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turn downtime into productive time
excruciating the waiting. We’ve reacted by trying to speed up our
activity and eliminate the spaces between activities so we can
cram more of them into a day.
The Wrong Way to Do Away with Waiting
Folks who are always late never have to wait. They make every-
body else wait. That’s one solution to the problem of waiting.
In the world of academia, the amount of time students are
allegedly required to wait for their teachers is a function of the
teacher’s position on the status pole. Teaching assistants and lec-
turers get little or no leeway. The untenured assistant prof gets less
slack than the tenured associate professor colleague, and a student
walks out of a tardy full professor’s class at his or her peril unless
at least 15 minutes have elapsed.
This scale is well known to many professors but virtually
unknown to most students (who probably don’t know their teach-
er’s rank anyway).
But in most areas of life, relative status and power often dictate
how long folks will wait for one another. Another determinant,
of course, is dependency. You may not afford your plumber many
status points, but you’ll wait for him or her indefinitely as you keep
swapping an empty bucket for a full one under the leaking water
pipe. And maybe it’s love or duty or just common sense, but we’ll
also wait indefinitely for a spouse or child every time.
How long are people required to wait for you? How long are
they willing? What will they think of you while they wait?
Keeping people waiting probably isn’t really your style any-
way. Folks who seek help with time management are generally the
ones being kept late by others. You get to places on time, and you
expect others to do the same.
That’s one reason why for you waiting is inevitable.
Elsewhere we’ve suggested that you build time cushions into
your daily life. But when you allow more travel time than you
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