M-Time and P-Time

I used to have a job that required me to travel internationally quite a bit. As part of these travels I would frequently have meetings with local reporters and campaigners. One afternoon I was in Athens waiting to meet with a journalist at a cafe. I arrived a few minutes before our appointed time and proceeded to wait 5, 10, 15 minutes. A half hour passed. 45 minutes. While I had a cell phone, this was before the relatively recent era of people using text messages to be in constant communication with each other--so I sat waiting, wavering between irritation (how dare she take my time for granted?), confusion (had I understood our meeting plan correctly?), and concern (she probably got hit by an Athenian cabbie on her way here). About an hour after our planned meeting time, she walked into the cafe, talking on her phone and chain smoking, her hair a wild halo. She made no apology for or reference to her lateness. She was operating on Greek time. I was the one with the problem.

Hall's descriptions of M-Time and P-Time cultures probably strikes a chord with most people who have traveled internationally and experienced different expectations and assumptions around time. Even moving from the East Coast to California after graduating from college had thrown me for a loop. Why was everyone walking so slowly? Why was everyone showing up 5 minutes late to meetings? Where the hell are the real bagels? Relative to New York, San Francisco felt pretty darn P-Time. After living in California for many years, I now stroll down the street like a native, left in the dust in the streets of Manhattan by my East Coast friends when I make my annual visits. This tells me sense of time isn't something innate to me--it is a part of the culture around me. You get used to the prevailing sensibilities about time in the culture you're living in. M-Time or P-Time is a context, not a personality.

Most of us who have traveled can probably point to the mundane manifestations of M-Time and P-Time differences. My in-laws retired in Belize, and I just returned from our yearly visit, where the running joke is that everything will happen in "10 Belizean minutes." Bring a snack and a book for the interlude. Making the adjustment from M-Time to P-Time requires a flexibility in scheduling and prohibits being in a big hurry. Since I'm usually on vacation when I'm in P-Time land, I can idealize it as an imposed relaxation mode, where productivity is reprioritized. It's an overly simplistic analysis of course, and I'd be very interested in learning more about how P-Time, I suspect, might foster a more organic kind of productivity and focus.

P-Time commute: my father-in-law in Belize.