
How Different Cultures Understand Time  - ghosh
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-different-cultures-understand-time-2014-5?IR=T
======
yason
I fit the multi-active category and living in Northern Europe and working with
Americans makes it sometimes difficult.

Now that I read the article, it put the words in my mouth. I value encounters,
discussions, meeting someone and time has not much to say in there. If someone
has to leave because of his/her schedules, it does leave me with the feeling
of business unfinished.

I don't have a calendar and I try to avoid meetings, just because something
more important usually turns up at the same time and also because the meeting
will typically run short and discussion is left unfinished, which makes me
think of it as time wasted. I'd rather skip the next meeting if I can connect
with the people in the first meeting, and drive things to a closure or
properly finish the discussion.

I als o don't mind if someone's late because I consider it more much valuable
if s/he turns up anyway and is ready for an in-depth discussion. Conversely,
if I didn't really pay attention, I'd be late to everything, thinking that no
matter what time, let's discuss the things once we're here now.

~~~
mercer
While I do have the Northern desire for punctuality, I have the same issues
that you do with planning days ahead to specifically. Unfortunately, since
most of the people around me plan ahead, they have specific times in their
schedules to meet me, so I have to accommodate that.

------
onion2k
Brilliant article. The same is very much true of distance. I'm British, and
I've always thought of 100 miles as a long way because I grew up in a
(relatively) tiny place. 600 miles away was the other end of my country. That
was a _really_ long way to me. Meeting an Australian colleague of my father
who was happy to do a 600 mile round trip _for a day out_ was a revelation.
How far away something 'close' is very much depends on your frame of
reference.

~~~
chadgeidel
I live in the western part of the US (Colorado) and 600 miles doesn't actually
take that long to drive. I regularly drive to my parent's house - which is
about 550 miles - in 8 hours. I'm essentially driving the speed limit the
entire way with no slowdowns except for one or two gas/restroom breaks. I
would imagine driving that distance in GB would involve a much lower average
speed.

I have always assumed this is why distances in the US (reasonably far away
from the coasts) are "not that far".

~~~
TuringTest
Judging by your road movies, most of those 600 miles you'd be driving in a
straight line. In the Old Continent, roads are traced around old crop fields
and other properties, so you need to pay full attention to the road the whole
time.

~~~
ryusage
Yeah, at least in my part of the US, that's very true. The roads do curve a
bit of course, but they're straight enough that you drive 55 - 80 mph (88 -
130 kph) for almost the whole trip. And a lot of the time, there are at least
two lanes to pick from -- common courtesy is that slower cars stay in the
right lane so that faster drivers can pass them.

------
thedevopsguy
As humans we primarily make time for what we really, really want to do over
what we should. Before getting angry at someone for being late take a step
back and assess the situation objectively. The person may have been late
because they probably weren't that interested in seeing you, they may have had
something more interesting to do or had an interesting conversation going on.

Walk away after 15 ( or 10) minutes because you should have something better
to do with your time than wait around hours for someone, right? There needs to
be a negative consequence of the bad behaviour and it should be communicated
through your actions rather than your words. Words will always fall on deaf
ears.

I remember a friend who had a problem with a very tardy friend from one of the
warmer EU countries and started to leave habitually after 10 minutes of
tardiness. After a couple of times he got the idea and even started arriving
early to the meetings.

You don't lose anything by doing this. It's a good strategy since it reveals
the nature of your relationship with that person. If you don't like the
revelation, fix it in a socially intelligent manner or exit the relationship.
...

------
Sami_Lehtinen
It seems that one of the primary issues here is the productivity. Why you
should be all the time doing something or being productive? If you have a
train ticket or to somewhere. So what if the train is delayed 24 hours. You'll
just go out, see the city, enjoy nice meal, book a hotel, etc. Arrive again
tomorrow to see if the train goes or not. Who needs schedules, bus will drive
this road roughly daily, schedule is quite open. After waiting for 48h on
stop, it's quite probable that you're getting your ride. Problem doesn't seem
to be the understanding of time, but the insane(?) need to be so productive.
Is the time wasted if you're not doing business, but you're enjoying relaxed
life? This is excellent question, because I'm obsessed with productivity, and
at sometimes I really question if there's any sense in it at all? So what if I
had tasks booked for this week. Maybe I decided that I'll watch my favorite TV
show for this week and consider doing those tasks next week, or maybe I'll
find something better to do before that time arrives.

------
transpy
Yeah, the non-western concept of time is so picturesque, laid-back and "non-
linear", so different to that ugly "monochronic" concept of the western world.
Until shit gets serious. Until a patient in an emergency room requires an
urgent treatment and a punctual surgeon.

Important, critical things depend on a rational approach to time.

I was irritated by the author's romantic view of the non-western concept of
time.

~~~
TuringTest
The point is that, if your treating all the appointments in your schedule as
life-threatening events, you're doing it wrong.

~~~
copperx
Indeed. I am able to separate critical and non-critical appointments, as I
suppose most people can do. I am punctual to business meetings, class meeting
times, doctor appointments, and such. I am perpetually tardy to things like
going out to party, having a cup of coffee, or visiting a friend.

Being punctual is stressful, requires planning, forethought, and saying no to
unforeseen circumstances. I can't imagine living being punctual in my non-
business life. I would feel like a slave. I once lost a girlfriend because she
was extremely uptight about punctuality and I wasn't. While that attitude
might seem completely normal to an American, to me it was a glimpse into
insanity.

------
zwieback
Overall a good read but I'd be interested to find out what happens in Italy or
Spain when a someone with much lower social status makes someone with a higher
social status wait for a hour to show. Bet it doesn't happen all that often.

Also, I've found that the idea of "circling around a problem" for several days
until coming to a decision is standard practice in the US, at least if you're
involved in any kind of development or creative task.

------
carlob
I'm Italian, my girlfriend is French. I always tell her it's not polite to
arrive on time to dinner dates, because people will be embarrassed because
they're not even remotely ready.

~~~
jbn
That's odd, we have a saying in France that one always ought to be a
fashionable 15 minutes late, it's considered polite to do so..

~~~
carlob
I'm not sure 15 minutes are enough in Italy, though it wildly varies from
north to south. Anyway I agree that the culture shock is not huge between
France and Italy, at least not as much as with german speaking countries.

------
andion
Spaniard here. I'll comment in a while, my stereotypical way of life won't let
me do it just now, because.. yknow.

~~~
clubhi
Finish your painting and let us know your thoughts.

------
joshuaheard
The difference between Northern cultures and Southern cultures is more
fundamental. In Northern cultures, the people have a relationship to the
rules. In Southern cultures, people have a relationship to other people. So
using time as an example, people in Northern cultures value strict adherence
to the clock as proper, while people in Northern cultures view person to
person relationships as more valuable than adherence to strict time keeping.

------
mdisraeli
Interesting and very useful seeing this discussed. The important thing here
isn't that any one country is 'wrong', but rather that this is useful
information to guide how we interact with businesses and divisions around the
world.

Once area the article doesn't discuss at all is how middle east and Indian
cultures understand time. Can anyone offer any commentary on this?

~~~
marc0
My personal experience in the Middle East: expect everyone to be at least half
an hour late (you're stuck in a huge traffic jam anyway), don't be surprised
if someone is 2 hours late, and don't view 11pm as an unusual time for a
meeting (joking: there exists a time zone in which the meeting starts in
time). I would classify it as "multi-active".

Personally, I like it that people are not angry with you when you're really
late (again, traffic jam). I experience this as relieving.

~~~
Surio
Oh dear... I was looking through the comments of the top trending thread in HN
now (6 hour workday) and this comment reminded me of your post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7839210](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7839210)

------
neilk
I'm not an anthropologist, but I have a hard time believing that different
peoples have significantly different conceptions of time. Americans are a lot
heavier than other peoples, but nobody suggests they have a different concept
of mass.

They're really talking about culture - mutual rules for deciding when a thing
will occur, and when it has ended. Or dominant metaphors for time. A lot of
these are dependent on material conditions; what is locally scarce?

In a place where gasoline and vehicles are scarce and people operate on thin
margins, people expect long voyages to be infrequent, and the bus is not going
to leave unless there are enough passengers. Otherwise the bus driver can't
buy dinner that evening.

In a place where human labor is cheap, materials are expensive, and
enforcement of contracts is sketchy, keeping people waiting while you assess
their character may be preferable to making a hasty commitment.

Maybe not every difference is explainable this way but I think a lot of them
are.

If alien anthropologists arrived, they might look at our space programs and
conclude that we had a different conception of time. There's a strange
obsession with the exact moment of launch, and time is measured as starting
from a negative number up to that point. Time can be, and often is, started
and stopped relative to that moment. Launches may have a published, scheduled
time, but everyone expects it to be deferred until consensus is achieved that
conditions are right. We are also careful that each launch be carefully timed
to use an auspicious window, dependent on the planets around us and other
cyclical conditions.

The alien anthropologist, ignorant of how his powerful ship even works, notes
that he takes off whenever he wants to and just goes in a straight line to
wherever he likes. He attributes the humans' odd practices to their different
conception of time.

~~~
chippy
>I have a hard time believing that different peoples have significantly
different conceptions of time.

Me too. This is why it's so mind blowing to hear that other people perceive
the world differently.

------
marc0
Wonderful article, and quite insightful. While reading I was asking myself if
it wouldn't be a good idea to provide tools to enlarge our possibilities of
time perception:

The dominant time perception in North-America / EU is linear: the work day is
segmented and tasks and appointments are scheduled. Calendar apps and project
management tools help us with this. But what if I wanted to take, say, the
circular time persepctive? I'm not aware of any tools or apps that would
support such a perspective.

Maybe one should think of ways to open our management culture to other time
perspectives, maybe even enabling us to shift between the perpectives and
unify them. Something like a 'multi-cultural project management tool.' I can
imagine that this could have quite some impact in globalized economy, and
maybe even could be the basis for a new management philosophy

~~~
ryan-allen
I grew up in Australia and at 19 started the 9-5 'grind' type job which I kept
going for a few years.

When I started contracting and working from home, I found that I could not
shake the association of the hours and what they mean. No matter how hard I
tried.

If I started later than 9 or 10, I was 'lazy'. If I took the whole morning off
and was working until 11pm it was 'a disaster of a day', even if I worked less
hours. For some reason if I was working later than 6pm it seemed like
something was wrong.

I have no idea how to reliably change the perception of time once it's
ingrained. It's certainly a strange phenomenon.

~~~
derefr
Mayhap it's simply an artifact of social psychology: if you're working later
than 6pm, everyone _else_ is off work and out having fun, and you're
cloistering yourself with your work when you _could_ be out socializing. (Even
if you'd rather not.)

If you get, say, stationed on a submarine doing night missions, the group
you'll mostly be socializing with suddenly gets off work around 7AM. The urge
to keep to a 9-5 fades quickly.

~~~
sophacles
I think there is really something to this - I barteneded my way through
college, and for a couple years after (in order to travel and take care of
some youthful exuberance that was incompatible with a standard job). As a
result, my "money shifts" were Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, and my
days off were typically Monday and Tuesday. A lot of my friends and social
circle were in the service industry as well. As a result when I decided to do
the career thing, it took several years to get over "Tuesday is a day off" and
"Saturday is super productive" type thoughts. Similarly, I still find evenings
to be more conducive to work than mornings because my schedule was bar hours -
4 or 5 pm - 3am, and relaxing after work makes no sense, I prefer a relaxing,
slow start to the day.

------
dualogy
Khmer proverb: "you have the clock, we have the time"

------
blaze33
Instead of the linear, multi-active and cyclic times paradigm, another
approach I found interesting is the one proposed by Philip Zimbardo neatly
presented in this video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3oIiH7BLmg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3oIiH7BLmg)

It presents individuals as being either past, present or future oriented.
Apparently, the closer we are to the equator the more present-oriented we tend
to be (because there are less seasonal changes).

------
allochthon
In my own experience, the traditional anthropological take on time seems more
and more outdated these days. There are some differences. But I get the
impression that almost anywhere you go people's senses of time are not all
that differentiated by country, even if this might have been the case in the
past. The main differences in perception of time that I have seen have been
between different socioeconomic groups within a country.

------
personlurking
The Aymara people of the Andes also have a "future is behind you" vision of
time.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aymara_language#Idiosyncrasies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aymara_language#Idiosyncrasies)

[http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/archive/newsrel/soc/backsfuture06.a...](http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/archive/newsrel/soc/backsfuture06.asp)

------
raamdev
This speaks to how useful email is as a communications medium on the Internet
and it's likely one reason why, despite all the new modes of communication,
it's still a widely used standard: people from different cultures all around
the world can get back to you at their own pace and there's generally no
expectation of an immediate response.

------
mayeesha
Excellent article. I think distance and relationships can also be modeled in
this fashion to show the differences between Eastern and Western philosophies.
I'm definitely going to read this book named "When cultures collide''. It's
important to be able to understand everyone's perspectives.

------
andrewl
For a deeper look into the topic, see _A Geography Of Time: The Temporal
Misadventures of a Social Psychologist_ , by Robert Levine
([http://www.amazon.com/dp/0465026427/](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0465026427/)).

------
teekert
The way the Malagasy see time really reminds me of the movie Memento. This
entire movie plays backwards (from scene to scene) because the main character
has no short term memory, the story is extremely well written. You should go
and see it.

------
epx
What I see in Brazil, that is a culture that is reputed to tolerate late
people: the same folks that want to be forgiven if they are late do get very
angry if someone leaves them waiting for more than 30s.

------
cyphunk
seems author wanted to write poetic book about understanding different
cultures but instead wrote this b.s. article filled with worn out stereo types
instead. Guess what, in nearly every business environment with an office
people get upset when you do not show up to a meeting. I know this because
I've worked in many of the countries this author listed. There are differences
in cultures but this article attempts to turn these differences into a
science, which in some way is just disgustingly racist.

------
bane
My perspective is as an East Coast American (the D.C. to Boston corridor)
where punctuality is highly prized and dealing with South Koreans, who have a
different cultural feeling about time.

Among the South Koreans I know some characteristics jump out

\- The 빨리빨리 culture (quickly! quickly!). Do every labor activity, no matter
how trivial, at the maximum possible tempo. Koreans coming to the U.S.
frequently complain about how slow their interactions are with Americans
(particularly cashiers). The idea of pacing yourself, running a marathon and
not a sprint is a foreign idea.

\- Everything stops for food. Fast food of course exists in Korea. But no
matter what's going on, how critical it is, or how behind everybody is, my
experience is that Koreans will drop everything during meal time and take a
remarkably relaxed view of meal-time. This may have something to do with how
many soups Koreans eat, but my American sensibility, of just powering through
a garbage lunch as quickly as possible because it's getting in the way of my
work day, had a hard time adjusting to this for years.

\- Koreans tend to be perpetually tardy. On the waiting end, I've noticed that
universally Koreans seem to be mildly irritated by the tardiness of their
peers. On the tardy-party end the reasons for being tardy are complex, with
about as many reasons why it's unavoidable as reasons why it could have been
avoided.

\- Planning group activities seems to be a group event rather than a leader-
focused organizer's role. This means if a bunch of people get together to go
do an activity, it means lots of waiting around until group consensus, and
lots of questions from everybody if this or that scenario is agreeable to you
("sure", "I don't care", "I don't know", etc. are not acceptable answers, the
consensus building requires your input). Then, much later than is necessary,
and probably after a few internal rounds of "voting", a plan will suddenly
crystallize and everybody will suddenly move into motion and execute. And the
downside it seems like there's a lack of organization and planning for your
day, on the up side, there's lots of variety.

With Americans it seems like a group will get together, everybody will ask for
ideas, most people will say "whatever" or "I don't know", and eventually a
leader will emerge who everybody follows for that day's activities. The
consensus oriented activity planning Koreans do is a little maddening to me,
even many many years later.

Some of this is rather recent. The 빨리빨리 culture in particular. Before the war,
Koreans were generally regarded like Southerners in the U.S. are. Leisurely,
taking their time, no reason to rush [1]. It seems that some of the
characteristics above are from this older cultural attitude, but the quickly!
quickly! culture seems to be the result of the reconstruction and
industrialization boom.

1 - [http://gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com/2012/06/koreas-bbali-
bb...](http://gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com/2012/06/koreas-bbali-bbali-
culture.html)

~~~
nhaehnle
> Everything stops for food. Fast food of course exists in Korea. But no
> matter what's going on, how critical it is, or how behind everybody is, my
> experience is that Koreans will drop everything during meal time and take a
> remarkably relaxed view of meal-time.

This is actually a very healthy attitude. The best of both worlds would be to
take your time with meals - there's really nothing wrong with having lunch and
discussions with friends even for two hours - but _plan accordingly_. Don't
schedule anything for two hours after lunch starts, and so on.

~~~
bane
I actually agree and it's one of the healthier attitudes I've adopted. It's
nice having a break in the middle of the day where all I meditate on is
enjoying and savoring my meal rather than seeing how fast I can shove it into
my stomach.

------
hyperliner
It's funny that the author associates variants of time to a culture or nation,
instead of to an "environment" or "organization." In the US, I have been in
companies where no meeting starts within 15-20 minutes of theoretical start
time. It is typically because of two reasons: a) people are always late at a
given company, or b) telephone bridge or technology does not cooperate.

This is what a meeting looks like many times:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYu_bGbZiiQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYu_bGbZiiQ)

Being on time does not mean being productive.

[EDIT: Comment to video]

------
jawns
Maybe it's my Western bias speaking, but a lot of what is described as "just a
different way of viewing time" sounds like "just a greater tolerance for
jerks" to me.

When you schedule a meeting and one person takes pains to arrive on time and
another person does not care whether they're late and shows up an hour later,
that leaves the conscientious person sitting there twiddling their thumbs for
an hour, whether they're in the U.S. or Italy or China.

I suppose it's more understandable in areas where transportation is
unreliable, in which case it's hard for anybody to be consistently on time,
but I have a hard time seeing how a culture in which no one is concerned with
punctuality can be said to be merely laid-back, as opposed to plain lazy. It's
possible to be both laid-back and punctual, after all.

~~~
rayiner
Suggesting that certain cultural traits might be unproductive or even bad is
frowned upon, in my opinion unjustly.

My family is Bangladeshi. One of the characteristics of the culture is a total
inability to be punctual. Its always drove my dad up the wall, even though he
grew up there. So when I read articles like this, I just think of people like
my dad--the linear time minorities in these places. Pacing around waiting for
guests who show up at 10 for dinner scheduled for 8.

~~~
chimeracoder
Out of curiosity, where in Bengal is your family from?

I have a hypothesis about the nature of this particular trait.

~~~
SerpentJoe
> Bangladeshi

------
GnarfGnarf
Yes, all this cultural relativity is just wonderful. Kumbaya.

Except, who walked on the Moon, and who didn't?

~~~
TuringTest
That's only valuable if you prefer walking on the moon rather than looking at
the moon in rapture.

~~~
wtbob
I prefer having my children live to old age because of vaccines and farms. I
prefer worrying about my weight rather than where my next meal will come from.
I prefer being able to communicate with people around the world at the speed
of light rather than the folks in my village. I prefer hot and cold running
(and clean) water.

And I can still gaze in rapture upon the rocky sphere held in the sky by
chains of gravitation.

~~~
TuringTest
Who says you need to "plan to discover vaccine at 11:30pm" to achieve all
that?

~~~
copperx
Whenever someone finds a fault with the American way of doing things, there's
always someone that shouts "but we're the most technologically advanced
country on earth!", and the sound of people screaming "hurdur!" deafens
everyone.

No wonder Americans stick to the imperial system.

