Watch Your Time

In today’s New York Times (August 16, 2025) there is an interesting article, “Always Late: Blame Your Time Personality” by Emily Laber-Warren. It is about how a couple have two different understandings of what it means to be on time. The husband operates in a manner where on time means to be present at the very minute that something such as a dinner party begins. His wife’s understanding of time means to be there around the time the dinner should begin.

Arguments about punctuality are common but are really about what both understand to be the nature of time. Dr. Edward T. Hall said that being on time is really a cultural experience. He labeled monochronic societies as one where time is very sequential, one task following another. It made me immediately think of lawyers who charge by the 15 minutes per billing guideline. It is generally true in America and Northern Europe, in the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa people are more flexible about time and can switch doing things all at once.

How can you tell if you are a monochronic in the way you see time as being very punctual and sequential in your approach to time or polychronic with a flexible approach to being on time.  You can tell by answering the question, “How do you handle interruptions, and can you multitask?” Polychronic people are great multiple taskers.

If you did what I did as a vocation in life, you had to be able to do both. Some bosses have a sign on their door, “Come in. Interruptions are my business.” I never knew how each day was going to unfold which is why I got into the office early to clear email and get ready for the multiple surprises that came my way. I loved every minute of It. The same would be true for most physicians in the ER. However, I would not be as comfortable with “a do list” with everything mapped out for me during the day. There was one exception. When we had meetings of the Vestry, the student spiritual leadership group voted into office, we met during their lunch half hour several times of week. My students were the busiest people I knew so I wanted to make sure that our time was used in an effective way. As we were making our way through meetings, I would say particularly when they had to go on to their next period, “Watch your time!” I didn’t realize how much I said this until students in the group gave the seniors in the group pocket watches which when opened was written across from the inside cover of the pocket watch the words, “Watch You Time! – Rev. That reminder encompassed both monochronic and polychronic time. One is not better than the other. 

But there is a view of time that, in my view, is essential to the development of the psyche and soul. I noticed something when I was working at Duke Medical Center regarding older black women who I was counseling. I first thought that it was just a coincidence that a good many of them seemed to have an uncanny ability to live right in the moment. Certainly, there was past experience and future hopes and dreams as part of their lives, but they lived in the moment. Time for them seemed to stop. I had their entire focus as they seemed to live in the now. I didn’t know what to call it. I l labeled it as the “existential notion of intentional time” which described the powerful living in the NOW. I wrote a paper about it.

Much later in my life I became a friend of Marty Seligman who founded Positive Psychology which has taken hold among therapists and colleges and universities across the nation as a revolutionary approach. You are not just making people who were depressed less miserable but produced clinical results that demonstrated that people could flourish.

Instead of looking at what was wrong with patients, he found that more progress could be found by looking for what is right with his patients. It is psychology based in research and not feel-good self-help. It was the largest class at Harvard (900) and Yale. The Gratitude Letter, an exercise in Positive Psychology, where you send a letter of gratitude to someone, and hand deliver it which became a criterion for Penn’s admissions process as well. Both people are moved deeply in the exchange.

It was through Marty that I was introduced to the work of Dr. Mikaly Csikszentmihayl, called Dr. C, a psychologist at the University of Chicago. He discovered the concept of flow. I was ecstatic as I finally knew what to call that experience, I had with elderly black women at Duke Medical Center. Flow is when time stands still. It is when an hour feels like a few minutes and not the opposite where a few minutes, like in a boring class, can feel like hours.

Flow is the basis today of mindfulness and meditation which nourish the soul and psyche. It is like a spiritual and psychological renewal. When you go on vacation it is a time of renewal, but when you practice mindfulness, meditation, or flow you are going on a vocation where you are going on a calling to take a deep dive into your soul and psyche.

Speaking of deep dives, I was moved when Marty invited me to join him for a thought leaders conference at Princeton. Tal Ben Shahar, Professor of Positive Psychology at Harvard, Barry Schwartz, Professor of Social Theory at Swarthmore, and Dr. C who discovered and named the phenomenon of flow. He had a distinct remembrance to Santa Claus, and others who were new to me. What a day! It was flow for me.