More On Punctuality
Punctuality is something that has been highly valued and esteemed for centuries. “Better three hours too soon than a minute too late,” Shakespeare wrote, and Lord Nelson opens his secret to us, “I owe all my success in life to having been always a quarter of an hour before my time.” “Punctuality is a virtue, if you don’t mind being lonely”, somebody wise said, and in our life filled with communication, social activities, friendly ties and obligations, punctuality is simply a must!
Since our early age, we are being taught punctuality by our parents, our teachers and our friends. It becomes apparent that if we do not follow this simple practice of being always on time and never making other people wait for us, we will most likely have problems and suffer in our academic, professional, social and personal life. It is impossible to cover up and hide this nasty habit of being always late from the people around us since they will sooner or later be involved in the negative consequences caused by our tardiness and lack of punctuality.
Usually, punctuality is strictly linked to very effective planning and scheduling skills. If a person is not able to estimate correctly the time necessary for completing one or another task or action, he or she will be constantly late and have to face such failures as missed opportunities, lost friendships and unachieved goals. In other words, if you are not punctual, you are a loser, and the best idea is to demonstrate punctuality in every part of your life, from getting to work on time to going to bed on time.
However, it is really hard sometimes, and chronic latecomers are constantly looking for advice on how to change their life and their attitude. To be more punctual, start controlling your daily activities an find the point, when you are starting to run behind the schedule. This can be getting up late and staring the day with missing your bus and arriving to work late, or waking up too eary and being unable to pull yourself together for hours in the morning. Try to spot the first thing that makes you late, and changing it can help you to become more disciplined and punctual.
Also, analyze your daily activities closely and find out what exact things or actions make you run late. There are good chances that you will be able to find 2-3 particular activities or occupations that take too much of your time and efforts and stop you from your being on time. Spending too much time surfing in the net in the morning, talking too much to the phone in the afternoon or doing so much shopping in the evening – whatever it is, you can start changing this very thing and open a new path on your way to being never late again.


Procrastination is a serious problem of many modern people, which actually goes several hundred years back and was troubling humanity centuries ago. St. Augustine, a Father of Latin church, who lived and worked in the IVth century, spent years in studying the issues related to procrastination. This concept helped St. Augustine to fight against his physical and mental temptations, that is why he was looking at positive sides of procrastination. Another famous scientist, Leonardo da Vinci, was also a victim of this negative behavioral model. Due to his chronic delaying, lots of his paintings and bright technological ideas were left half-done. Mark Antonius, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Douglas Adams, Agatha Cristie and many more of famous successful people were chronic procrastinators as well.
As I have already said, many of those people who are chronically late or tardy have a tendency to justify their behavior by various outside factors. In other words, it is difficult for them to be honest with themselves and recognize the problem. That is why they go on looking for reasons and making up excuses for their improper behavior. However, there are times or certain situations, when these people start feeling sad or embarrassed because of their chronic tardiness. In such moments, there’s a great opportunity for them to begin working on changing their personality and giving up bad habit of being always late.
Those who are always running late are quite interesting people. Like for the majority of drinkers or smokers, it is also difficult for chronic latecomers to acknowledge their lateness as a bad habit. Certainly: they got used to being constantly accused in their tardiness and procrastination, and also they have perfectly mastered the art of creating never ending excuses for their being always late. That is why they try to make an impression of chronic victims of the circumstances. Ask a tardy, why is he/she late again? Most likely, you will hear something like “No, no, I was not running late, but then…”
For the last two-three decades, the changes in our life resulted from technological development were more than miraculous. Internet, computers, notebooks, e-mails, smartphones, Wi-Fi and bluetooth technology, flash cards: is it possible to imagine our life without them? That is why we all love technology. However, specialists do not stop warning us that we rely on the latest technological achievements and innovations too much. The truth is: all those devices and inventions were made to help us to save our time. But very often they play a role of very powerful time killers and cause a lot of unwanted stresses. Let’s take a closer look at this problem.
We always say “I have no time for this, I have no time for that…” However, many of us know so well that we spend a lot of time for noting. Watching TV and spending time in traffic jams are supposed to be the most common “time killers”. But, actually, there are so many more of them… Many of us have own sites or blogs, and the majority of such site owners are infected with the virus called “checking out the Statcounter“. Some of us tend to check out recent visitors activity every 15 minutes. What for? Certainly, to kill the time…
In addition to all those external time killers, there are also internal ones: all the factors connected with your personal traits which cause delays, problems at work, stresses and other unwanted side effects. Inner time killers are actually our habits and the parts of our life, therefore, it is usually harder to get rid of them. They commonly include such things as: