It’s the middle of a busy workday. Looming over you is a 3 p.m. deadline for a report and a 3:30 appointment with the dentist. Suddenly your father calls. He wants to talk to you about plans for an upcoming surprise party for your mother. Should you disrupt your work schedule and talk or tell your father that another time would be more convenient?

Dilemmas such as this revolve around chronemics, the way you use time to communicate during interpersonal encounters. Edward Hall, who pioneered work on proxemics, also wrote extensively on chronemics (from the Greek word khronos, meaning “time”). As you learned in Chapter 5, Hall distinguished between two time orientations: M- time and P-time (Hall, 1997b). People who have an M-time (or monochronic) orientation value careful scheduling and time management. They view time as a precious resource: it can be saved, spent, wasted, lost, or made up, and it can even run out. So, if you have an M-time view, you likely would perceive your father’s call as an interruption, and time taken during the workday to discuss a party as “misspent.”

If you’re an M-time person, “spending time” with someone, or “making time” in your schedule to share activities with him or her, sends the message that you consider that person and your relationship important (Hall, 1983). You may view time as a gift you give to others to show love or caring, or a tool with which you can punish (“I no longer have time for you”).

In contrast to M-time people, people who have a P-time (or polychronic) orientation don’t view time as a resource to be spent, saved, or guarded. And they rarely think of time as “wasted.” If you’re a P-time person, you might view your father’s phone call as a welcome reprieve from the stress of work and an opportunity for an enjoyable and lengthy conversation.