Time Factor

Avant-garde composer John Cage was famous for his song “4 Minutes and 33 Seconds.” To perform the piece, a pianist sat at the piano in complete silence, for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. The “music” was created by the audience as a collection of noises made while awaiting the expected actions of the pianist. Confused whispers, coughs, and giggles created a unique “Chance Composition” that could never be repeated once that performance was finished. Whenever someone asked Cage why the piece had to be four minutes and thirty-three seconds long, he replied that if the song were any shorter it would be incomplete. In his kooky way he was saying that you should use the exact amount of time necessary to make the performance meaningful to everyone involved.

Ever since it became a commodity in the 19^th Century, conventional wisdom has dictated that time is an asset you have no choice in spending. It spends itself, leaving us with only the choice of how to manage it. We have come to value our time so highly that it has evolved into one of the world’s most important forms of currency. We value it as we do the Dollar, Euro, Pound, Peso, or Yen. In our endless quest to maximize it, time is getting compressed. Attention spans are shrinking and we are learning to execute multiple tasks simultaneously. We are 21^st Century busy-bees viewing our lives through compound eyes: a thousand lenses focused on a thousand tasks.

In our professional and private lives, we have become fiercely protective of our time and increasingly intolerant of wasting it. So a professional trainer is expected to efficiently manage students’ time and offer valuable intellectual property in return. Doing both simultaneously is an art form every trainer should strive to master.

The most important aspects of teaching are always rooted in instinct. So there is no formula for deciding how or when to adjust your agenda to fill the time available. But you can develop some fundamental habits that—when combined with your better judgment—will keep you on the right track.

Learning takes time. At some point time becomes too short for a student to genuinely engage with the material and understand how to implement crucial concepts. You should assess—or at least anticipate—the learning needs of your students before the class starts, and secure the time necessary to address them.

You can try to squeeze a three-day class into a half-day. The trainer can explain the concepts but the students won’t have time to experience them. They won’t have time to practice any new skills. Faced with such a request, you should negotiate with your contact for a two-day class and let them choose a slimmed-down selection of topics from your curriculum. Compressing form and content into the smallest space possible is often necessary. But you can easily find yourself only describing what you could be teaching them. Reducing your class to an extended sales-pitch doesn’t meet anyone’s needs.

A carefully structured agenda provides a trainer with a blueprint for the perfect class. It also establishes a baseline for expanding or contracting activities during an imperfect one. You should plan in as much detail as possible, knowing that the class will probably not go exactly as expected. Planning in detail does two things: it creates the script for the best-case scenario and helps you rehearse for the worst-case one. Advance preparation sharpens your material and your mind at the same time. Since you will rely on both in the classroom, it is simply the best practice for the real thing.

That said, no amount of planning replaces the need for flexibility and improvisation. Sticking to your plan at all costs is systematic and tidy, but it can be counterproductive to your goal of helping students learn in the way that makes sense for them. You need to apply the subject to their job’s and personalities, using examples they can relate to. Especially because—like Cage’s “4 Minutes and 33 Seconds,”—no two classes will ever be the same.

A trainer’s instinct for transferring knowledge can work against their efforts at achieving quality time management. As long as you are excited about being a trainer, you will be tempted to share everything that you know. Diving deeply into a topic can be intellectually stimulating, and recounting relevant anecdotes can be fun. But while these digressions and indulgences add depth and color to a class, they also add weight and volume. Recognizing when to stop giving examples or feeding students theory makes the difference between a class laden with pork, and a class that is lean and mean. Give them a tasty class without the fat.

Students find the greatest benefit in exploring a concept thoroughly enough to apply it to their own situation and then moving on. As a rule-of-thumb, your role as Class Manager should take priority over that of Subject-Matter-Expert. It is the first role that ensures students walk away with the right combination of knowledge, in the right quantities, in the time available.

Composing a Masterpiece

In “4 Minutes and 33 Seconds,” John Cage created a work of performance art that existed in perfect time. It arrested people’s attention and kept them engaged long enough to provoke and instill meaning. Yet it ended before the concept lost its resonance and simply became a cheap gag. His quip about the piece’s length was rooted in his understanding of an audience’s willingness to collaborate with him. He sensed how much of a challenge they would accept from him, and how much energy they were willing to invest in the experience. In other words, he knew how to run a classroom like a master trainer.

Mark Lewis is an intercultural writer, trainer, and consultant based in Pleasanton, California. He has experience living and working in the U.S., Germany, and England. He can be reached at: Spudabbott76@hotmail.com

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