How Do Americans View Time? | Advanced Listening

How do Americans view time? Let's start with a specific example. If I invite you to dinner at my home, what time will you show up? If I say 6 p.m., will you show up promptly at 6? Or are you the kind of person who arrives early? Or really late? Well, I try to be understanding, but I'd be a little miffed if you arrived at 630 and didn't tell me you were running late. For many of us, somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes past the designated time is okay. Some may consider 15 to 30 minutes as still fashionably late, but a whole hour can really be pushing it. I mean, if it's a big party, maybe no one will miss you for the first hour or so. But if it's a small gathering, then your host is expecting you to remember what time you were invited to come. And don't forget that if they're cooking something, timing is everything. Don't make them ruin the dinner by making them wait for you. Do all Americans show up on time? No, we don't, but many of us feel bad if we cause others worry or inconvenience. Time is a precious commodity in American culture, and people can get angry when time is wasted or not respected. So here's a tip. Communicate with people when you make plans. If you agree to meet someone at a certain time, try to be punctual. You can usually be 5 to 10 minutes late for coffee or even dinner, and it won't be a problem. But have the courtesy to text your contacts and say, I'm on my way. You can even give your ETA, that is, your estimated time of arrival. If you're coming by car, you know you can share your ETA with any GPS app, right? If you're seriously running behind schedule, text or call to apologize. Making someone wait for a super long time won't go over well. In a business context, showing up late is often unacceptable. After 15 minutes past the scheduled time, a doctor's office has the right to cancel your appointment and still charge you, for example. Calendar apps have helped a lot of us get organized, Even before they became popular, Americans loved to schedule things. In my experience, at least in recent decades, it's not really normal to drop by someone's place out of the blue. My son reminded me that casual drop-ins are common in college dorms. But outside a college campus, you don't just arrive at someone's home and expect to ring the doorbell and then socialize for the next hour. Oh, no. Americans schedule almost everything in advance. Even if it's a casual visit, you'd likely text first and ask, Are you busy? Or, Are you around? And then you can make a suggestion to hang out or request a stop by. Do you know that we Americans have been scheduling playdates for our kids for at least a couple of decades? Yes, when kids depend on parents to drive them everywhere, playdates have to go on the calendar for them to have any chance of happening. Americans are busy with family obligations, doctor's appointments, visits from contractors, errands, and, of course, work. So playtime with other children usually has to be scheduled. American kids are often involved in various activities from a young age, which adds events to our busy calendars. Swimming lessons, soccer practice, taekwondo classes, art camp, and the like. Don't forget that kids also have dentist appointments, eye doctor appointments, and special school events. Did I mention parent-teacher conferences during the school year? All these things go on the family calendar. Both children and their parents have plenty of scheduled events and that makes any additional free time very precious. So it's not that surprising that we came up with the concept of playdates. Guess who else has playdates in the USA? Dogs! Americans love their pets, so dogs also have their needs, including trips to the vet, doggy daycare, and playdates, which can mean getting together with other pet owners and letting our dogs play together. This is also time for us to chit-chat, so it's a social activity for both the animals and the humans. A win-win situation. Maybe you don't have kids and you have no plans to own a pet, and that's fine. But if you're in the USA, you'll still need a calendar app because you'll have plenty of meetings to attend and appointments to keep. Sometimes we take on so much that we need an accountability buddy. That's what we call it in American English. We also say accountability partner. This is someone who helps us stay on track as we complete tasks to achieve goals. Sometimes we join accountability groups for the same reason. It can help to acknowledge a goal that everyone is working towards and it requires consistent effort. Do you know how it works? Well, you have to schedule regular check-ins with your partner or group and then you all share your progress. Have you ever tried it? I have. I like the feeling of support and the scheduled check-ins motivate me to get things done on time. The popularity of accountability buddies right now reflects our strong desire to reach our goals despite our very hectic lives. It doesn't always work, though. I've been in groups where some people fail to show up due to a schedule conflict or just plain forgetting. Then it's up to me to hold myself accountable. Accountability directly relates to productivity. And knowing what kind of schedule you need to keep is important. Americans uphold productivity. We like to celebrate big and small wins when it comes to getting things done. How do many of us stay on top of our day-to-day errands? Either there's a physical to-do list on the wall somewhere or people like me have reminders going off throughout the day and week. Beep, beep, beep, buzz, buzz. These alerts remind me to feed the pets, change the frog water, clean the A.C. filter, take out the trash, clean my makeup brushes, or find time to meditate. If I don't have something on my calendar or on my list of reminders, there's significantly less chance it will happen. As I said, time is a precious commodity. Our days fill up rather fast. Of course, what time the day starts varies from person to person and from household to household. If you have young children, you'll be up early. Their internal clock usually has them up around 6 in the morning. And you need to be up anyway with school-age kids because our schools start early. Elementary schools may start at 9 a.m., but many American high schools have a deplorable start time of 7.30 a.m. or even earlier. My own school bus picked me up by 7 a.m., so as a teen, I had to roll out of bed around 5.45 in the morning. Most of us stumbled to the bus stop and slept on the way to school. My kids don't enjoy waking up early either. Thankfully, my son is in college now and he has more control over his schedule. Sometimes his first class isn't until 11 a.m., but he's kind of an exception. Given a choice, he likes to have dinner around 9 p.m. He goes to sleep late. Both my kids changed from early birds to night owls as they got older. That suits me fine because I enjoy sleeping in until 8 or 9 whenever I can. However, a good number of Americans wake up bright and early. I don't know if they're naturally chipper in the morning or if they just drink lots of coffee. Maybe it's a combination because Americans do drink tons of coffee. But breakfast hours at American restaurants Sometimes my kids and I barely make it in time for a free hotel breakfast because we don't like to get up at dawn. Since we're talking about mealtimes, I'll note that lunchtime in the U.S. is anywhere between 11 a.m. and about 2 p.m. Of course, in high school it was different for me. I was up before 6 o'clock, so I didn't mind having lunch around 10-30 in the morning. I was definitely hungry by then. But dinnertime is fairly consistent in America. We usually eat the final meal of the day between 5 and 7 p.m. Exceptions happen on vacation, but we often don't have the luxury of staying up late when the school or work day starts so early. And don't forget that Americans often need to travel a distance to get anywhere. Even if it isn't all that far, morning traffic can be a nightmare, even in a small town. We love our cars as much as we love protecting our routines and schedules. So the roads fill up with cars just as our calendars fill up with events. I know it all sounds kind of crazy, but busyness feels normal to most of us. Maybe that's partly why we like to celebrate milestones. If we didn't do this, then one busy day would unfold into another endlessly. Instead, we mark all kinds of special occasions and anniversaries. Where? On our calendars! Let me tell you about one tradition that's become popular for many American families. Parents make first day of school signs and take photos of their kids before they leave home. There's a photo of little Lauren going to her first day of kindergarten, first grade, second grade, all the way up to her high school graduation. The photos go on social media on the first day of school. Millions get posted, and they all use the same hashtags, more or less. Actually, it's kind of cute. My family didn't do this, but we had other ways to mark the passage of time. We all need to pause every now and then to appreciate the long road we've traveled. The kids grow up, we parents grow older, the world changes, and time marches on. How you choose to value your time and make use of your time is up to each and every one of us, regardless of our culture. I hope you enjoyed hearing my thoughts on this topic. You can access the full transcript and download the PDF as a free member of my English with Jennifer community on Patreon. Visit my website to learn how to join. englishwithjennifer.com Thanks for listening and happy studies!