A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog about respecting time. (If you missed it, you can read it here.) Over the course of several subsequent conversations about this topic, a reader posed an interesting question to me: Is it possible to have too much respect for time?
The short—yet complicated—answer is…Yes.
I am the type of person who has a tendency to bend over to tie my shoe and think What else can I do while I’m down here? Although thinking like this may seem to lend itself to ultra-efficiency and the ability to maximize my time, it more often than not causes me to actually become rather inefficient and waste time.
As modern humans, we have become programmed to fill the static gaps in our lives. We feel a need to be constantly engaged in activity. Smart phones have certainly contributed to this practice. If we are standing in line at the grocery store, we pull out our phones and check Facebook. If we are in the hallway waiting for our next class or appointment to start, we pull out our phones and check the latest headlines.
We try to fill the gaps.
A similar scenario often plays out in my home that we call circling. It goes something like this:
I’ll be working in my home office and my wife will duck her head in and say, “Are you ready to start dinner?”
I respond, “Sure, let me finish typing this last email and I’ll be right there.”
As I continue to type, she doesn’t want to “waste” any time, so she starts to fold laundry.
I finish typing only to see her folding laundry, so I start picking up our kids’ toys.
She finishes folding laundry and now sees me picking up toys. So she starts to compose a grocery list.
I finish picking up toys and discover her holding a notebook, busy making what appears to be an important list. I don’t want to interrupt, so I go back to my computer and start working on something else.
This cycle continues until one of us eventually yells at the other, “Stop circling!”
Of course by that time, we are now both so hungry that we no longer have the desire to make dinner, so we end up going out for pizza.
Circling is the art of disrespecting time.
Our attempts to not experience any “dead air” caused us to become inept in the management of our time.
In the previous article, I also talked about Lombardi Time (*If you’re 10 minutes early, you’re 5 minutes late.) Taking this concept to extremes can lead to the same dangers as circling.
As you continue to arrive early, you run the risk of inevitably wondering what else you could be doing with that time. Your obsession takes over. Pretty soon you rationalize that it would be better to try and accomplish some other task than to arrive so early and just be waiting. You begin to see arriving early as wasted time, and it can develop into a very slippery slope.
Ultimately, Lombardi Time isn’t about being early and circling isn’t about multi-tasking. And neither of them are about efficiency. They are about prioritizing.
Being fully engaged with your top priorities is a way of sharing your most valuable entity—time—with those you value the most.
It goes far beyond the idea of stopping to smell the roses. That concept is more about your own feelings towards time. Prioritizing is about sharing your undivided time with others.
The ability to successfully do so is one of the things that makes an individual a good teammate.
This morning, I saw a man pushing a stroller with a small child, while walking his dog. He was fixated on the screen of an iPad that was attached to the top of the stroller. The child was holding an iPad too, and was equally fixated on its screen.
The woman standing next to me looked at them and commented, “Isn’t that a sign of the times?”
I thought to myself, “No that’s a sign of disrespecting time.” His attempt to multitask was causing him to miss out on a special moment that his child will never get back. One day, they’ll both wish they could.
As always, remember: Good teammates care. Good teammates share. Good teammates listen. Go be a good teammate.
