Keeping time

What time is it?

Ever heard of the idioms 'time waits for no man' and 'there's no need for hurry in Africa'? Well, I subscribe to the former. 

From my observations, the majority of people, especially here in the beautiful Pearl of Africa, subscribe to the latter, which is quite unfortunate! Irrespective of the occasion (conference proceedings, workshops, meetings, wedding ceremonies or receptions, etc) we tend to turn up late for whatever reason. Amazingly this applies to the organizers as well as the participants. What surprises me is that there is always an excuse! "The traffic jam was too heavy", "I was held up at the office/at home", and my favorite - "this is Africa - it is our nature to be late". These excuses soon become attitudes, which in turn become the norm, and hence an acceptable pattern! However legitimate an excuse is, part of keeping and managing time is to plan in advance for the unforeseen circumstance should they arise. This could be by way of factoring in additional time, say, by setting off early for an appointment.

I attended a workshop not long ago. The workshop's starting time was stated as 8:00 a.m. I arrived on time as usual only to find the venue empty - absolutely no soul in there! I chose a seat, sat down, and turned on my portable electronic device and proceeded to do my own things. Another participant joined me a few minutes later and together, we lamented about the annoying lack of time-keeping culture that exists in our midst. A short while later one of the organizers showed up and to our dismay he didn't know where his colleagues were. Lord Have Mercy! Then he left in search of them. Anyway, long story short... the workshop began an hour and a half late - without apologies of course from neither the organizers nor late participants!

I had ample time on my hands to take in the premises that hosted the workshop.

Many of us (anyway those that I know) go through our day in a planned way. Granted, some unplanned occurrences or activities may permeate our so carefully planned day thereby throwing our schedules off, but I'd say to a large extent that is uncommon. The bottom line is: time is of precious and of the essence, particularly to some of us, and therefore should be treated so!

Part of the garden.

The downside of not keeping time (I must say that I'm not aware of any upside of not keeping time) is that starting an activity/event late has a negative impact on the rest of the day's scheduled activities/events as it will push those activities/events further back by an equal amount of time wasted. If one's livelihood depends on meeting tight deadlines, the odds are that they will be swamped at the end of the day, with the likelihood of their scheduled activities "spilling-over" to the next day. This is bound to cause anxiety and work-related stress!

If we don't keep time, time will surely leave us behind!