To any appointment, I am chronically early. I simply have to be on time. Why? Because it shows respect. I am respecting the fact that the other person’s time is just as valuable as my time. It doesn’t matter if the appointment is with a girl friend to see a movie or the president of a college I am trying to gain business with, I will be early. And by a random chance of awful misfortune I am running behind then I will always call to inform the party that I am meeting that I will be late, again out of respect.
On the flip side, I get extremely frustrated if the same respect is not shown for me. The problem is that being late is often not seen as being disrespectful therefore it is commonly expected that people can be late.
Another time issue that I concern myself with is response time. I know we live in a busy, fast pace world however I am a firm believer that phone calls and emails should be returned within 24 hours of receiving the information. Even if the only response you currently have to offer is that you will have to get back to whoever it is on a later date. By doing this, the sender gets acknowledgement in turn shows respect for them. In most cases it takes a matter of oh you know, 30 seconds to respond, but these 30 seconds of your precious time could help ease the mind of someone who might worry for days, simply by letting them know that you are in fact working on getting an answer.
If you have too many avenues for communication open for people to send you questions or information, consolidate. Constantly being on top of five different email address, facebook, linkedin, twitter and expecting yourself to keep up is funny to say the least. Knowing your limits is a huge part of time management.
I know that creating a precedent for myself is one thing, but thinking that others will follow suit is another, unfortunately. My hope is that by writing this blog others will to see the value in respecting other’s time as much as their own! (End Rant)
From the perspective of someone with ten years of success as the President of an up to $200M group of manufacturing and services companies on response time:
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