FIVE
Now or Later
How perceptions of time can warp across cultures
The island nation of Madagascar that lies off of Africa’s eastern shore is well known among biologists for its incredible diversity of animal and plant species. But for cultural psychologists, Madagascar is perhaps better known for its empty fuel pumps.
Øyvind Dahl is a Norwegian psychologist who observed stark differences in the way that people in rural Madagascar tend to view time, in contrast to most Western cultures.1 While conducting research there in the early 1990s, Dahl noticed that many of the fuel stations outside of the city were perpetually out of gas.2 A hose slung over the top of the pump was a telltale sign that there was no fuel to be had. Most of us probably would have chalked it up to a scarcity of petroleum in this developing nation, but Dahl’s curiosity was piqued, and he decided to ask the manager about it. His conversation went like this:
DAHL: Why isn’t there more gas?
GAS STATION MANAGER: Because it is empty. Look, nothing left.
DAHL: But haven’t you ordered new provisions?
GAS STATION MANAGER: Of course. I did that two weeks ago. But they are always slow to react in Antananarivo [the capital].
DAHL: So why did you not order the gas a couple of weeks before?
GAS STATION MANAGER: Well, it was not empty then!
DAHL: Why don’t you order new provisions when you know that you are approaching empty? So that there will be no interruptions?
GAS STATION MANAGER: Sometimes very few people come to buy gas, and sometimes many people come. So you never know when it’s empty. But when it’s empty, it’s empty, and you have to order more gas. In the meantime, I will hang up the hose so that people know. It will come—some day. Time will show.3
Dahl had similar conversations with other gas station managers. He also found that local shopkeepers did the same thing: they would wait until provisions like medicine and farm equipment had completely run out before ordering a new supply.4 Dahl’s assessment of this tendency to wait for a triggering event (like running out of fuel or medicine) before taking action was a direct reflection of the people’s perception of time. In these communities, Dahl theorized that time is considered to be cyclical, like the seasons—an ever-repeating loop marked by events that signal people to take action, like the way changes in weather signal the best time to plant seeds or harvest fruit. In contrast to Dahl’s European view of time in which time is always moving forward away from the past and toward the future, he theorized that people from Madagascar have a more cyclical view of time that blurs the delineations between past, present, and future. In this view, time itself lets people know when they need to take action to meet the needs of changing circumstances.
Confused yet? Don’t worry. The main point is there are many different ways of thinking about and expressing time, something most of us do on autopilot as a result of our cultural programming. Dahl notes that the Malagasy view of time doesn’t necessarily apply to all aspects of life in rural regions, but it occurs frequently enough to be dubbed “Malagasy time” or fotoana gasy as locals refer to it.5 (The people of Madagascar are called the Malagasy, as the country was formerly the Malagasy Republic.) Dahl’s line of questioning with the gas station manager underscores how someone who sees time as linear would be hard put to comprehend the behaviors associated with nonlinear perceptions of time—thereby priming the proverbial pump for frustration.
Differing perceptions of time—and the way it impacts our behaviors—can lead to an array of culture crashes. The most obvious and frequently encountered problems relate to punctuality. My parents found themselves in the midst of a punctuality crash when they first moved our family from Boston, Massachusetts, to Bogotá, Colombia, in the 1980s. Not long after arriving, my parents were invited to a dinner party to welcome them to the community. When my father asked what time the party was called for, the Colombians responded, “Por ahi a las 8:00” (around 8:00 p.m.). My parents showed up at their house bearing wine at 8:00 on the dot, just as they would have for a party in the United States. The hostess answered the door wearing a bathrobe, having just emerged from a shower and clearly not prepared for guests.
My parents waited patiently in the living room for the next hour, feeling slightly embarrassed and a little annoyed, and getting hungrier by the minute. Other guests eventually started to arrive just as their blood sugar levels had begun to bottom out. Thankfully, appetizers were served soon after that, although dinner didn’t come until around 11:00 p.m., followed by coffee and dessert well past midnight.
This was my parents’ first introduction to “Colombia time.” A perceived looseness about watching the clock is a phenomenon that many people from the United States experience when they interact with people from Latin American countries. It can be a constant source of frustration for people who misinterpret the act of showing up too late (or too early) as disrespectful, without knowing that it simply stems from varying perceptions of time. Invited to many subsequent parties during the twelve years that they lived in Bogotá, my parents learned that these kinds of social gatherings almost never started on time, and that arriving more than an hour “late” was not only acceptable and respectable, but expected. As a survival strategy, my parents adjusted their notion of “on time,” and always made sure to snack and nap before heading out.
Although you may have never heard the expressions “Colombia time” or “Malagasy time,” you are probably familiar with expressions like “a New York minute” or “island time.” These expressions speak to the distinct ways that different cultures perceive time, and they are often used to let foreigners know that they need to adjust their clocks accordingly when they are in that country. When people relocate or immigrate to other countries, they bring with them their deeply embedded views of time. Eventually they may be able to override their instincts and modify their behaviors as my parents did, but the roots of their earliest programming will remain, and they will probably continue to create minor culture crashes. The perception of time is one of the toughest cultural habits to shake.
We all integrate our perceptions of time into our lives in different ways, related partly to culture and partly to personal predilections. Consider your expectations around punctuality, for example. When do you arrive at parties, business meetings, or other functions? On the dot? Five minutes early? One hour late? How late is too late, and how early is too early? Some of us pride ourselves on getting things done way in advance, while others wait until the last minute, or even later. You might be someone who tries to accomplish many tasks at once, or someone who prefers to do things one at a time. And what about how your sense of the past, present, and future impacts your outlook on life? Some people continually look toward the past as a guide to how to proceed in their daily lives. Others are more oriented to the present, harboring a sense of immediacy that pervades all of their actions and responses. And then there are those who generally keep their outlook fixed on the future, placing more emphasis on the long-term outcomes of decisions and actions.
Madagascar and Colombia are not the only places where people view time as more fluid— something that doesn’t always need to be micromanaged by the clock or calendar. There are cultures in every part of the world that share this perception of time to varying degrees and with a diverse array of nuances. To keep things simple, I refer to cultures that tend to see time as relatively abundant, malleable, and/or cyclical as Later cultures. In these cultures, the way that people tend to live their lives is shaped by the notion that there is always more time later.
For most people raised in the United States, however, the notion of time moving in an endless loop is pretty hard to wrap their brains around. That’s because in the United States, time tends to be viewed as relatively limited and linear. Time moves on a continuum: the past flowing out behind them and the future stretching before them. And while time may march on endlessly, the chunk of time people are personally allotted each day—or in their lifetimes—does not. Time is a commodity that can be spent, saved, wasted, or used wisely. Time is something precious that must be used carefully and efficiently. As a result, it’s generally expected that deadlines, plans, and schedules will be adhered to. Once time is in the past, it is irretrievable. There is an imperative to get things done now, before the time disappears. For simplicity’s sake I refer to cultures where people tend to perceive time in this way as Now cultures, enabling us to more easily understand and explore these perceptions.
Time as a Prized Commodity
I recently took a flight from San Francisco to Denver to attend a conference. The plane was delayed taking off, and I became anxious that I was going to miss the opening presentation. As the minutes ticked by, I could see other passengers becoming restless too, looking at their watches and shaking their heads. About twenty minutes later we were cleared for takeoff. About an hour later the pilot turned on the speaker to make an announcement: “Good news, everyone: the tail wind is strong, and it looks like we will be able to make up the lost time.”
Sound familiar? If so, you know what came next: smiles, some applause, and a collective sigh of relief from the passengers. Now think about what the pilot said. He implied that time is something that can be “made up.” Have you ever questioned this premise or considered that not everybody thinks of time as something that can be lost or made up like money invested in the stock market?
Expressions like this one underscore the degree to which perceptions of time become engrained not only in the fabric of a culture, but also in our brains. No matter how I try, I cannot override my emotional response—my sheer glee—at the idea of making up time. I’m always looking for ways to find more time in my day to finish all my tasks. It’s one reason hundreds of thousands of people in the United States have bought the book The 4-Hour Workweek.6 People (myself included) are chasing the elusive dream of finding more hours in the day. We let time control our actions, adapting and adjusting to the demands of schedules and deadlines.
Here are a few other expressions commonly used in places like the United States, Canada, and parts of Europe that underscore this kind of thinking:
Time is money.
Time and tide wait for no man. The time is now.
We need to save time.
Don’t waste time.
Time is running out.
These expressions make little or no sense to cultures on the other end of the spectrum, where time is perceived as being cyclical and/or less limited. In Later cultures, time is more of a flexible entity than a fixed commodity. When time is considered ongoing and easily adjustable, there’s less fear of its running out—and adherence to schedules becomes less important. Even schedules that I think of as set in stone, like public transportation schedules, can be a moving target in some Later cultures. When I was living in the Caribbean during my teenage years, I often visited the island of Jamaica, where people generally seemed less beholden to schedules—especially outside of the capital. It was only after several visits to Jamaica that I stopped asking when the bus was going to appear at the bus stop, knowing that the answer was always “Soon come,” along with a look that implied that I should relax.
Mexico is another place where schedules tend to be less rigid in daily life, a sentiment underscored by the expression “Darle tiempo al tiempo.” It literally translates as “give time to time,” but what it really means is that there’s no need to rush. Let time run its natural course, and things will sort themselves out as they should. Hurrying doesn’t help.
Here are some other sayings from other cultures that underscore views of time that tend toward the Later end of the spectrum.
When God made time, he made plenty of it. (China)
What flares up fast extinguishes soon. (Turkey)
A ripe melon falls by itself. (Zimbabwe)
Man has responsibility, not power, over time. (Native American)
Depending on our personal programming around time, we may be critical of how others manage and perceive it. But others will be equally critical of your views of time. Your best bet for rising above the fray of judgments and misinterpretations is to start by getting better acquainted with your inner time zone.
Know Your Time Zone
Living in a Now culture is an unfortunate fate for someone like my wife, who is perpetually and apologetically running late. Although she has a strong sense of time as a limited commodity, her personal time management habits poke through each time she finds herself in a rush to get somewhere. She becomes anxious every time she runs more than ten minutes late, because she knows that she is not meeting the cultural expectation, and she is being disrespectful of others’ time. On one occasion, her friend—a very punctual person—felt so disrespected by my wife’s showing up late for the umpteenth time that her friend didn’t speak to her for a week. The bottom line is that although my wife’s personal clock runs on its own schedule, she is still beholden to and impacted by general expectations about time in her culture.
The funny thing is that even when my wife considers herself on time, she is actually running late according to the clock (usually by four or five minutes). And there are plenty of other Americans who, like my wife, perceive a certain amount of time as a standard grace period. It’s puzzling to those of us whose personal clocks are geared for precise punctuality—that is, until you consider the phenomenon of “segmentation.”
Over the years, social scientists like Edward Hall and Robert Levine have theorized that people segment their time in different ways, which in turn results in differing perceptions of being early and late.7 In his book The Silent Language, Hall observed that Americans divide time as follows: “there are eight time sets in regards to punctuality and length of appointments: on time, five, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty-five minutes, and one hour early or late.”8
Essentially, what he’s saying is that people in the United States mentally partition time into these increments, so that if you are late by five minutes, you are late by only one time segment; if you are late by ten minutes, you are late by two segments; fifteen minutes late is three segments late; and so on. So, when my wife shows up four minutes late, in her mind she’s not technically late by even one segment yet. I, however, consider half a segment as being late, which has been known to cause some minor culture crashes in our household.
While there are plenty of noticeable differences among people of the same cultures when it comes to perceptions of time, Hall was primarily focused on how these differences break down along cultural lines. In his book, he recounts the story of an American ambassador in an unnamed country who was infuriated because local diplomats would always show up an hour late to meetings.9 Here is Hall’s assessment of the perception of time in this culture:
An hour’s tardiness in their system is equivalent to five minutes by ours, fifty to fifty-five minutes to four minutes, forty-five minutes to three minutes, and so on for daytime official visits. By their standards the local diplomats felt they couldn’t arrive exactly on time; this punctuality might be interpreted locally as an act relinquishing their freedom of action to the United States. But they didn’t want to be insulting — an hour late would be too late — so they arrived fifty minutes late. As a consequence the ambassador said, “How can you depend on these people when they arrive an hour late for an appointment and then just mutter something? They don’t even give you a full sentence of apology!” He couldn’t help feeling this way, because in American time, fifty to fifty-five minutes late is the insult period, at the extreme end of the duration scale; yet in the country we are speaking of it’s just right.
Hall never identifies this unknown country at the other end of the spectrum from the United States (I could venture some guesses). Hall did, however, theorize that people from Arab cultures in the Mediterranean such as Morocco, Tunisia, and Libya use scales of time that don’t differentiate between a long time and a very long time,10 in stark contrast to the five- to ten-minute increments of lateness that people from the United States use as their barometer. Social psychologist Robert Levine made a similar assertion about U.S. and Arab cultures, but he added that people from Arab cultures break time down into fifteen-minute increments when assessing their own punctuality.11
Their combined conclusions have long been widely accepted, but some social scientists wondered if those findings would still hold up today based on more current data. In 2012, three university professors from around the world conducted a study with three hundred students from Morocco, the United States, and Estonia and found that “the Moroccans in the study were more likely than Americans to mentally partition an hour into 15-minute segments.”12
In other words, an American who arrives ten minutes after the appointed time is late by what they called “two units of psychological time.” But a Moroccan who is running late by two perceived units of time would arrive thirty minutes late. The Estonians seemed to fall somewhere in between the other two cultures. Although the study was limited, it does generally uphold the assertions made decades ago by Hall and Levine.
All of these studies underscore the notion that people from different cultures abide by different clocks and measures of lateness. Bearing this in mind may help you curtail your frustration when someone shows up early or late by your standards. The broader takeaway is that we are all conditioned to perceive time in ways we are barely aware of, and it’s only by sizing up our personal clocks that we can adjust our expectations and behaviors in order to avoid a crash.
While we may have a vague idea of whether we tend toward the Now or Later end of the spectrum, it’s usually only in relation to other people from our home culture. When crossing cultures, those differences can be much more drastic. Try answering the following questions to get a clearer idea of your Now-Later orientation and a sense of where you fall on what I call the “time warp” scale. Although tendencies may shift, depending on the situation, these questions are still a good starting point.
1. You are in a business meeting with another person. Your phone rings with a call from an old friend. You:
a. Answer it and talk with the person calling.
b. Answer it and immediately tell the person you will call them back.
c. Ignore it and let it go to voicemail.
2. You are waiting for a bus and there is no schedule posted. You:
a. Ask others at the stop if they know when the bus will come, and constantly check your watch. You feel frustrated.
b. Wait ten minutes and then decide to walk or look for a taxi.
c. Turn on some music and relax until the bus comes.
3. You’ve missed your bus or train by a few seconds. You’re not in a rush to be somewhere. Your thoughts are:
a. Oh sh*t. That really sucks.
b. That’s too bad.
c. No worries. There’s always another one.
4. You recognize that you will not be able to meet a deadline that has been set. You:
a. Immediately let everyone involved know and share contingency plans.
b. Share the news with everyone involved just moments before the deadline.
c. Let people know only after you’ve missed the deadline—and only if or when they ask for the deliverable.
5. You are waiting for a colleague to join you in a scheduled meeting, and they are late. You:
a. Text or call them two to five minutes after the appointed time, and leave if there is no response.
b. Text or call them ten to fifteen minutes after the appointed time; if there is no response, leave.
c. Wait fifteen to thirty minutes (without calling or texting) before leaving.
Now review your answers. Give yourself zero points for every “a” answer, one point for every “b” answer, and two points for every “c.”
Have a look at where your total falls in the following scale:
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Now
Time is more limited/less flexible
Later
Time is less limited/more flexible
While our personal clocks all run differently, the behavior of people from different cultures does consistently fall on the spectrum in certain ways that are continuously reinforced at work and in daily life.
As an example, let’s say you have a meeting at 9:00 a.m. and you leave your home in time to get to work, but the train or the bus is running late. You burst into the meeting room, blaming your tardiness on the bus. Your boss shoots you the “liar look”—she probably assumes that you just overslept or opted for an all-too-leisurely pancake breakfast. If you live in Japan, Germany, or parts of Switzerland and France, however, and your train is running late, when you board it you may be handed a “late card” or “certificate of delay.” You would then hand this to your boss—and there would be no doubt about why you missed the first half the meeting. It’s interesting to note that a delay of one to five minutes will most often get you the certificate of delay in Japan, where the average train delay on some major lines is a mere thirty-six seconds,13 while in France the delay has to be at least fifteen minutes before you are offered any proof.14 In Switzerland, trains are expected to arrive on time as much as possible, and if delayed, then no more than three minutes behind schedule.15
The Swiss, who have come to dominate the high-end watch- making industry, take “being on time” very seriously, leaning heavily toward the Now end of the spectrum. In Swiss French, punctuality is reinforced through language; you are either avant l’heure (before the hour) or après l’heure (after the hour)—expressions used to indicate that either you are on time or you’re not, implying that there is little allowance for missed minutes.
That’s not to say that the Swiss never find themselves running late, but chances are they would feel more stressed out by being in this position than someone from a culture that didn’t place such a high value on being punctual. At the other end of the spectrum are places like Jamaica where common phrases like “soon come” reflect a relatively looser attitude toward time.
The reasons why certain cultures experience time the way they do are interesting to consider. What values and other reasons underlie differing perceptions of time? The answers can be complex and varied, but it’s worth examining the inner workings of some of these cultural clocks, if only to get you thinking more deeply about your own cultural wiring.
Whether a culture falls more toward the Now or the Later end of the spectrum often has to do with whether people place more value on accomplishing a specific task or cultivating relationships, just as Me-We tendencies do (although not all We cultures are also Later oriented—Japan is a prime example of a We culture oriented toward punctuality). In Later cultures, if a need or opportunity arises to build or nurture a relationship, it tends to take precedence in daily life over punctuality or getting something done quickly. This doesn’t mean that people in Now cultures don’t care about relationships; it just means that they are less likely to spend time tending a relationship until the more urgent task at hand has been accomplished—or if spending time on that relationship has the potential to screw up a schedule.
Other drivers of Now and Later orientation may have to do with the evolution of regional history and politics, like a desire to create a sense of order amidst chaos caused by perpetual warfare.16 There are also theories that point to the tendency for cultures with high levels of economic development to be more Now oriented (time = money), while in less economically developed or less stable nations the value of time may lie more in people’s ability to “spend” it building relationships. In A Geography of Time, Robert Levine points out that in places where employment opportunities are scarcer and less reliable, jobs don’t improve well-being as reliably as family and friends do. He found that places with vibrant economies tend to value time more, and vice versa; and that the wealthier the society, the faster things tend to move.17
Other factors may also shape the way different cultures perceive and organize time, such as population density, climate, and religious beliefs. Friends of mine who live and work in Mexico City tell me that one reason everyone is always running late there is that the traffic is so bad that you can never be sure whether it will take ten minutes or two hours to get somewhere.
If we can keep in mind that there are differing values and other factors that underlie our expectations and perceptions of time across cultures—including our own—we are less likely to make snap judgments about someone’s behavior that can cause us to lash out in anger or label people as inefficient, inconsiderate, or over-eager, depending on our point of view. This may also offer some enlightenment for people like me who experience time anxiety in our own cultures because our personal views of time are sometimes at odds with cultural norms.
Taking Your Time at Work
No matter where I am in the world or with whom I am working, when I am preparing to run a workshop I always ask whether I can expect people in the company to be punctual, and if not, how long I should wait before starting. The answer varies widely from company to company and even within departments of the same company. I’ve heard expressions like the “software seven” (minutes) and the “engineering eight” at different companies in the United States. In some companies I’m told to start right on the hour, and in others to hold fire for fifteen.
There are many reasons why companies within the same culture may have different takes on time. Sometimes it’s because people need extra time to physically get from one meeting to another. Other times it may be based on the personal clock of the head of the organization or department. No matter the reason, every organization has its own expectations for promptness as well as other time-related activities, including when the workday starts and ends, how much time someone takes for lunch, length of vacations, and so on. When you start working for any company you have to learn the nuances of how they view time, but when you work for a company based in or staffed by people from other cultures things can be even more challenging.
Workday lunch breaks are often a big point of contention between people from Now and Later cultures. I’ve worked with people from the United States who fume over what they perceive as excessively long lunch breaks taken by their Brazilian colleagues (usually one-and-a-half to two hours). People from the United States tend to think of lunch breaks of an hour or more as indulgent or reserved only for special occasions. This perception leads them to accuse their Brazilian counterparts of being inefficient and lacking dedication to the job. In the United States, when people eat lunch at their desks it’s generally seen as a sign of dedication—that they have prioritized work over all of their personal necessities and pleasures.
On the flip side, I’ve worked with Brazilians who complain about how their counterparts from the United States eat at their desks and refuse invitations to join them for lunch. The Brazilians interpret their colleagues’ behavior as a lack of dedication to the team—or a lack of interest in building strong relationships, which would yield better results at work.
As with every other culture crossing, the key to avoiding this kind of crash is to hit the pause button before making judgments about how people use their time, and consider the message you may be inadvertently sending out via your own behavior. If you get the vibe that you are working with people from a Now culture, try your best to be on time for meetings, return emails and calls promptly, and be quick about your break times. If you are dealing with a company or a boss from a Later culture, they may have more tolerance (and so should you) for late arrivals to meetings, delayed responses to communications, and lengthy lunch breaks, which are generally better for digestion than scarfing down some food at your desk anyway.
Fast Buy or Slow Sell?
If you sell things for a living in the United States, creating a sense of urgency is one of the most effective tools in your kit. Admonitions like “this house will probably go very quickly” or “demand is high and the inventory is low, so I would act now if I were you” have long been a failsafe method to nudge potential buyers into a purchase. When I was searching for a home, just a subtle suggestion of urgency was sometimes enough to set my nerves aflutter, even if I didn’t even like the house very much. But real estate agents and other kinds of sales-people in the United States who have always depended on this tactic are now finding that it no longer works as reliably, because they aren’t selling to the same pool of potential buyers. Today, a large percentage of buyers are recent immigrants. Documented immigrants comprise about 14 percent of the U.S. population and growing18 (by 2050, roughly one of every five U.S. residents will be foreign born19).
Many of these immigrants hail from Later-oriented cultures—places where they are much less likely to be swayed by time pressures.
Next time you are considering a purchase, think about how you are affected by a sense of urgency, whether real or fabricated. People from Now cultures easily fall prey to scarcity ploys and marketing strategies like “this offer is only good for the next thirty minutes and open to the first five callers!” Or how about the “last one in stock” line, or the perpetual (and often questionable) “going out of business” sale? Even though you know that the same exact offer may still stand a few weeks later, this marketing technique plays right into the fear that time is rapidly running out, and you must act now.
In the United States, this fear is also connected to the desire for immediate gratification. Despite the adage “Good things come to those who wait,” most people in the United States prefer not to wait. It’s this mindset that spawned innovations such as drive-through restaurants and banking, which began in the United States in the 1930s.20
These days there are even drive-through wedding chapels in Las Vegas for those who truly can’t wait to tie the knot. 7-Eleven, a convenience store chain ubiquitous throughout the United States and now in many other parts of the world, was one of the first stores to have extended hours from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.21 Today, 7-Eleven and other convenience stores are often open even later, further accommodating the late-night whims of Now-oriented people living in urban centers around the globe. At the extreme end of the Now spectrum are places like New York City, where most residents will tell you that they find it comforting to know they can get a slice of pizza and a roll of double-ply toilet paper any time they need or want it. No matter if the pizza tastes like cardboard or the roll of toilet paper costs $5.00—people are often happy just knowing it’s available right now.
In recent years I’ve heard from countless sales and marketing people frustrated by the fact that their Now tactics aren’t effective when selling to people in immigrant communities. These potential buyers are likely from Later cultures in which rushing things can backfire, especially when it comes to making a significant purchase. The right time to buy or sell is often more influenced by factors like auspicious dates, favorable numbers, and getting advice or buy-in from others. People from Later-oriented cultures may be wary of transactions that move too quickly or of people who pressure them with questionable time constraints.
That said, it is possible to facilitate the purchase in other ways with customers who are less compelled by urgency. The key is to discover what is important to the buyer rather than simply relying on the scarcity ploy. Look and listen for cues like whether the buyer asks you personal questions, which may imply that they want to get to know you a bit better and develop a sense of trust. Notice if the customers spend time discussing the benefits of certain dates and numbers, and consider how you can adjust the offer to accommodate those concerns. If they mention needing to talk to others, schedule a time in the near future when others can see the product too and join in the conversation. Ask questions to try to get at what’s most important to the customer—you might be surprised by what you discover.
The bottom line is, you’ll have a better chance of influencing someone to make a purchase—or do anything else—if you look for cultural cues like those we’ve discussed (as opposed to projecting your own culture onto them) and adjust your tactics accordingly. The more you work or interact with people from a particular culture, the more attuned you will become to these cues if your mind is primed to spot them. Of course, when it comes to influencing people, this strategy is useful not only as it relates to perceptions of time, but also for all of the ways that culture defines how we do business and navigate interactions in other aspects of our daily lives.