Time management is important. I think almost everyone knows that at some level. Thousands of books have been written about it, every year companies and educational institutions organise hundreds of training courses and information sessions for it, all of that just so people realise the value of time and learn to manage it well. After all, time is the only resource which once lost cannot be gained again. Money, reputation, knowledge all of them can come back, but time will never come back.
So I asked the university for a time and after some time I receive a reply - After 2:30 pm. Okay, I asked for a specific time but got a range instead. Fine. At least I know it won't happen in the first half of the day. So I went to work and shared with my team that I will have to go give my seminar sometime after 2:30 pm so for 50-60 minutes I will be unavailable. They were all really cool about it. Cool. It's 2:00pm next day and I'm thinking I should probably get back by 2:30pm to attend the seminar. So I excuse myself and leave office to go back to my room. I reached my room, turned on my laptop, opened my presentation and waited for a meeting link to join.
Despite that, I sometimes can’t help but feel that people tend to get greedy when it comes to time management. They know time management is important but I feel their belief is that “their” time is more important than others’ time.
I’ll share an interesting story about this. Last week, I got an email from the CS Department at my university about a seminar presentation that I was required to deliver as a requirement for my master's degree. While the notification mentioned all of the details of how long our presentation should be and how should it be designed, it failed to mention a specific date and time - only mentioning that the seminar evaluation will happen between 25th and 28th of this month. Okay fine, I have a minimum date by which I should be ready - 25th of this month. So I prepared my presentation and was ready. On the 24th we received another notification that the seminar will happen tomorrow - on the 25th. That's good. The university confirmed the date. But there was a problem. I am also an intern at a company and am expected to be present in office at least 9 hours of the day (no we don't get work from home sadly :( Moreover my company doesn't allow me to bring my own laptop to work so now in order to deliver the seminar I have to return back to my room, use my personal laptop to deliver the seminar, and then come back for work. Fine, this can also be managed if I know what time I'm expected to give the seminar.
So I asked the university for a time and after some time I receive a reply - After 2:30 pm. Okay, I asked for a specific time but got a range instead. Fine. At least I know it won't happen in the first half of the day. So I went to work and shared with my team that I will have to go give my seminar sometime after 2:30 pm so for 50-60 minutes I will be unavailable. They were all really cool about it. Cool. It's 2:00pm next day and I'm thinking I should probably get back by 2:30pm to attend the seminar. So I excuse myself and leave office to go back to my room. I reached my room, turned on my laptop, opened my presentation and waited for a meeting link to join.