Time is the enemy in the digital age. Our brains are processing information at the speed of light, we’ve got gadgets to help us remember things, machines to help us do things, therapists to help us make sense of things and all because we absolutely cannot, at any price, let one of the plates we’re constantly spinning crash to the floor, there simply isn’t the time.
Transfer this human condition into the world of work. Time is measured differently here, in pounds and pence, and there’ll be more plates to spin to prove to ourselves that we can keep up with it all, letting nothing slip, still on the ball and at the top of our game. The effect on our human relationships? Less time, less compassion, less understanding, more judgment, more snap decisions, more pigenholing.
We all do it. We all pigeonhole, only now it’s faster than ever before with fewer nuggets of detail required to formulate the judgment. Where you live, where you work, what car you drive, where you go on holiday, it all adds up in this peculiar point scoring system that we possess that enables us to put people into boxes. Time doesn’t allow us to do anything else. Well high time it did!
Time is the most precious commodity we have and too much of it is spent on ‘stuff’ that ultimately we don’t need and don’t want. If we thought of our time as the valuable resource that it is, our behaviour towards others would become more generous and we would be less quick to judge and more willing to listen.
Make time for people in all areas of your life and rather than seeing them couped up in pigeonholes, see them in terms of possibilities. People are the greatest asset in your life and also in your workplace, or they should be. Allow people to breathe in a business, make sure they are more important than processes and you won’t find a pigeonhole big enough to put them in.
