Don’t waste people’s time

Time is a precious commodity. If traded on the commodities market, its value would be incalculable. But alas, time cannot be bought or sold. And while the length of our lives varies and is unpredictable, the number of hours we have in each day is fixed.

Many books have been written on how to maximize your time. Read them and learn. You are the steward of your own time.

This essay focuses on the negative influence that we can have on other people’s time. In other words, if you want to waste your own time, that’s up to you, but don’t waste other people’s time. Likewise, I don’t want to waste your time.

So let’s agree…

Be punctual.
If you have an appointment with someone at 1:00 p.m. and you arrive at 1:05, you have squandered five minutes of her time. To be on time you must be early; it’s nearly impossible to be precisely on time – time is moving too fast. For instance, if a meeting starts at 1:00 you can’t walk in 1:00 – that occurs in a milli-second and then becomes the past. You must arrive before 1:00.

Be organized.
When you are responsible for a project that involves other people, be organized or you’ll waste their time. Predetermine what needs to be accomplished and the quickest way to do it.

Plan ahead.
Plans exist in the future. The past is history, the present is reality. Always have a plan for what the future can look like. Spontaneity can, at times, be useful, but not as a way of life. Sound planning will undergird effectiveness and efficiency.

Be decisive.
Often, it is wise to postpone a decision until it must be made – careful contemplation and monitoring changing variables are good reasons to delay a decision. But when a decision needs to be made, do so. And don’t overthink minor decisions; that just gums up progress.

Be quick, not slow.
By and large, slow is not good. Jack Welch, former CEO of GE would ask his protégés, “Who wants to be slow?” It was a rhetorical question; I hope no one raised his hand.
While it’s good to be thorough, careful, wise, circumspect, cautious, and deliberate – don’t be slow. Maintain a quick pace.

Monitor conversations and keep them on track.
When you and I are talking to each other, let’s pay attention to what we’re talking about and use our time wisely. For instance, don’t spend time talking about irrelevant topics and don’t even spend too much time talking about a relevant one.

A man (whom I did not know) once approached me and said, “Don, I know you lived in Austin, Texas, for a few years. Did you know a man named Ted Wallenburg?” I replied that I didn’t, but he spent the next four minutes telling me all about Ted, a man who had no connection to our lives. Why did he do that?
Also, don’t repeat yourself. When you and I are conversing, I will listen carefully and comprehend what you’re saying. I get it. So you don’t need to say it again. If I don’t understand, I’ll ask for clarification. Circular dialogue (getting caught in a verbal cul de sac) is a waste of time.
And let’s carefully consider the topics we want to discuss and allocate our time wisely. If we have only 20 minutes to converse, let’s try to address as many topics as possible.

Anticipate
When I was 13 years old, we lived next door to an engineer whose hobby was rebuilding Volkswagen engines. One summer I served as his apprentice, so on warm summer evenings we rebuilt engines in his garage.
One of the first lessons he taught me was, “Don, try to anticipate what needs to happen next and act accordingly – hand me the right tool, fetch the next part to be installed – always be thinking two or three steps ahead in the process.”
That’s a great lesson to learn because it saves time.
Understand what can happen simultaneously and what must happen sequentially, and act accordingly.

Pay attention.
President Reagan was buried on June 11, 2004. It was a dreary, rainy day. Nancy Reagan and her family stood in the drizzling rain to watch the casket being taken from the Capitol Rotunda to the National Cathedral. A young military escort held an umbrella over Mrs. Reagan to shield her from the elements. In a moment of mental lapse, the young man allowed the umbrella to drift off to the side, exposing Nancy to the rain. She reached up, grabbed the man’s hand, and yanked the umbrella back into place.

Ouch. I can just imagine what the young man’s commanding officer might have said to him after the funeral: “Son, your only job today was to hold an umbrella over Mrs. Reagan. That’s not a difficult assignment. Millions of people were watching. What were you thinking?”

A Boy Scouts leader used to tell his boys, “If you are early, you are on time. If you are on time, you are late. If you are late you owe everyone ice cream.”

I like that. Let’s not waste each other’s time.

Attend a virtual information meeting about the Greek Isles cruise in September

For the past 12 years I’ve led groups of friends on annual, international trips. We’ve been to Paris, London, Europe, the Mediterranean, Baltic States, Russia, Israel, Peru, and North Africa. We’ve never had a malfunction or bad experience; just memorable, life-enhancing moments.

Please join me this fall 2022, on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the cradle of Western civilization. We’ll visit Rome,  Athens,  Istanbul, Ephesus, three Greek Isles and Naples, Italy. 

This month, I’m hosting two virtual information meetings on Zoom.

Thursday, March 17 at 6:00 p.m.
Thursday, March 24 at 6:00 p.m.

During the meeting, we’ll discuss the itinerary and logistics and I’ll answer all your questions.

If you want to participate, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll send you an invitation. Or call me at 214.783.4414.

Here’s a brochure about the trip. Travel with Friends – 2022-Brochure

We need a venue in which we can share our developing thoughts without worrying about being judged or criticized

Bull session: an informal discursive group discussion; a conversation among a small group of people

I long for a setting in which friends can explore half-baked thoughts, doubts, and questions with no fear of being judged, betrayed, or retaliated against. A conversation that is process-driven rather than end-directed; the aim isn’t to convince anyone to change their view or to reach a consensus, but simply to hear and value the range of perspectives.

Harry Frankfurt (professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University) calls this type of conversation a bull session. He writes:

“The characteristic topics of a bull session have to do with very personal and emotion-laden aspects of life—for instance, religion, politics, or sex. People are generally reluctant to speak altogether openly about these topics if they expect that they might be taken too seriously. What tends to go on in a bull session is that the participants try out various thoughts and attitudes in order to see how it feels to hear themselves saying such things and in order to discover how others respond, without its being assumed that they are committed to what they say: it is understood by everyone in a bull session that the statements people make do not necessarily reveal what they really believe or how they really feel. The main point is to make possible a high level of candor and an experimental or adventuresome approach to the subjects under discussion.

“Each of the contributors to a bull session relies, in other words, upon a general recognition that what he expresses or says is not to be understood as being what he means wholeheartedly or believes unequivocally to be true. The purpose of the conversation is not to communicate beliefs. Accordingly, the usual assumptions about the connection between what people say and what they believe are suspended” (On Bullshit, pages 36-37).

Anticipating an experience and striving to make it happen is often more satisfying than the actual experience

In the film Christopher Robin, Christopher asks Pooh, “What do you like doing best in the world, Pooh?”

“‘Well, said Pooh, what I like best’—and then he had to stop and think. Because although eating honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.” 

Every December, my family and I fly to London and sail back to the States on the Queen Mary 2. It is a wonderful family tradition. Last year (2021), Covid made the trip very challenging. Several family members needed new passports but the passport office was so backed up we had to wait until the day before the trip to walk into a passport office and hopefully walk out with renewed passports. We got the passports five hours before our plane left. We all needed a negative Covid to board the plane, another negative test within 48 hours of arriving in London, another before we boarded the ship and another before disembarking in New York City. There were many hurdles that could have hijacked the trip. 

Fortunately, all went well and all five of us boarded the ship. When we had dinner together the first night, there was a collective euphoria about having made it. What we felt was what Pooh was trying to describe: Sometimes anticipating an event and striving to make it happen has its own reward. 

Sometimes the journey is as satisfying as reaching the destination and often, a difficult journey makes the arrival even more rewarding.