“I am always 10 minutes early…so if you're 10 minutes late, I've been foot-tapping for 20 minutes. I know it's not fair to hold the first 10 against you, but I just can't help myself.”
“Public transport malfunctions, lost contact lenses, last-minute clothing catastrophes…all conspire to keep us from our destinations. But if it were merely a question of quotidian mishap, we would all be late with equal frequency, so how come the chronically tardy are always late and the fastidiously prompt are always on time? If I can manage to be punctual, why can't you?”
“Because you faffed and fiddled and I didn't. And don't even think about blaming the traffic. How do you think I got here? By flying carpet? Late trains or slow tractors just won't wash: only ineptitude or arrogance can explain persistent lateness."
“Let's tackle the lesser sin first. Scatty, dizzy people are always late because they're incapable of making realistic calculations about how long it takes to do things. You've got too much on your plate, love. There are 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour; just deal with it."
“Much worse, though, are the shoddy timekeepers with inflated egos. Fashionably late? How can it be chic to make a balls-up of something as straightforward as time management? Swanning in late is not proof of an anarchic, carefree or artistic temperament, either - it's just rude. Deliberate lateness is nothing short of an expression of contempt.”
Monday, March 28, 2005
Being late can be cured
This piece really struck a chord with me. I hate being late and I hate people who are late, especially those who are persistently late. Aside from the two categories she mentions below, there are also the addicts. Addicted to powerplays, addicted to lateness. They like being late because they think that shows they are more powerful or more busy than those they keep waiting. But what they are mainly demonstrating is that they are incompetent at managing time effectively themselves and unable to delegate to others.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Believe me, as a chronically bad time-manager, I'm not late on purpose in an attempt to piss off the punctual folks. The fact is, a creative person loses the ability to properly notice the passage of time - ever get really caught up in some project and looked up to find hours have passed without you noticing? It's a natural part of that right-brain artistic thinking process, and if you're creative for a living, it's very hard to turn that process off. So it's not that I mean to be rude or that I feel in any way superior (quite the opposite), I'm just built that way. Please show us some compassion - we're trying!
I hate tardiness. But, I recognize there are those people who think I should be okay with their tardiness. I'm not. If you are not on time--I leave without you, or I move on to the next thing. If you want to reschedule you can, but you'll get the same treatment if you are late the next time.
I too have artistic tendencies and can look up to see 5 hours has flown by as well. However, if I have an appointment I have a mechanism to pull me out of that focus ,(like an alarm or meeting reminder), so I am not late for the appointment. How difficult is it to choose to respect other people's time? You have the world's permission to be frivolous with your time, but you can't be with mine unless I agree to that...which is not likely to happen anytime soon. So, if you miss your 1-hour meeting with me by being 10 minutes late, you now have :50 minutes of your frivolous time to burn. Hope that meeting wasn't important. And by the way, after you've done it a couple times, you're fired.
Stop "trying to be on time" and just "BE on time". There are no excuses. That's especially true if you know you are always late. And, based on what you said, you know you are. So here's a hint: Leave earlier!
Brains are very complicated. The ability to judge the passage of time is a brain function that has nothing to do with intelligence or with a power trip. People who are always early just don't have the same brains as people who are always late. This doesn't mean they are better or smarter. Chronically late people have the ability to focus intensely on something and tune everything out, like someone absorbed in reading is not distracted by their surroundings. The other comments by "early" people seem extremely arrogant. Take the issue of time off the table and compare brains. Most "early" people fall short in areas of intense concentration and staying focused on something for hours without "coming up for air."
Post a Comment