#polychronic

As I was searching info for a colleague about Polyvalence, I came across things concepts which I've never read before.

This is what I found on wikipedia:

In The Silent Language (1959), Edward T. Hall coined the term polychronic to describe the ability to attend to multiple events simultaneously, as opposed to "monochronic" individuals and cultures who tend to handle events sequentially.

Chronemics is the study of the use of time in nonverbal communication. The way that one perceives and values time, structures time and reacts to time frames communication.

The United States is considered a monochronic society. This perception of time is learned and rooted in the Industrial Revolution, where "factory life required the labor force to be on hand and in place at an appointed hour" (Guerrero, DeVito & Hecht, 1999, p. 238). For Americans, time is a precious resource not to be wasted or taken lightly.

A polychronic time system is a system where several things can be done at once, and a more fluid approach is taken to scheduling time. Unlike the United States, Canada, most of northern and western Europe, and most of East Asia, Latin American, African, South Asian, and Arab cultures use the polychronic system of time. These cultures are much less focused on the preciseness of accounting for each and every moment. As Raymond Cohen notes, polychronic cultures are deeply steeped in tradition and relationships rather than in tasks—a clear difference from their monochronic counterparts.

SOURCES: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_T._Hall

“You can only do one thing well at a time.” “There is no such thing as multitasking.”

I hear the former daily in my student teaching in Spokane and heard the later often from a college professor citing a study of the brain.  They are a part of a culture that claims “There is a time and a place for everything” and would rather set a potentially faulty solution in place to at least get action going than wait to be certain of the perfect solution.

This is a monochronic culture.  A future oriented culture.  An “April showers bring May flowers” and an “A penny saved is a penny earned” culture.

Much of America and Western Europe perceives time in this way.  It is a low context culture.  We don’t want our time wasted in meetings where we already know the information and we don’t want to have to repeat ourselves.  We want to be given the information to make a decision and then to move one.  For this reason we tend to see ourselves as problem solvers, and as doers.

In other parts of the world such as some Asian countries, much of Eastern Europe and Africa, and rural Alaska there is a polychronic, past oriented, high context culture.  In such a culture, meetings are rarely to get or give information so much as to build relationships and it is more important to wait for the right time to enact the perfect solution than to move quickly.  To this end, it often takes a long time for work to get done, so people do many things at once.

This becomes a problem when groups with differing perspectives try to interact.  If someone with a monochronic perspective and someone with a polychronic perspective hold a meeting together the first may think the second is disorganized and trying to thwart any progress while the second may think the first is brash, disrespectful, and not concerned with the good of the group at large.

I see my students struggling with this daily.  In their homes and culture they are trained to take things slowly, to care more about the people around them than about moving themselves forward, and to let things rest, work on something they know, and let that which they don’t wait until they do.  In school they are told the opposite, to sit when it is time to sit and stand when it is time to stand, to look to their own task, to work on one step at a time, and to persevere single-mindedly, even when it seems like they cannot succeed.

The way we view time affects our interactions and perceptions of the world, and these students struggle to live in two times every day.

colornoise - Polychronic (2013)

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"Making the most of a limited palate,@thecolornoise's #Polychronic is stomping noise-rock w/ a lot of promise."

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