Your Time Isn’t A Commodity

It was a weekday evening and I was in the middle of an important conversation at home. One that came up sort of uninvited, but there it was, unfolding itself across the dining table. It had to be interrupted because my better half had accepted a 19:30 Zoom meeting (and forgot to tell me). A quarter of an hour in, all I heard was silence and that is not the sound of a meeting. I found myself sending a text from the living room to check if everything was going alright (call me anxious). Turned out the other person was late by 20 minutes and the meeting was eventually postponed. In that interval, I sent a second text with these exact words: “I am really fed up with these people who live as if only their timeline matters”.

In that very moment, I knew what my August article would be about, and that the earlier conversation was well and truly unfinished but gone.

Let me ask.

Do you care about other people’s time? Do you even consider it?

You probably think you do. I know people who believe they do and who would defend that idea, whereas I would argue the opposite. We disagree because the behaviour can be subtle, even unconscious, and because recognising it depends on personal perception and willingness to be self-aware. People like the idea of being self-aware, but are they really?

There are in fact many ways someone can make you understand that their time is more important than yours.

• They’re late. They don’t give you the heads up. They don’t apologise.
• They don’t show up.
• They don’t call you back.
• They don’t acknowledge your attempts to reach out.
• They regularly get the time wrong for your meeting.
• They tend to schedule things on their terms, not yours. You twist yourself like a pretzel and compromise for a chance to have some time with them.
• They change your meeting plans at the last minute.
• They send an email or a text so badly written or expressed that you don’t understand anything.
• They don’t respond to your messages and leave you hanging.
• They keep on talking or texting even when you’ve told them you have to go.
• They leave you endless voice messages.
• They can’t seem to work out when they overstay their welcome.
• They avoid committing to meet you or communicating with you, without telling you why.
• They cut your meeting or conversation short.
• They seem permanently more busy than you and make you feel that you have to chase them.
• They play hard to get; you feel lucky when you can pin them down in whichever way.
• When you finally do, they give you scraps and their attention is thin.
• When it comes to your relationship, whatever kind it is, they make little effort.
• They don’t thank you for your time.
• When they’re with you, it’s consistently more about them and they take more than they give.

In essence, consciously or not, and for whatever reasons, they deprioritise you and you’re not dumb enough to not notice it, but you might be choosing not to admit it to yourself.

Of course some people are simply terrible at managing time no matter how hard they try, but realistically we all have the same amount every day and we are responsible for what we do with it. Whether we’re naturally good at it or not.

Such an unpopular opinion, isn’t it? With it comes rushing all your special circumstances and excuses along with the rationale and arguments proving that it ain’t you. Or maybe we don’t understand, we lack empathy for your mental load, which is obviously bigger and heavier than people realise.

There is something I loathe on my iPhone: when it shows me my screen time and the breakdown by app. It makes me cringe every single time. The point being, the moment you have time for videos, series, movies, social media, gaming, online shopping, and whatnot, you have time for someone else who might be waiting for you to show up. It’s true for all of us.

I know I wrote about it before, but this is so essential, so I’ll say it again: Time is finite. By its very nature, it’s precious. We can’t repeat it enough and whether you’ve already learned this the hard and hurtful way or not, when you keep this in mind you start behaving differently. As if it’s valuable.

But right now, people are treating others and others’ time like it is a commodity. Witnessing it day in, day out, online and off, doesn’t make it acceptable. In fact, you have no right to waste or steal people’s time. In a perfect world, no one should let you do that to them.

Unfortunately, we do let people do that to us. I see it all the time.

This is an opening for a second unpopular view. If you don’t want to spend time with someone, respect yourself and respect them enough to be sincere, own it and do not pretend. Energetically you won’t be able to lie anyway. Polite attendance isn’t respecting someone’s time or yours.

Which brings me to a question that you may want to ask yourself or someone else: How do you know someone isn’t wasting or stealing your time? Asked in reverse: How do you know your time is valued by the other person?

I sincerely suggest you sit with it, even maybe with someone else or a group of people where you all get to speak your answers and reflect on each other’s responses. Especially with those you tend to spend more time with.

Much later, on the evening of the unnecessarily interrupted conversation, I asked my husband those two questions and not only did it open the door further to this article, it also fuelled an ongoing reflection of mine regarding what it means to us as human beings to feel like our time is respected:

• It’s inseparable from feeling valued as a person — it’s in fact not just about time.
• In other words, when someone gives us time and attention — they value us.
• The quality of the engagement.
• The quality of the presence.
• The quality of the listening.
• The perceived intent — the care, the reciprocity — they’re not in this exchange just for them, self-serving.
• The perceived trust. Trust is given to someone we value, and therefore we tend to feel valued as people when someone entrusts us with something.
• Their awareness is turned outwards, towards us, not just inwards on their own navel-gazing.
• The perceived respect and generosity.
• The thoughtfulness of what’s being said, shared or written.
• The overall feeling within.

Now what?

Of course there is a part of me which would love to send you off with a prescription to go and inspect your own relationship with time and your relationships with others through the lens of time. But since we all value free will, I’ll just hope this article hasn’t wasted your time and that you get something out of it.

Though my tone is admittedly often edgy and pointed, I actually mean this. I don’t take people’s time for granted. I take a lot of my own time to write articles and I don’t do it lightly. And it’s always been on my mind that anyone who reads what I write will part with a few minutes of their day to do so. I value and respect that.

Therefore, I care deeply about what I publish, even when it’s written with a sharper edge. In my early days of writing on Substack, I would always end my posts with “thank you for reading” as I am fully aware of how everyone is fighting for a piece of our time and attention. On that note and as a final illustration, I recently also got fed up after feeling I wasted three hours of my life watching Christopher Nolan’s latest film, which you’re free to read about here.

Thank you for your time.

Main – Image by Michael Cheval