the late effect.

i have always hated people who are late for appointments. this explains why i dislike being late for any scheduled appointments.

let me explain why.

when an individual does things slowly, it does not affect only to him/herself. it affects dozen of other people around that person. don't get me wrong. i have no problems with people who do things on a slow pace because he/she is not capable to do it fast or when it does not affect other people.

it is only a problem when a person does things slow because they 'feel' like it and it affects people. let me give you an example; a person decides to get ready slowly by lazing around, walking extremely slow and doing tonnes of unnecessary things before actually getting ready to fulfill the promised time of appointment.

then, when he/she actually gets into his/her car, he/she decides to take his/her own sweet time to turtle his/her way to the destination eventually resulting being late.

to many, it does not seem like a problem. but let us see where the time leakages are.

if this person is meeting 4 people, it means these 4 people's time are wasted. and it does not just stop there. due to the slow paced driving, it slows the traffic down. let just say he's slowing 4 cars down around him, these 4 cars which are being slowed down are slowing other cars down. so, if one car slows 4 cars, 4 cars would be slowing 16 cars (4x4=16). imagine the other 16 cars slowing other cars as well? (16x64x?xgoes on). he might even have created an after-office-hours jam!

okay, back to the initial 4 people that he's meeting. lets say 4 of them have errands to run after the meeting. i shall name these 4 people A, B, C and D.

A: goes to a bank to bank in a cheque but found out that it just past the cut off time of the day (wednesday) and affecting the receiver not able to get the money by friday due to the 2-3 days of process time. he/she will only get it on monday.

B: goes to a post office to send a parcel over to the business partner but to find him in-line behind of a guy who decides to take his own sweet time to fill in a form which resulting a long queue (remember the x4 concept?)

C: rushes to meet his parents for dinner but to find himself stucked in jam by people who 'feel' like 'turtling' on the road. (again the 4x4 concept?)

D: rushes to a meeting with another 4 people. (okay, you get the point)

okay, this may sound like a ridiculous exaggerated example. that's because i have not talked about the slow paced employee in bank processing the people in line requests (example A), the person who takes 10 years to get his car parked congesting the carpark in post office (example B), the others who decide to crawl on the road and other entities with their time leakages that may play a part in those 4 daily lives.

in the real life society, there are too many entities that play a part in getting things moving. it is like a network that moves and it is inter-dependent. unlike the first block that crumble on a chain of blocks in domino effect, it is like a multi-domino series being dropped.

so next time when you decide to laze around for the couple of seconds/minutes or to service a person slowly whether in bank, restaurant or etc, think of the multiples of 4s people you're affecting.

you might be just affecting the country's development.