Chapter 7: Time Matters

Overview

[T]ravelers from abroad have invariably recorded and still record today the same impression : Why this American impatience? Where was and is the fire? What is the deadline each American is trying to beat?
” Luigi Barzini, The Europeans

One of the first things most non-Americans notice about Americans is that they never seem to have enough time and are always in a hurry. As the saying goes, They want everything yesterday . No matter what they are doing, a certain urgency pervades the behavior of Americans, both on and off the job. The American obsession with time is not limited to the business sector, one observer has noted. They do everything in a hurry, even things they enjoy. Writer Calvin Trillin has noted that when traveling, Americans ˜drive long distances as if they were being chased (Engel 1997, 58).

Take note of some of the chapter titles in a book called Time Tactics of Very Successful People (Griessman 1994):

• The Myth of Free Time

• Find Hidden Time

• Become a Speed Learner

• Learn to Focus

• Make the Most of Downtime and In-Between Time

• Learn to Recognize and Avoid Time Thieves

• Enlist Others to Save You Time

• Master the Art of Interrupting

Are you feeling anxious yet? Good. You re supposed to.

While several factors come together to form the American attitude toward time, surely one of the greatest influences is the achievement ethos described earlier. Given the great emphasis on achieving in American culture and the inextricable link between achieving and/or making money and time, it s no wonder time is such a precious commodity. From the American perspective, only two things can truly limit achievement ” time and effort ” and while people have a certain amount of control over how much effort they make, they have none over how much time they have. If they are in a hurry, it is primarily to cram more effort ” hence more achievement ” into an amount of time that is distressingly finite. As might be expected of a people who have learned to control and dominate so much else, the inability to conquer time is especially galling to Americans, and they re working very hard on the problem, with legions of scientists vigorously probing the secrets of aging.

Another reason Americans may feel so stressed about time is that in at least one sense they actually have less of it than people in some other cultures. The day isn t any longer in these other places than it is in the United States, but it can seem to be because the inhabitants of these countries don t have to divide their time among as many people as Americans do. I have briefly discussed universalist and particularist cultures in chapter 4. Particularists (who tend also to be collectivists) divide the world between ingroup and outgroup. Toward the members of their ingroup ” immediate family, extended family, and close, lifelong friends ” individuals owe complete allegiance and are bound by a series of responsibilities and obligations, which are mutual and reciprocated. Toward their outgroup ” the rest of humanity ” particularists recognize no obligations or responsibilities (they have their own ingroup to look after them). In particularist cultures, only people from one s in- group have a claim on one s time, and while that claim can be considerable and even onerous on occasion, they are obliged only to divide their time among a finite number of individuals. Indeed, in particularist cultures, such as many of the countries in the Middle East and Latin America, it is very difficult to get an audience with someone unless you are from that person s ingroup, or more commonly, can at least claim an indirect link, such as being a friend of an ingroup member. In these cultures, not surprisingly, almost everything is done through connections.

Universalists (who also tend to be more individualist) typically don t even use the ingroup/outgroup vocabulary. While they make distinctions between family, close friends, acquaintances , and strangers, recognizing different degrees of closeness and responsibility, there is no such thing as an outgroup, that great mass of humanity toward whom one has no ties of any kind. To put it another way, universalists, such as Americans, divide the world into people toward whom they have specific and binding obligations and those toward whom they have general and loose obligations. But there isn t anyone toward whom they have no obligations. In universalist societies , while some people may have a greater claim on one s time than others, everyone has at least a potential claim, and that can make the day go by very fast. It also explains why the people from more particularist cultures sometimes find Americans impatient, unrealistic (about how long things can take), reckless (doing things too quickly), and brusque (dispensing with pleasantries to get down to business ).

Meanwhile, until they learn how to beat or at least make more time, Americans work very hard at the next best thing ” saving time ” which is to say, doing more in the same amount of time. One way to accomplish this, of course, is simply to do everything faster, especially activities such as eating or shopping, which don t count as an actual accomplishment; hence the popularity of fast-food and drive-thrus of every description (including, in Las Vegas, drive-thru weddings). Another way to make more time is to do more than one thing at once, such as talking on the phone, dictating memos, or eating breakfast in one s car (it has been estimated that 25 percent of Americans do so), writing e- mails on the commuter train, or engaging in the ubiquitous breakfast meeting and working lunch .