151 Quick Ideas to Deal With Difficult People

82Getting Colleagues to Respect Your Time

One of the most ambitious people I’ve ever met was a single parent with three children. After she cleared the dinner table and helped her children with their homework, she did her own homework—studying for a law degree. Time was her most precious commodity back then. It was severely limited and a lot of things competed for it. She watched her time so zealously that she seldom socialized. In time, the time management paid off. She became a lawyer and then a judge.

You may view time as a finite commodity. But some of your colleagues may not. Dawdling is okay with them, because as they see it, they’ll always have lots of time to catch up. These colleagues are the time bandits you’ll have to guard against. ...