The Yamas, Ethical Principles in Relation to Others: Asteya

Asteya (non-stealing)

Aphorism: Don’t take what isn’t earned: people’s time, credit, or potential.

HR Application: Asteya challenges us to respect employee time, intellectual property, and emotional labor. When leaders take credit for others’ work or underpay staff despite high performance, it’s a breach of this ethic. To advance this principle, we need to focus on fair wages, acknowledgment, and advancement.

A good example to help clarify this; consider meeting. How often are you in a meeting with no clear agenda? Or how often is a meeting called for something that could have been an email? Meetings are for decision making and if no decisions are made, then why is there a meeting? When employees, especially in management positions, are caught in back-to-back meetings, how does that advance anything? Deep work is a necessity. We spend so much time in shallow work, that we don’t get to truly exercise our brains. We rob ourselves of the opportunity to truly focus and deliver exceptional work. 

Metrics to watch

• Meeting hours/FTE (determine a target by role, including scope)
• Percentage of calendar in focus blocks (determine what is appropriate based on role and scope)
• Decision latency (tighten the request to decision timeline)
• Time-to-clarity (ensure the written rationale for decisions is shared)

Asteya test for time: Ask yourself: “If this hour were my own money, would I still spend it this way?”

Auditing Asteya:

• Time: Take a look at the top 5 or 10 recurring meetings: Is there a purpose? Is there a clear decision maker? Are meetings resulting in meetings being made? Considering all of these, either eliminate or re-scope meetings as needed.

Asteya makes excellence possible
Guarding time fuels deep work. Guarding credit builds trust. Practiced together, Asteya turns busy organizations into high-clarity, high-ownership teams where no one’s time, ideas, or future is taken without being truly earned.