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Thinking GMT (Ghana
Maybe Time)? Think Again
Samuel Dowuona
Accra, April 19, Ghanadot - About a month ago, I arranged
with a commercial mini bus driver (trotro) to pick me up at
37 Military Hospital Bus Stop to Ningo, a suburb of Accra.
We agreed to meet at the bus stop at 2pm since we were to be
in Ningo at 3pm to pick up another group whom I have
contracted to perform at a funeral
there.
I explained to the driver that we needed to be on time
because if we got to Ningo later than 3pm, the spinners
would charge me more money for the extra time they played.
The driver assured me that he was more time conscious than I
was so as we say in Ghana “no problem”.
To cut a long story short, I got to the meeting point at
1.45pm and waited till 2.17pm (i.e. 17 minutes after our
supposed meeting time). At this time, I got a call from the
driver who said he just took off from his mechanic’s
workshop in Madina and was sure to get to me in 15 minutes.
At this point I was upset for the simple fact that he was
late.
I almost decided to hire another mini van but I considered
the hustle and opted to wait for him. He finally arrived at
exactly 3.29pm, i.e. 29minutes after the time we were
supposed to have been in Ningo.
When he arrived his attitude was a mixture of apology,
excuses and as if to say 1 hour 30 minutes lateness was not
enough for me to be upset. Later on when we got to Ningo and
our lateness became a topic for discussion, the driver
retorted with a pout “Oh! But one hour 30 minutes lateness
is nothing!?
Obviously he was not sorry for coming 1 hour 30 minutes late
and that his behaviour worried and still worries me. Indeed
it affected me so much that I had to give the driver a whole
lecture on time management and what the lack of it is doing
to our individual, family, community and national lives.
Indeed, this same driver had earlier on narrated his
experience with a white man in the past to me – how he was
sacked from work due to lateness. Obviously he did not learn
any lesson from that experience!
He reminded me of the Ghanaian style of poor time
management, where two people can have an appointment to meet
at a particular time, and yet in both of their minds the
meeting time is always at least 2 hours later than the time
they actually agreed to meet. Surprised? Don’t be. Isn’t
that amazing? They call it the Ghana Maybe Time (GMT), a
corruption of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
Like the driver, to many Ghanaians, great and small, one
hour 30 minutes wasted is no big deal. Oh not at all.
You would often hear the typical Ghanaian making a meeting
appointment saying something like, “let’s meet between 2 -
2.30pm, 3 - 3.30pm that way!” That is a very wide, ambiguous
and confusing time range for any serious person to plan
with. But that is how Ghanaians do it. No wonder our
attitude towards time, right from our infancy is so bad.
The discussion about poor time management on our side of the
world has taken all kinds of forms and shapes but still that
culture of good time management is far from being realized
in our country and on our continent.
As undeveloped and underdeveloped as we are, one would have
thought that time is one commodity that we don’t have enough
to waste. We can probably afford to waste all other
resources but time is the most perishable commodity in this
world and we don’t have enough of it to waste the way we do,
especially because we have some catching up to do with the
developed world.
CNN runs an advert which talks about the Dow Jones, which
says “people are making and losing millions of dollars
around the clock.” I reckon that for such people, one hour
30 minute is worth far, far more than nothing like the
driver said.
Recently I had a rare privilege of chatting with one
US-based Ghanaian Christian Leader and consultant to many
heads of states while on visit to the states. He told me
himself that for every hour of consultation with leading
figures in the world, he is paid between $25,000 and
$50,000. That is how much his one hour is worth. For sure
that is more than nothing.
And that is just consultancy fee, come to think of how much
he makes from speaking engagements, seminars and workshops
as well as his writings, CD sand tape sales by the hour.
Let me bring you home to myself – besides my day job, which
does not pay much, I inject some of my other talents into my
one hour and it makes me so much. For instance one hour of
engagement to perform at a function could earn me not less
than 5million cedis, depending on how I negotiate.
I don’t want to go into the usual time wasting attitudes and
activities at the workplace, like the newspaper and lotto
paper syndrome, time consuming cultural practices like
funerals and others, which we always talk about and yet get
no positive results. I want to look at the issue in another
light.
First of all from the perspective of the individual –
history has proven the fact that every lasting change begins
with one or a few radical and determined individuals. It is
important that as individuals we begin to see ourselves not
as belonging to a community, which has a certain time
management culture so we just maintain the status quo. i.e.
“because I am a Ghanaian and it is known that Ghanaians are
always one to two hours late to appointments, I have no
choice but to follow the norm and adjust my life style to
accommodate that culture.”
As an individual, one needs to ask himself the most attitude
changing question towards time – what is my one second, one
minute, one hour, one day, one week, one month and one year
worth?
If we can truly value our time in terms of money lost or
gained, we would appreciate time
better than we do now. It may probably not have to be just
money, but at the end of the day money is the common
denominator for the acquisition of any imaginable thing in
this world.
I used to have a very poor time management attitude. My wife
and a couple of my good friends around me became too much
for me to bear because they had very good time management
cultures. One day I told myself, why should I always be on
the wrong side of the coin when it comes to time management?
That question changed my life and it has changed my life
forever. I would not say that my time management culture is
now perfect, but there has been a major transformation – a
complete shift, far away from the usual Ghanaian time
wasting attitude, where an appointment at say 1.00pm ends up
becoming a 3.00pm appointment because of deliberate
lateness.
I run a Christian organization and we have such a strict
time management culture that sometimes our clients and other
colleagues of ours find us too much to bear. We have come to
understand that in the developed world good attitude to time
is what really makes the difference between the poor and the
rich. In fact the same applies to the difference between
developed and undeveloped nations.
As individuals we do not have to adopt the community or
national culture of poor time management. The change would
not begin from the national level – it always has and always
would begin with the individual, then the family, then the
community (working, social etc) and then to the various
sectors before it finally goes national.
In my organization for instance, even though we have a
strict time management culture, for which we do our best
never to be late to any appointment, some individual members
of the organization are still struggling with the issue of
lateness. There are two particular members who seem to hold
a patent on lateness and really contend with each other for
the title of the “lateness champion”.
Funny as it may sound it is a very bad attitude. So bad it
borders on sin. It is like wasting life itself because the
length of one’s life on this earth is one’s age, which is
nothing more than the sum total of time. Age is just the
totality of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and
years one spent on earth.
So if you waste time through lateness, laziness, indecision,
procrastination and other bad attitudes, you are wasting
life and you may have to answer to your maker one day.
For once, as an individual forget about what the people
around you are doing with their time and think, what is my
time worth; what am I losing over time and what am I gaining
over time. How is my attitude to time affecting what I do
and the people I work with?
It is only selfish people, who do not care about whose time
they waste and what the consequences are to them and to
others.
I am not suggesting any hard, point by point, step by step
time management principles and rules. Let’s step away from
the rhetoric; for once look at your own life and make a
decision to stop being late to appointments no matter what.
Even if no one is on you to keep to time, just do it for
yourself. That is the beginning of a good time management
culture.
Begin to hate yourself and nobody else for being late to
appointments and refuse to make excuses for your lateness,
even if you have one. Blame only yourself and nothing or
nobody else for your lateness.
One colleague of mine is always - always
- late to appointments and there is only one reason
he is not able to change – because he doesn’t blame himself
for his lateness – he is hardly ever sorry for his lateness
– he almost always finds some excuse and something else to
blame for his lateness instead of himself. Often times he
would even tell a lie about his location when he is late and
we call him on phone out of anxiety. It’s all attitude;
wrong attitude robs him and most of us of the joy of having
control on time.
I used to make excuses for my poor attitude to time, but I
had to say a loud HAY!!!!!! to myself one day and speak
strongly to myself looking in a mirror and that was the
turning around for me. And friend I can tell you from
experience that there is great joy in having control over
your time.
I never thought I would be able to do it, but I did it and I
am a happy person now. Indeed there is nothing more to it
than the individual’s attitude. There is really no need to
say how a family, community or nation could manage time
without the individual starting it. When the individual does
it, it would automatically reflect in our family, community
and national lives.
There is something interesting about attitude – the word
ATTITUDE, when converted into numbers, alphabet by alphabet
and summed up, would give 100(%), which means for any good
result one wants in any aspect of one’s life, including time
management, the key is attitude.
Once again let me ask you – what is your one hour, 30
minutes worth. I hope it is worth more than nothing, unlike
the trotro driver in my opening Ningo story.
Good luck to you on your first step towards a better time
management culture. And remember GMT is Greenwich Mean Time
and not Ghana Maybe Time.
Samuel Dowouna, Accra, April 19, 2007, Ghanadot
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