rule, wait 15 minutes and then leave.
Do not be afraid to leave a meeting if it is running overtime especially if it is unproductive.
However, be a little sensitive here, as some meetings need to be pushed through but if you have to get up and walk out, apologise politely, suggest a time to get back together and leave.
Value your time. Value other people’s. Remember, on time is late, early is on time.