I am Always Late

Finally, we came to the third question you need to ask yourself before you start working on your punctuality and abilities to manage your time effectively. Ask yourself: why do I need to change my behavior and do everything possible to stop my being chronically late? Why do I want it now and why have I never wanted this before? If it is not the first attempt of yours to fight with chronic lateness, then ask yourself: why have I failed before? Was I not too patient or didn’t I have enough of willpower? Also, ask yourself, are you ready for this hard struggle against your bad habits? Finally, make it clear for yourself, what kind of reward you will have in case if your performance is good and your negative habits are gone with the wind.

Practical experience of many specialists in time management shows that having a worthy goal and a strong and clear motivation for giving up a habit of being chronically late is a very important stimulating factor which usually brings to achieving very good results. Let me tell you a story: there was a guy, an incorrigible latecomer, who was always depressed and never cared about his own life. He has forgotten the ambitions of his youth and was spending his time as an accountant in a small private lawyer’s office. Together with his wife, they used to manage to make ends meet, but everything the family could afford is going to their vacation once a year.

However, one day he met one of his old friends, a successful businessman in his late 30s, who offered our loser a new occupation. “I remember that you were always very good in creative arts”, the businessman said, “so join my designer’s team and get a taste of real life.” This was a new beginning for the former accountant, who very soon proved to be absolutely great in designing interiors and decorating apartments. One of the first things he learned was being always on time for his meetings with the clients, otherwise his incomes would not be that impressive. Less then in one year he bought a prestigious house for his family, and the next summer he paid for his sons’ vacation in Europe.

Certainly, breaking any habit requires recognition of the problem, recognition that the habit is bad and having a strong desire to extinguish it. Take your time and think more, in what ways your chronic lateness affects your life? Didn’t you feel embarrassed and responsible for the negative effects of your habit on the life of the people around you? How many interesting things and activities you have failed to do due to your habit to procrastinate and put the things off? How many opportunities you have missed and how many of those you will possibly miss in the future? Find the answers on these questions and convince yourself that you need to get rid of your perpetual lateness and procrastination.

Maybe your reason is not too clear for you yet – it is fine. But remember that having a great long-run objective is the most important reason to start working on your punctuality and the most effective stimulative factor for our success. Get support from your friends and close people, visualize possible rewards for your persistence and willpower. Finally, value your future! The changes you will experience in your life are really worth the efforts you are going to spend for breaking you chronic bad habits, but if you do not really want to change your tendency to be always late, do not even spend your time for reading these pages. If you are ready for immediate action, have a steady unbated perseverance and feel strong enough to start our journey – follow me…

The second question you need to answer is: why are you always late? What is(are) the most probable reason(s) of your being late all the time, no matter how important your meeting is or how badly your boyfriend usually gets angry after waiting for you for hours. In order to answer to this question you have to analyze your behavior and your personal approach to the things you usually do. Be honest with yourself!

Undoubtedly, the leading reason of being always late is inability to estimate own time and fit the things that must be done in the planned schedule. Many people are late because they do not know how to prioritize the things they need to do and, therefore, they frequently put off important visits, meetings or other activities. Or, on the contrary, they try to fit too many different things and tasks into one day. As a result, such people always have to rush in the last minute, be late again and again, and make up more and more excuses again and again. Knowing the basic skills of effective time management plus a strong desire to become more organized and punctual can help such people to solve their problem of being always late.

Some people (especially young ladies and women) are always late because they like attracting attention. When you are late for your lecture and have to enter the classroom after your Professor has already started delivering the lecture, everyone will definitely look at you. The same will happen if you are late for a party, for a theater play or for the official beginning of your working day in the office. Therefore, lack of other people’s attention in our daily life is another key reason of being chronically late.

In some situations, the reasons of our being late are in our subconscious. When a person is constantly late to some place, it can mean that he or she does not really want to go there. For example, you need to go to school, university or office, but there’s nothing but your daily routine waiting for you there. Or, you need to visit your aunt with her noisy children, who will turn your day into a real hell! So, if you need to do a thing you really do not want to do or go to a place you do not want to go to, your brain automatically starts generating the calls to delay doing this thing or delay the visit. And you automatically start doing something more “necessary” or more important (cleaning your room, preparing dinner for the whole family or doing your homework), which can justify your being late to somewhere.

In addition, many of us can be late because of feeling uncomfortable about being put into some limits or schedules. Some people hate being told, what exact time they have to come at, that is why being late is a form of protest against such “dictatorship”. For example, it’s a common idea to be late for work in order to show the boss that you do not really care about his schedules and defy his authority. If you belong to this type of latecomers, you need to think about possible outcomes of your behavior. Will it be good for you and should you ever dream about a promotion in the company, where you are known as a rebel-latecomer?

Finally, one more reason for late personalities to be always late is their neglect of other people’s time and a habit to treat people with disrespect. Such people are usually concentrated only on their own things and problems, giving no importance to time or their obligations. This behavior is frequently accompanied by laziness and obliviousness, and the latecomers of such origins are extremely hard to be changed.

Let’s suppose that you have already understood very well how serious can be the consequences of chronic lateness. This problem can really bring to very disappointing results. For example, you can be a good, experienced and well-qualified specialist, but if you are a chronic latecomer, your employer will definitely prefer another less qualified and proficient employee. Chronic lateness and tardiness always result in lost money, wasted time, missed opportunities, forgotten birthdays, lost friendships, hurt feelings, gone hopes, morale and psychological problems, and so on.

So, you have made up your mind to start the battle against your lateness and want to learn how to prioritize, schedule and handle all your work on time. In such case, we are in the beginning of an interesting journey, during which I will open you the secrets of effective self organization and time management. You must be wondering now, where do we start from? To begin with, you need to ask yourself three very important questions and give very thoughtful and considerate answers. The first question to be answered is: what type of a latecomer are you?

We all know that all people belong to the following groups:

• The people who are never late.
• The people who are late sometimes, mostly due to some serious circumstances, such as problems with transportation, a sickness, stresses or heavy load at work, etc.
• The people who usually come a little later to any sort of ordinary meetings or dates, but still can control their time and generally be on time for more important events.
• The chronic latecomers, who are late in 95-99% of the situations.

Unfortunately, within the last decades the share of the last two groups of people has been firmly increasing. If you are sure that you belong to the first two groups, I do not think that you need to change something in your behavior because you are simply not a latecomer. However, if you belong to the last two groups (especially to the fourth one), you have to get ready for a long way to self-improvement that will soon bring to great changes in your life and your attitude toward your own time.

Now, you can continue analyzing your behavior and looking for the answer on the question using some help from an experienced specialist. In a recently published bestseller “Never Be Late Again: 7 Cures for the Punctually Challenged”, Diana Delonzor, an expert in overcoming perpetual lateness, classifies chronic latecomers the following way:

• The Absent-Minded Professor: a person who lives in his or her own world and never thinks about time, who always forgets everything or can be distracted very easily. Such people are usually slow and leave their things here and there. They often jump from one activity to another or get lost in what they are doing.

• The Indulger: a procrastinator who has obvious lack of self-control and wastes the time for doing useless things. These people have no good concept of time and always put important things off that leads to chronic lateness.

• The Evader: a person who always feels the necessity to control own environment, and this idea makes him/her anxious. Such people have problems with self-organization, and their inability to do the things properly makes them feel helpless and stressed out. At that, the Evaders’ own needs or routine takes precedence over their being on time.

• The Deadliner: a person, who truly enjoys running behind the schedules and looks for a crisis to get motivated and win the battle. Adrenaline in the form of the last-minute sprint to the finish line is the best way for them to prove own importance: however, it always leads to being desperately late.

• The Rationalizer: a person who is very often late for work or meeting, but always justifies such behavior by various outside circumstances. Such people hate being reminded about their being late because they do not acknowledge their responsibility for lateness and blame everything or everyone but themselves. Usually, they are able to make up very realistic excuses for their lateness.

• The Producer: a very busy person who tends to squeeze incredible amount of tasks into every minute and do several things at the same time. They are always late because they can not properly schedule their time and have to go on doing something they have planned. Like the Rationalizers, many of the Producers also do not admit their fault for being late, because punctuality is not a priority in their life.

• The Rebel: a passive-aggressive type of people, who truly hate stereotypes, everyday rules and schedules. By being always late they try to resist authority and underline their courage of breaking the laws. For the Rebels, their tardiness is a form of demonstrating that they are in control of their own life.