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Time Sense - Polychronicity and Monochronicity
http://www.harley.com/yp/categories/behaviorandsocialforces/index.html, 15.06.07
Time Sense: Polychronicity and Monochronicity
Are you a polychron or a monochron?
My guess is you have no idea what I am talking about. And yet, this is one of the most
important questions you can ever ask yourself. Knowing if you are a polychron or a
monochron will help you understand a lot about yourself, including how you fit into the world
and how you get along with others.
The terms monochron and polychron have to do with our time sense: how we perceive and
manage time. To a polychron, time is continuous, with no particular structure. Polychrons see
time as a never-ending river, flowing from the infinite past, through the present, into the
infinite future.
In the workplace, polychrons prefer to keep their time unstructured, changing from one
activity to another as the mood takes them. Although polychrons can meet deadlines, they
need to do so in their own way. A polychron does not want detailed plans imposed upon him,
nor does he want to make his own detailed plans. Polychrons prefer to work as they see fit
without a strict schedule, following their internal mental processes from one minute to the
next.
Monochrons relate to time differently: to them, time is discrete, not continuous. Monochrons
see time as being divided into fixed elements – seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, and so
on – temporal blocks that can be organized, quantified and scheduled. Monochrons love to
plan in detail, making lists, keeping track of their activities, and organizing their time into a
daily routine.
Monochrons prefer to do one thing at a time, working on a task until it is finished, then, and
only then, moving on to the next task. To a monochron, switching back and forth from one
activity to another is not only wasteful and distracting, it is uncomfortable.
Polychrons are different. They love to work on more than one thing at a time. To a polychron,
switching from one activity to another is both stimulating and productive and, hence, the most
desirable way to work.
Can you see yourself in here somewhere?
I bet you can and, once you do, you can see how easy it would be for a monochron and a
polychron who live or work together to butt heads frequently, driving each other crazy
without even knowing what is happening.
Here is a common example. Because of the way polychrons see time, they are often late. This
only makes sense because, to a polychron, exact times (and even exact dates) are not really
meaningful and, hence, are not all that important.
Try telling this to the monochron who is kept waiting for that polychron. While the polychron
was finishing a couple of last-minute chores at home, the monochron was at the appointed
place five minutes early, anxiously looking at his watch. To a monochron, time is exact and,
as he sees it, being late is both rude and disrespectful. To a polychron, any time – even an
exact time – is just an approximation. If someone keeps him waiting, he doesn't really care.
He just figures that something must have happened to hold up the other person, and it's not
that big of a deal.
In order to keep the peace, polychrons do learn to be on time when they really need to be.
However, if you can get them to talk truthfully, they will tell you that they don't really
understand why so many people feel that punctuality is a virtue.
The important lesson here is that, when it comes to organizing time, we all think that how we
do it makes the most sense. The hidden assumption is that there is only one right way to
understand time (our way). The truth is there is more than one way to think about time and
neither extreme is right or wrong; they are just different.
Of course, this is not to say that, in a particular society, it won't be more advantageous to be
either polychronic or monochronic. Indeed, the terms "polychronic" and "monochronic" were
first used to describe whole cultures and not individuals (by the anthropologist Edward Hall in
his book The Silent Language, 1959).
According to Hall, some cultures are traditionally monochronic. In such a culture, time is
thought of as being linear. People are expected to do one thing at a time, and they will not
tolerate lateness or interruptions.
In polychronic cultures, time is thought of as being cyclical. In such cultures, it is not
important to be punctual, and it is acceptable to interrupt someone who is busy.
If you live in the United States, Canada, or Northern Europe, you live in a monochronic
culture. If you live in Latin America, the Arab part of the Middle East, or sub-Sahara Africa,
you live in a polychronic culture.
Last modified: 20.09.2016, 14:16 | 814 Words