There is a different perspective about time that we usually take for granted. It is an important element in corporate life at any level as much as it is in personal life. The balance between work and life has a great impact due to this and hence the thought process is seen, as a morale requirement in today’s hectic pace of life.

“You have all the right to waste your time as it’s legitimately yours.
But you have no right to waste another person’s time.
There is certainly no legitimacy in that.” –

Given there is no author for above; as I have not seen/read it anywhere. It’s about a different perspective of measuring time from another’s perspective and not solely from one’s own.

Born to this world, you have the most precious commodity in the world that’s yours for free. TIME. You don’t pay for it. It’s yours until the day you take leave from this world, whatever that duration be. You can waste it, use it productively or otherwise. That’s all yours and no one can legitimately question you on that. Of course, if you are employed or in a service where you are paid for your time in some manner or you are obliged to do certain things due to a coercive power or social power such as parental direction, then you will have to oblige. Apart from that it’s all yours. 

The issue becomes enlarged and enraged when people take this freedom of having got the most precious commodity for free in trying to enforce it upon others. As above, apart from a position of coercive or social power that you’ve earned, there cannot be any legitimacy in wasting another person’s time. You have not earned that. That is his or hers for keeps and how the individual wants to use it is entirely up to him/her; of course, this is for adults, as for children their time is largely regulated by parents and elders a much similar status but for different social and societal reasons. 

Not keeping to times when meeting people, not starting or concluding meetings with a certain degree of precision, con-chats over the phone or otherwise when you feel like, making people wait for you for minutes or hours, not replying on time after promising, plethora of ill-timed and non-essential verbatim at different points/ occasions, and we can go on. 

As the saying goes, people generally do not value anything that comes free. In economics very correctly, it’s said there is no free lunch. The notion that time is free and that one can attach limited value to that is one of the biggest fallacies. To rake the importance of time you need to speak with someone who has just a couple of days or hours to live. They will surely tell us what a lot of things remain unaccomplished and probably several buckets of the so-called bucket list. 

You need to talk to a soldier in the battle front to know the true meaning of time because for him it’s any moment that the truth might behold on the fact that life is uncertain. 

The most important matter to understand is that time is not free. It’s an advance that you have received at the time of birth against what you are to accomplish in this world. Truly only about fifty percent of this advance can be used to further this cause. The balance fifty percent is the down payment that you must pay for this possibly seamless amount of achievement against the time advance that you’ve got. It’s paid in the form of childhood and aged life, where you spend your childhood learning how to make use of the time while when aged spend this either repenting or cherishing the achievements. Hence the theory of nothing for free holds well and truly good on time too. Therefore, we better not waste it. 

If that’s the scenario, notwithstanding your time, if one is to waste others time, isn’t it a moral misconduct. Why? You are not only wasting your advance and part of the down payment too but trying to rob the wealth of the others. We would like to term this as moral robbery of wealth. 

In today’s day and age, there are many ways of communicating which enables us to not only to save our time but to do the right thing by not being a moral robber of others wealth which by now we agree is time. For an example, there are e mails and short messages. Depending on the contents and importance of the time to receive a response we could use these. For something that’s not every urgent, do we need to call? Probably not. Remember the principle is not to waste your time and more importantly the other persons. He/she will respond at their permitted time and if time is not so critical, you are happy too. Then there are group messages that can be used as much as a meeting or a call. Why call a meeting and waste everyone’s time if that could be done over the phone? 

Keeping to appointments timely is yet another. Most walk in late without even an apology. When you have robbed another person’s wealth, in real terms you should be punished. Leave alone that here you don’t even get an apology. What’s the logic in that. The self-disciple of being morally right is more important than being right only against the written law of a country or organization. That moral law says that you are robbing another man’s potential wealth by making him/her forego one of the most precious resources due to your actions. Wealth, I do believe all agree, need not be monetary. It can be intellectual, social or otherwise. Time, one of the rarest resources that’s limited and everyone is entitled to put into best use to further the life goals be it one’s career, family, wealth or otherwise. Research reveals that it takes more than 10 years of great sacrifice, focus and dedication to make a genius to be born in any craft, be it a Picasso or Steve Jobs. That’s the economic power of time. The more you indulge in the craft the better you become, eventually realizing the true potential. That requires time for one’s own self.

Let’s take a moment to think about this before making a call, meeting, spending time doing nothing, countless hours of non-productive tasks or many productive chores. No one would grumble if one wants to sleep all day provided it doesn’t rob another’s time and doesn’t waste other resources such as not performing a given task.

Morale of the thinking is;

• time being the most if not one of the most important resources that’s limited as any other, is a gift to mankind to make the best and achieve your goals. You can use it productively or flaunt it or do nothing with it. Whatever that goal may be its your right thus far it does not interfere in stifling the productive use of time of others. That is moral robbery.
  
  
• As per Robin Sharma, renowned author and leadership mentor, research reveals that it takes 66 days to wire a person with a new habit. Here’s the challenge. Ten weeks down the line can we resolve to utilize our time better and importantly respect others time as it should be.

– By Murali Prakash –