The eye of time watching over us

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Multicultural
MANAGING TIME
The eye of time watching over us  
Diamond/Ruby brooch by Salvador Dali  
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• As a result of taking this tutorial, you will
  appreciate
• that we each experience and relate to time
  differently
• that different things motivate each one of us
• that these differences can give us different
  attitudes towards schedules and deadlines
• that we need strategies to help us take these
  different attitudes towards time into account
  when we work with people from different cultures
• This is a click and read tutorial, but you may
  want to keep a pen and paper handy. It will take
  you about 15-20 minutes.
•  

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How many words can you think of for what TIME
does? What are the words in your mother
tongue for TIME? How do they differ from the
words in English?
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In English, time can 'fly', 'pass', 'flow'
'stand still', while we 'make', 'create', 'keep',
juggle, 'have', 'spend', 'waste', 'save',
'fill', and 'manage' it. In Hindi for
instance, Kal is used both for yesterday and
tomorrow. But at least we are all agreed on how
we measure it. Aren't we?
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Well...Maybe   The first day of the new
'millennium', 1st January 2000 was also
depending on whether you were on the
Gregorian, Japanese, Korean Chinese,
Indian-saka. Hegira-Islamic, Coptic, or Hebrew
calendars Traditionally in China and other
cultures, each month can have differing numbers
of days each year and the number of hours, or the
length of each hour in a day, depends on the
ever-changing number of hours of sunlight.

• January 1st, 2660
• January 1st, 4333
• February 5th, 4697
• March 21st, 1922

• April 5th, 1421
• September 11th 1717
• September 29th, 5761 A.M.

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• How you 'spend' or 'waste' your time, will
  largely depend on how you relate your priority
  activities to your personal perception of time.
  We each experience time differently.
• 2) The current concept of 'Time management'
  assumes that we make choices about what we do,
  and when we do them, in measurable periods of
  years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and
  seconds.
• 3) Time management also assumes that you want
  to fulfill your personal values, needs and goals.
  But making the most of my time' means different
  things to different people.

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1. Our different experiences of time
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For you, is time like
A linear arrow of definable units, stretching
into the future?
Is time like an arrow that you can bend to your
will, by slotting your activities in order? Is
your aim to do more, more efficiently, in less
time and this leads to a better, more satisfying
future?
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Or is time like an infinite, circular,
multi-dimensional movement? A set of rhythms,
within which the quality of your being,
inter-relationships with others and the
procedures and steps in how you do things, is
more important than the exact amount of time it
takes?  
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See which side to you tend towards in the next
table?
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2. Being aware of our different priorities
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If you are going to work well with others, you
need to be able to articulate your own goals and
priorities too.
Imagine filling up a large vase with water - Then
fill it with some sand - Then with some gravel
- Then, lastly, a few big rocks
By this time, most of the water will be on the
floor. And your time will be wasted
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Now take the empty vase and first put in your
few large rocks, then the gravel, then the
sand, then the water..... it can all fit in
quite nicely. -- try it! ? The rocks are what
inspire you and make you feel good. They are the
important things that feed your 'fire within.
Life creates lots of gravel and sand that you
also need to deal with, sometimes urgently.
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Have you identified your REAL priorities? Have
you explored the urgent and/or important matrix?
'Life is what happens while you are busy making
other plans' - John Lennon
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Is that revealing? Quadrant 2 is the key to
'living, loving, learning' and fulfilling you
inner being. The other activities in Quadrants
1, 3 and lastly 4, should align and follow after
you have made sure your days and weeks include
activities that support your Quadrant 2
priorities. Otherwise you may get
disheartened and lose motivation.
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Quadrant 2 The rocks is also where people hold
their deepest personal and cultural beliefs and
values. These values deeply influence our very
different intellectual and emotional approaches
to how we spend our time and how much we
honor or feel pressured by the clock.  
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Having clarified your own priorities, most Time
Management courses now suggest creating activity
sheets that show how youll meet your primary
goals in life, and guide your plans for
responding to the different roles you play, as
well as how youll get things done. They also
suggest ways to be more disciplined with how you
respond to and structure information and
communications, i.e., only handling paper and
emails once, knowing how to say NO. These can
be very helpful in clearing your desk and inbox
and keeping out of quadrants 3 and 4.
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And..maybe by managing our own work processes
better, we may have more time for each other?
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3. Developing strategies for working with TIME
differences
Multicultural
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What kind of thoughts have you had about others,
when their priorities are different from yours?
  Wow, he gets so much done and is so well
organized, I wish I could be like him,... but is
he creative?   All she cares about is her
work. She is so ambitious that she never greets
me properly in the morning, just goes straight
into the task, as if I am not a real person.
  Are these people serious? I came to talk
about science, not about my kids and where I went
to college. Perhaps they dont really want to be
part of this team.   Our perceptions of
difference can make us laugh, chuckle, grimace,
fume, get annoyed, learn, become aware of
ourselves and even open up.
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Time is so deeply integrated into our bodies,
minds and lives, that changing our own personal
experience and use of time can only be done with
'presence of mind.  
Mindfulness in any one moment, means attending
to one's internal assumptions, thoughts and
emotions while simultaneously attuning to someone
else's. It puts us in a stage of readiness to
interact with people different from ourselves.
Its success can be judged by the
appropriateness, effectiveness and satisfaction
that results.
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• SO YOU CAN
• make sure you know your own priorities. Get
  creative and write down what you really want out
  of life and set your long term goals.
• schedule your planned activities in the four
  quadrants and make sure your monthly and weekly
  calendars include what feeds your fire within.
• become aware of how you respond when you
  encounter people with differing priorities.
• think about the tactics that you will use to
  work effectively with others.

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• What are you going to do when...
• The boss comes running in and asks you to bring
  forward the deadline of an internal
  organizational review, because the Chair of the
  Board is now two days ahead of schedule. You are
  already fully booked to work with your team to
  complete a major donor proposal due tomorrow
• When the meeting starts on time. without you
• A fuel crisis is making petrol expensive and very
  hard to get. You need to reach a key donor
  meeting scheduled for 2 pm to 2.30 pm. The driver
  asks if you could wait ten minutes so that he can
  also take your colleague's personal assistant to
  town on the way. This would make you 20 minutes
  late
•  

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• When you go to Mexico to negotiate with a major
  partner, he comes 30 minutes late, focuses on
  long social 'chit chat' before telling you that
  he cannot meet the deadline set by your boss. He
  needs to involve all the local partners in the
  decision and that will take extra three weeks.
  Your deadline is two days away

• When you are told that you cannot possibly talk
  business on an empty stomach in China, three
  hours before your plane is due to leave

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So..
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We hope you will

• have some humorous self-critical awareness
  about your own expectations.
• Be aware your own stereotypes about others and
  remain still non-judgmental, realising you could
  well be missing the underlying truth or the truth
  of that particular individual.
• build in some slack next time, when you are in
  high-context cultures that put high value on
  getting to know you, establishing rapport or on
  using deeply consultative processes.
• get there on time in low context, task driven
  environments.

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• appreciate that the others can have different,
  equally valid priorities and gently enquire what
  they might be.
• carefully acknowledge others priorities, while
  respectfully sharing your own needs in the
  situation.
• actively strategize, negotiate and be flexible
  to see if both sets of needs can be met at the
  same time.
• respectfully negotiate some ways of doing things
  that work for everyone, especially in longer term
  relationships.
• and adapt, adapt and adopt where appropriate,
  effective and satisfying in other words, Be
  Mindful.
•  

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Focus on bringing about change from the inside
out.
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And remember- When you are totally involved in
what you are doing, Giving it all your being and
attention, At one with the universe, Chances are
You are not aware of the TIME at all.
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MANAGING TIME
Multicultural

• Key learning points
• become aware of your deep assumptions about how
  time works in your life.
• know what feeds your fire within.
• make sure you are climbing these priority rocks
  every day, along with all the other more urgent
  gravel and sand.
• appreciate that others have different priorities
  and use their time differently.
• acknowledge and respectfully negotiate your
  needs with others.
• use presence of mind and humorous self awareness
  to adapt to different contexts and uses of time.

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Acknowledgements

• Sue Canney Davison, for the designing the
  tutorial.
• Steven Covey, A Roger Merrill and Rebecca
  Merrills First Things First ( pocket books
  1994) for bringing together the urgent/important
  quadrant and the rocks and water story under one
  cover, and for emphasizing the importance of
  self-fulfillment in time management.
• Jean-Claude Usinier, HEC Lausanne for all his
  in-depth academic work on time styles in
  different cultures and for sharing it so openly.
  
• Joyce Osland and Allan Bird for their writings on
  mindful communication.
• To all those who post such interesting material
  on calendars and time on the internet. Some of
  which is linked in the Tutorials section of the
  e-conf Cybrary
• Salvador Dali for creating such exquisite over
  the top jewelry with a message.
• www.dreamstime.org, for having such a wide
  variety of cheap downloadable stock photos.
• Sue Canney Davison, for the designing the
  tutorial.