One of these small things is valuing the time that others give you.
I have been treating and training Sachin Tendulkar since 2002, and over all these years, I can count just 2-3 times that he has cancelled a session without sufficient notice. In fact, I remember even in the early days when he was at the height of his career, (and I was not), he would send a message with an apology if he was getting delayed by as little as 5 minutes!
I got a message from him today, well over an hour before I was to see him. He was not feeling too well and needed to cancel the session. The message came with an apology “Sorry for the last minute change” and a “Thanks”, even though there was sufficient reason to cancel. A simple acknowledgement of the value of my time.
Especially in a city like Mumbai where commute is difficult and time-consuming, and time is extremely valuable, all of us need to respect each other’s time.
At Prakruti SSPC Pvt Ltd. we rarely keep any one waiting for their appointment. We try our best to space out appointments, so that the clinics are not crowded, and our patients are comfortable.
But we often have to deal with a few patients repeatedly cancelling sessions at the last minute, sometimes not showing up without bothering to cancel, and sometimes coming extremely late for an appointment, All of this without an apology. A late cancellation means that we lose valuable time, find it difficult to function efficiently, and of course we lose revenue because we had reserved that time-slot and denied it to someone else.
In today’s fast-paced world, “Time is money”. It is therefore not wrong to say that those who regularly miss appointments, or fail to cancel them in time, are squandering our money!
Greatness is a lot of small things done well every day.
