Hold on a minute! Is there a better way to view time, asks Charles Assisi

It wasn’t until I joined the workforce that I began to adhere to the other school of thought. As monetary value was assigned to my hours and workdays, time became the unit by which my productivity was measured. The higher up the ladder I went, the more monetary value each minute gained. The minutes began to feel more precious to me too, and I began to guard them more fiercely.

It can be a particularly confusing thing to straddle these two worlds, because in their own way, each school of thought makes sense. And yet, they remain perpetually at odds with each other. In grappling to balance the two, I have ended up studying them rather deeply.

Where does the idea of time as a “resource” come from? The West, driven most recently, of course, by the industrial revolution. In the Western world, time is regimented with an almost military precision. Meetings start exactly when scheduled. Tardiness is seen as a sign of disrespect or inefficiency.

When I worked with a media company in Munich, I walked into a meeting five minutes late once and felt like I’d committed a misdemeanour.

This world is predictable and seamless. It can be a pleasure to immerse oneself in. But there is less room in it for the personal element, the unplanned encounter. A conversation with a shopkeeper will last as long as it needs to, and not as long as the two parties wish. There is little of the wandering, meandering personable-ness of such an engagement here.

The Western approach is particularly effective in a business context, where efficiency often underpins success.

In India, the flexibility in time management reflects what I have come to see as a broader philosophy of adaptability — towards people, occasions and the unexpected. Underlying it is an ever-awareness that life is unpredictable, and we aren’t really in charge of it anyway.

Straddling the two worlds, punctuality has infiltrated my system, and I am glad of this. The way I see it, high-quality output requires high-quality interactions. And these can only occur when one plucks high-quality time out of a well-organised schedule.

Can there be a middle path? I have seen it in practice, in Mediterranean countries such as Spain and Italy. When on assignment in Greece, I had colleagues with whom a conversation might segue seamlessly into a meeting, and then sometimes continue through a languid lunch. I enjoyed how this approach integrated punctuality with an appreciation for life’s slower moments.

I learnt something else from my friends there: how to deal with people who do not respect your time. When faced with a late arrival, my Mediterranean colleague would consider the context and the relationship. Was this a habit or a one-off instance? If it was a recurring issue, he would address it directly. If not, he would wait to hear the cause. The point would still be made, but more gently. And inevitably, I saw everyone fall in line.

I do believe many of us, today, complicate things, when it comes to how we regard the clock.

It can simply be about mutual respect and patience. The former is not a struggle, for me. My long years ought to have taught me the latter too, I suppose. But the patience bit, I admit, is something I am still working to perfect.

(Charles Assisi is co-founder of Founding Fuel. He can be reached on assisi@foundingfuel.com)