Don't wait for others

Waiting for other people can be time consuming and frustrating process. You have your day nicely lined up, you know what you need to do and roughly how long it is going to take. And then you begin to encounter "other" people. They don't have the same concept of time management you do. You have to wait in line as they pretend to do their jobs. Take check outs and receptions as two very good examples of bad time management and customer service for the most part.

Rarely do they make eye contact with the people they are serving, and you can usually tell at a glance if you are interrupting their day - clipped tones, bad body language, vague directions and even less help. A note at this point - I did say for the most part - there are SOME good ones out there. But I can almost guarantee you will come across poor time management on the part of others when you are in a hurry, and need to get on.

So how do you cope with this interruption to your well planned day?

And that is a good question.

• You can leave whatever it is you are queing for and go back when it is less busy, or when you have more time
• You can choose to wait - and complain loudly
• Or better still you can choose to wait and practice your deep breathing exercises. If you don't do this anyway, very deep breathing stops panic from setting in - you control the amount of oxygen going into your body and out again, by forcing more air into your lungs than you normally breath in. Not only does it clean out the stale air in your lungs, it produces an instant calming effect on your body.
• Take the opportunity to watch other people. Queues are a great way to see what motivates other people. You can see if they care about themselves, their spouses, their children, by how they handle the waiting. And
• You can work on your plan for the rest of your day, I always carry at least one notebook around with me, but most mobile phones these days have some form of note making facility.

Of course, queues aren't the only time we wait for others, I'm sure you can name many times you've waited for phone calls that didn't arrive, people to turn up for appointments and so on. These moments are the times you can use to move your tasks and goals on, or you can use them as a way of stopping, as a "breather" in your busy day. Just remember - our expectations will always be different to other people's.