11/08/2026
The Crime of Wasting Time by Mr. Prince Kofi Amoabeng
If the greatest crime against a human being is to deliberately take away their life by shortening the number of years they were meant to live, then wasting another person's time should be regarded as a crime of a similar moral weight.
Life is measured in time. Every minute, every hour, and every day that passes is a portion of a person's life that can never be recovered. When you waste someone's time unnecessarily, you are not merely taking away minutes from their schedule—you are taking away irreplaceable moments from their life.
This is why time should be treated with the same seriousness with which we treat life itself. Money can be lost and recovered. Property can be destroyed and rebuilt. Opportunities can sometimes return. But time, once spent, is gone forever.
To deliberately keep people waiting without justification, to make promises you have no intention of keeping, to arrive consistently late, to engage people in unnecessary conversations, or to demand their attention without respecting its value is, in a sense, to consume a portion of their life without their permission.
We often condemn someone who takes another person's life, yet we casually waste the time of others without recognising the value of what we are taking from them.
Respecting people's time is therefore more than good manners; it is a demonstration of respect for their lives. When you value someone's time, you are saying, "I recognise that your life is precious, and I will not unnecessarily take away a portion of it."
Perhaps one of the highest forms of respect we can give another person is simply this: do not waste their time.
Because when you waste someone's time, you are not just wasting time—you are wasting a small, unrecoverable portion of their life.