Being on time

November 21st, 2007          Email This Post        Print This Post

I have a chronic problem with arriving late. Not arriving an hour late, but arriving 3-5 minutes late – all the time. I try to make myself get there on time but it just doesn’t seem to work. Today I got a flood of ideas about why I am so often late. Knowing why you are late gives you the opportunity to combat those issues. Here are the major things to keep in mind:

Why be on time?
If we have no desire to be on time, then we won’t be serious about trying to change. If we are late to a personal meeting or date, it gives a very bad impression – one of not caring enough to be on time, immaturity, or not caring about wasting the other person’s time. For business meetings, it shows a lack of responsibility – this habit could lose you lucrative business opportunities. Being late can also cause an awkward situation to arise if the meeting has already started. For prayer, you lose the opportunity to calm yourself before starting and – you are showing up late for an appointment with G-D, He might decide to smite you. You also lose the opportunity to calm and mentally prepare yourself AND you will be anxious about arriving on time.
All these reasons are very selfish reasons, which should be great. If you want a selfless reason, showing up late is just plain rude.

Why we don’t want to be on time
To arrive on time, we actually need to arrive early. If we plan to arrive exactly on time, we will most likely end up late. Planning to arrive early means leaving and getting there before we have to! Leaving early means forfeiting one last activity, which is the price we must pay to be on time. Getting there early probably means we won’t have anything to do when we get there. Depending on your outlook, this leads either to boredom or to wasting time. The solution, rather simply, is to have something (productive) to do. Bring something from home, or try some of these: practice your people or relationship skills, spend a few calming moments with some deep breathing, look over and imagine your current goals or intents, crank through your read/review stack, or spend some time thinking (or at worst, play some games on your cell phone).

Setting a deadline to leave
If we never set a deadline to leave for our appointment, how do we know how much time we have before we leave? We must decide how much time we really need to reach our appointment on time, or we can always tell ourselves we have more time, that it isn’t so important to leave right now. Use a watch and time how long it really takes you to reach your destination – many people have very inaccurate perceptions of time and chronically underestimate the time needed.

Wait – just one more thing!
If you are working on something close to your deadline to leave, this will cause you to feel rushed while working, which causes mistakes and anxiety. We also have a very intense need to finish whatever it is we are working on – it takes tremendous discipline to stop working on a task that you almost finished. The best things to do before your deadline are things you can stop without any mental resistance. This could be something you can take with you - reading, meditating, or listening to inspiring or personal development audio. Alternatively, they could be things you can stop at any point (it is best if you don’t expect to finish them) such as straightening up your workspace or home, or processing your inbox.

So: set and enforce a deadline to leave, because it really is important to get there on time, and have something to do when you get there early. Simple!

Similar Posts:

• Finding More Time, Part 1: Eliminating Activities
• Four Benefits from Scheduling Play Time
• Use open ended times for creative tasks!
• Procrastination Hack: 10 Second Delay
• Finding More Time, Part 4: Optimizing
• Finding More Time, Part 2: Delegating/Working With Others