Human history has advanced through revolutions
searching for the most precious property we have: time.

Computers allow us to calculate in seconds
operations that would take hours for a human being,
cars allowed us to reach our destination faster than on
foot, and then planes excelled cars by reaching greater
distances at higher speeds.

If it is so obvious that the lack of time, the fear that
our lives will end, is the great incentive for the great
advances in society, why do we assume that wasting
time is normal.

A study by the website Get Your Guide has drawn up a ranking in which it tells us how many hours we “waste” waiting in queues in the main tourist cities.

London Eye: 2.5 hours
Anne Frank House (Amsterdam): 2.5 hours
Eiffel Tower (Paris): 2 hours
St. Peter’s Basilica (Rome): 2 hours
Vatican Museums (Rome): 2 hours
Colosseum (Rome): 2 hours
Casa Batlló (Barcelona): 1,5 hours
Sagrada Familia (Barcelona): 1.5 hours
Tower of London: 1.5 hours
Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam): 1.5 hours
Empire State Building (New York): 1.5 hours
Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam): 1 hour
Saint Paul’s Cathedral (London): 1 hour
Louvre Museum (Paris): 1 hour
Top of the Rock (New York): 20 minutes

And these are just a few tourist sites, but we find queues in many places we use every day, from getting on the bus to getting into class or going to the pharmacy.

Thanks to or because of the last logistics class, I spend time thinking about how to improve some of the queues I see. How long does the customer wait? How long are the servers empty? How much can the system get out? At what rate?

You may delay, but time will not. – Benjamin Franklin