Each culture has its own system how to use time, which is extremely important to mind for intercultural communication. According to Edward Hall, American anthropologist and cross-cultural researcher, cultures can be divided in terms of how this certain culture use time into two opposite types: monochronic, in which time is distributed in such a way that only one kind of activity can be performed in the same period of time and polychronic, in which several types of activity can be performed in the same period of time.
Monochronic time cultures emphasize schedules, a precise reckoning of time, and promptness. People with this cultural orientation tend to do one thing after another, finishing each activity before starting the next. The representatives of monochronic cultures are the USA, Germany, the UK, Turkey, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Jamaica, Canada, Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries.
On the other hand, in polychronic cultures, people tend to handle multiple things concurrently and to emphasize the number of completed actions and the number of people involved, rather than the adherence to time schedule. Being on time is less important in polychronic cultures than in monochronic cultures. The representatives of polychronic cultures are Russia, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Mexico, India and others.
Monochronic people (Hall terms them as M-people) tend to divide time in discreet segment or parts, which are to be dealt with one at a time. It is not logical to have two activities going on at the same time. M-people can become frustrated with Polychronic people (who are P-people) who view time as something fluid and who easily alter schedules to shifting priorities. In P-time cultures, meetings may start late, run overtime, and allow outside issues to interrupt them. In addition, adherence to deadlines may depend on the strength of the relationship.
It's not bad or good to be polychronic or monochronic, it's just you are, but it's a significant thing to consider when you have multicultural setting at your work or studies. Different attitudes to time a.k.a. how to plan a work, how many tasks to do at one time, attitudes to deadlines, level of productivity depending on the stage of project and how close deadline is - all of these can become a ground for conflict, and this, as we know, don't help the process at all. For example, for French people being late for a meeting, even with friends, is a moveton (one Erasmus student from France told me about that), while for Russians and Italians being late don't mean a thing, they just don't see anything wrong in being 5 minutes late, because they think that everyone won't be on time. While one nation considers this action as an act of disrespect, for others it's just a typical thing, and all this situation is based on the different attitude to time.
To avoid this situation in working process strict rules and openness between team-members would help. Adherence to deadlines in business is vital because even waste of time is money, and money is the key-factor for any firm, so here having strict rules and schedules that workers should obey would help to get away from misunderstandings.
When it comes to teamwork and the teammates are from both polychronic and monochronic types, M-people can be annoyed by the fact that P-people do everything in the last moment, for example, or have not so serious attitude to the deadlines. In this situation, M-people should take into consideration that different people feel time differently, so if nothing threatens the project and the work is placed within the schedule, then it's fine and a monochronic person should let the situation flow, otherwise if M-person will remind P-person constantly about his/her part of work, P-person can accuse M-person of mistrust and disbelief, what might become a reason of a conflict.
So, as we can see, definition of which type of culture - monochronic or polychronic - you belong to is very important. However, nowadays, I think, this theme isn't paid due attention. Now you know more about how the approach to time very depending on the culture and, I hope, you will make due conclusions out from it.
After all I have one little advice for you: be patient and accept the fact that all of us are different.
