African Time Syndrome

Lead image

Hi everyone. It's the first day of the week again. Usually, people don't usually come to the understanding that a new week has already started until Monday morning.

Basically, a new week begins on Sunday.

Hence, the need to begin the preparation of a new week should be on Sunday and not on Monday.

This takes me to the need to maximise time. Personally, I used to think that it was not important to keep to time until I met a boss who is time conscious. You dare not waste his time. He places priority on timing. And as a matter of importance, he ensures that any meeting fixed by him does not go beyond two hours.

In life, time is very important. There is time allocated to everything. We need to make use of time judiciously. Anytime we spend well or waste cannot be regained. This is why we should stick with obedience to time.

However, people have talked about what is know as *African Time.* This timing method is usually accompanied by lateness to the event or closing later than scheduled.

African Time Is Wastage

African time as it appears does not necessarily mean time by Africans. Due to leadership failure to keep to time, people have become used to adding some minutes or hours to heed to an invitation.

Some years ago, a town hall meeting was fixed in the United Kingdom by the Nigerian diaspora. The people were to be addressed by a serving cabinet minister from Nigeria.

Unfortunately, the people waited for several hours but the minister was nowhere around and no message came from his end to know what had kept him back.

The once filled hall became almost empty. Perhaps, the people over there were not used to lateness or not keeping to time. You know, this issue of time wasting may be strange to people of other cultures. Hence, the people began to leave one after the other.

When the meeting was scheduled, it meant to discuss the progress of the homeland of the people, Nigeria. How will a responsible government, represented by a serving minister, keep their citizens waiting for such an important meeting.

Finally, the minister arrived but the organisers of the town hall meeting went berserk. They showed a lot of disrespect for the minister and his entourage.

At first, when he arrived at the venue, the national anthem was observed. To my amazement, the people stood and said that the minister was not in the right standing to address the people he had kept waiting for a meeting of national interest.

Image source

This and many more lackadaisical attitudes have made people in different strata of life violate the importance of time. In reality, the measure of time we use judiciously is proportional to our record of success.

How To Keep To Time

Some amount of strategy would.make you keep to time. These strategies would become effective when you apply them as the rudiments for an effective change in your administration of time.

Set Reminders:

When you have an invite, you should do yourself some good by setting reminders on your mobile or via your email so that you will be reminded of such an event ahead of time.

Prepare A Night Before:

Since you are aware that you have an event or meeting to attend, you should begin to prepare to meet up with time a day before. While preparing, you should consider a lot of indices. This is to make you arrive at the venue, at least ten minutes before the event begins.

Prepare for the Worse:

Sometimes when we go out to attend an event or meeting, we shouldn't expect the best in terms of output. As much as it is good to think of the best, do not be disappointed it doesn't turn out to be as planned.

On the other hand you may think that getting to the venue may take only fifteen minutes but that may turn out to be thirty minutes. At that point of lateness, you may need to inform the organisers so that they are aware on time. That keeps your integrity and allows the participants to expect that a major key player in the programme is on the way.

Time is vital. No man who understand that time is unrecoverable would waste it unnecessarily.