Re-learning to tell time: do you aspire to an overseas assignment or work with colleagues from other countries?

American Demographics, Jan, 1998 by Robert Levine

Do you aspire to an overseas assignment or work with colleagues from other countries? Here are eight lessons to bear in mind that will help you avoid time-related misunderstandings.

There are no overriding rights and wrongs to a particular pace of life. They are simply different, each with their pluses and minuses. All cultures have something to learn from others' conceptions of time. In many instances, temporal illiteracy leads to situations that are simply awkward and embarrassing; in other cases, however, the lack of knowledge can be socially disabling. The latter is often the result when non-clock-time people must achieve by the standards of fast-paced cultures. Entire subpopulations with otherwise economically vital communities are marginalized by their inability to master the clock-governed pace of the mainstream culture. These temporally disabled subgroups are particularly common in societies with large multiethnic, multicultural populations, especially those undergoing rapid social change.

The difficulties in adjusting to another culture's time sense are, of course, not limited to economically deprived subcultures. Everyone has the potential to stumble badly over the temporal rules of other groups. But there are also multitemporal success stories.

One group that has demonstrated a proficiency for temporal flexibility is the thousands of Mexicans who live in Tijuana but commute daily to jobs on the California side of the border. Psychologist Vicente Lopez, director of the library and an instructor in the Communications Department at the University of Mayab in Merida, Mexico, considers himself typical (temporally, at least) of this group. Lopez spent five years making the Tijuana-to-San Diego commute. He says that each time he crossed the border, it felt like a button was pushed inside him. When entering the United States, he felt his whole being switch to rapid clock-time mode: he would walk faster, drive faster, talk faster, meet deadlines. When returning home, his body would relax and slow the moment he saw the Mexican customs agent. "There is a large group of people like me who move back and forth between the times" Lopez observes. Many, he believes, insist on keeping their homes on the Mexican side precisely because of its slower pace of life.

Lopez proves that people can master unfamiliar time patterns. Of course, most intercultural travelers would prefer to avoid the five years of on-site mistakes that Lopez endured before achieving multitemporal proficiency. Could it be possible to formally teach the fundamentals of another culture's time sense, in the same way people learn other spoken languages?

In Israel--perhaps the one country today that can match the demographic diversity of the United States--psychologists Ephraim Ben-Baruch, Zipora Melitz, and their colleagues at the University of Ben-Gurion in the Negev, have reported success with an elaborate set of time-teaching exercises they have designed to train children from third-world cultures to adapt to Israel's mainstream pace of life. Their program consists of 20 wide-ranging activities that teach 8 basic time concepts. By preparing children to deal with ideas like time limitations, the value of time, and the desirability of efficiency, they help them understand that in their new culture, anyone who fails to master the clock may be labeled a failure.

EIGHT LESSONS

The programs devised by Norton and Ben-Baruch target people preparing for encounters with faster cultures. But what if you are moving in the opposite temporal direction, from fast to slow? What lessons can we offer a sojourner from a "time is money" culture, like the United States, to help them adapt to the time sense of Vicente Lopez's Mexico? Here are a few lessons for clock timers who wish to understand the temporal logic of slower cultures.

Lesson 1: Punctuality. Learn to translate appointment times. What is the appropriate time to arrive for an appointment with a professor? With a government official? For a party? When should you expect others to show up, if at all?

Should we expect our hosts to be upset if we arrive late--or promptly? Are people expected to assume responsibility for their lateness?

Many of these cultural rules can be taught. Sojourners should seek guidance about the expected ranges of promptness, for the sorts of situations they are likely to encounter. You can learn to translate hora ingles into time frames like hora mexicano, hora brasileiro, Indian Time, and rubber time. You can be prepared beforehand for the sort of critical situations that are likely to occur when your conceptions of punctuality are at odds with those of your hosts.

You can also be taught a culture's customs for making and keeping appointments. The fundamental cultural clash here often comes down to what is more important: accurate information and facts or people's feelings? Missing an appointment is simply a severe case of lateness, a well-accepted Brazilian behavior. And in Brazil, people's feelings are more important than accurate information.