Following on from last week where I confessed I had missed an appointment, this week I still want to talk about Time Integrity but in a different way.

When I was younger (about 30 years ago), I used to do psychic readings for people. They would book an hour and 4 hours later, they would be walking backwards up the driveway, trying to get away.

I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to give them everything I could. I did their Astrology and Numerology charts. I gave them a jewellery reading as well as a Tarot reading.

I thought I was providing so much value.

I didn’t realise that I was actually out of integrity with my time.

I had forgotten about this until this week when a colleague of mine asked for feedback on an online training seminar he presented and one person questioned him and reminded him of his lack of integrity around time.

His session was scheduled for 60-90 minutes. He finished after 3 ½ hours.

His response to the feedback was that he wanted to give massive value and share all that he had to give.

“Ouch.” It reminded me of me.

Having time integrity doesn’t only mean we show up on time. It means we stick to the time we have agreed. Your customers and staff have planned their day around the time they expect to be with you.

We are doing a disservice and disrespecting them by going over time, especially without their permission.

It also reduces the motivation for people to want to catch up on training sessions, etc. when they see the time they need to watch is now 3 ½ times longer than expected.

More is not always better. In fact, less is more.

Here’s another example. I was invited to submit an article for an industry magazine. The word limit was 500-700 words. I prepared 1440 words because I was using the content for my TV show. Being over the word count was not helpful. It reminded me of this quote “If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a Shorter Letter”, attributed to a number of different sources. The editor was adamant, so I had to invest more time and eventually got it down to 584 words.

The editor forced me to be succinct and to choose every word carefully.

This week your task is to notice your time integrity.

Are you respecting your customers, colleagues, family and yourself or are you rationalising your time indulgence by telling yourself you are adding tremendous value?

What’s Your Time Integrity?