I am Always Late

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.

If you are one of those tarides, you should try changing your chronic tardiness and lateness in three steps. According to Diana Delonzor, the best option for you is to begin with monitoring closely your daily activities and write down, how many times you were late due to really important outside reasons and influences. Then, the expert recommends to recall all those regretful and embarrassing moments connected with your being late, as well as numerous uncompleted tasks, wrong steps, missed opportunities, canceled projects and so on. In order to acknowledge the problem you should fully understand negative consequences of your tardiness and lateness.

The second step is changing your mind and attitude toward punctuality. You should understand that being always late is nothing else but your personal choice, which takes source from the way you precept this world and look at your environment. To change your idea about chronic lateness and punctuality, you should look at the situation with the eyes of other people. Would you like the others making you wait all the time or breaking their promises? Will you still value and respect such people? It can be helpful to talk about your problem with someone you trust, with  a good friend or a relative who can give you an objective feedback on your usual behavior.

Finally, the third step is going into action and starting making some practical changes in your life. Rewarding yoruself for every successful attempt of not being late  is one of the most effective practical techniques, which can be generally used wen trying to change any bad behavior. Besides, you can punish youself every time when you are not punctual. For example, you can say your friends that you will pay for their meals every time you are late for a meeting or a party. This technique may work real great! Finally, you can ask people around you to assist and encourage you when you manage to be on time. Positive reaction of the people you love can be an excellent motivator for you to start changing yourself more effectively.

Success, advancement, high incomes and high social status are among the greatest motivators for further professional and personal development. Many people are trying so hard to be successful in this life and achieve something, but very often they fail over and over again. In the end of the ends, they get disappointed, dejected, depressed, and give up all their hopes for better life, eventually turning into lazy and grumpy guys. Maybe, they were doing something wrong?

There are 7 rules for those, who want to be successful in this life. All of these rules are simple and well-known. Try to use them, and very soon you will feel positive changes in your life and career.

1. STOP PITYING YOURSELF AND START DOING SOMETHING RIGHT NOW! It is always easy to find the reasons for failure. Women believe that they have less chances for success in this “business world of men”, and men are sure that everything is easier for women. Overweight people tend to connect their failures with their weight, and slim or short people do the same thing. Stop looking for reasons and remember that you and only you are the master of your destiny and your life!

2. BE READY TO INVEST IN YOURSELF. Moreover, learn to pay a real price for really good things. Think carefully about everything that is really important in this life, and avoid being mean about such things.

3. DO NOT PLAN TO RECEIVE EVERYTHING RIGHT AWAY. Our hunger for fast and easy money can lead us to bankruptcy.  Those people who do not understand that it is better to start their career with getting an average salary in a strong reputable company than receive good money from a company with doubtful reputation. If you want to reap something, you need to throw a seed first.

4. REMEMBER THAT TIME IS MONEY. Treasure your time and know how you actually spend it. Only loses can afford wasting their time and time of the people around.

5. DO ONLY WHAT YOU REALLY LIKE DOING. It is impossible to talk about any success and advancement in the business which does not actually bring you satisfaction and enjoyment. If you hate what you are doing, immediately start looking for new directions and new horizons for yourself.

6. AVOID DOING SOMETHING OUT OF ENVY. Envy is one of the most terrible feelings, which makes many people take inconsiderate actions. If you want to be successful in this life, you should learn to value your own skills and abilities and not to look at what other people have or can do.

7.  AVOID BORROWING MONEY. We always want more money to buy a good name and reputation, a fame of generous and kind person, a feeling of personal importance, and so on. However, learn to say “no” to yourself in many situations and know how to manage your life by your own means.

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…”

At that, this phenomenon does not always mean that the person is not troubled by his/her chronic lateness. It is a common knowledge that tardiness and being chronically late is something negative. The tardies know so well that being always late means disrespect to other people’s time and failure to meet their expectations. They know that chronic tardiness can seriously affect the career development and social life. So, late folks hate being reminded that they are always late and hate being reminded about that when they are called ‘latecomers’ or ‘chronically late people’. Instead, we can call them ‘punctually challenged’, or those who have continuous problems with punctuality and being on time.

This effective term was defined by Diana DeLonzor, an experienced time management specialist, in her book Never Be Late Again, 7 Cures for the Punctually Challenged as the following: “Punctually Challenged [means] having the inexplicable ability to arise at six, yet still be late at work at nine“. DeLonzor is convinced that chronic lateness is a very nasty habit which is really hard to overcome. In her book, she uses a bright comparison of punctually challenged people with those who suffer from overeating. Just like those, who are on diet, have to fight their temptation to eat cakes and cookies, chronic latecomers have to fight against their “… temptation to do one last thing before leaving the house. Resisting that sudden urge to make the bed, unload the dishwasher, water the plants, or finish a newspaper article can be nearly impossible“, she writes.

Unfortunately, as we already know, being always late or punctually challenged is not only about punctuality and time management. Changing a bad habit is something like peeling the onion: you start removing the upper layer and see many more other layers coming. While trying to fix your problem with punctuality, you can face the problem of effective time management, time perception, chronic procrastination or simple laziness. There are few strategies and tactics which can be used for breaking a bad habit, but all of them are connected with making lots of efforts, lots of  patience and willpower. However, it is really worth to spend your time and mental power for building a new yourself and giving up looking for those endless excuses and apologies for chronic lateness.

We all got used to the idea that laziness in any form is always something bad and negative, something we all need to fight against and feel embarrassed to demonstrate in public. However, there are always two sides of the same story, and there are situations when laziness should not be considered something shameful or embarrassing. Nothing is good in excessive amounts, as well as a habit to work hard. In such situation, using a little bit of laziness to calm down the urges to work hard without any rest will definitely have positive effects. Another type of healthy laziness is the one, which is supported by a good motivation. Fred Gratzon discusses the issues related to a motivated laziness in his blog, My Lazy Way to Success.

In his writing, Fred talks about two types of laziness. One is  a true evil, a type of laziness, when its owner tries by all means to avoid any possible sort of work which requires making some efforts. It is a basic form of laziness and it will never result in something positive or useful. Another is a good, healthy laziness of a higher level, which can always work for the good of its owner. Fred describes it as a tendency to “skillfully avoiding work“. In other words, such laziness results in looking for the ways of accomplishing everything by making minimum efforts. Obviously, knowing how to have the things done faster, cheaper, more effectively and with minimum losses of the resources should not be considered destructive.

Laziness is not always a bad thing which ruins people’s lives and creates obstacles for becoming reach or successful. You know so well that working hard is not the only factor which leads to success. It is not less important to be educated, talented, insistent and, certainly, lucky. “If correctly utilized, laziness is a one way ticket to great success“, Fred Gratzon writes in his blog. A healthy motivated laziness can help us learn to find the shortest ways to achieveing and accompishing the tasks that must be done. Therefore, transferring your passive, apathic and depressive laziness into an energetic, alert and skillfull laziness can be a great key to a personal success!

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.

For some years, my friend Carla worked as a secretary in Precision Intermedia, a huge marketing agency. Every time when I used to meet her she was complaining about one of senior managers in her company. He was always extremely busy and unreachable, but when she used to tell him that she could not contact him on time, he never accepted that as an apology. “Look, you have 5 ways to reach me at any time. I have my mobile phone, which is never off. I have my personal assistant who is always next to me. I have a phone on my office-table which also works fine. Finally, I have 2 business e-mail addresses and I check them out every hour from my PPC. I will never believe that all these communication channels failed at the same time.” What to say?

Undoubtedly, every technology and every innovation has positive and negative sides. For example, using e-mails substantially facilitates and fastens communication, as well as lowers its costs. However, numerous viruses and spam messages we receive through e-mail damage our computers and affect our productivity. Mobile connection allowed people to stay in touch with each other regardless of the distance and other circumstances. At the same time, using mobile phones has negative effects on our health and also affects our productivity. The same can be said about using Internet or PPC. It is obvious that we must keep using technological developments under control, and here are some recommendations for those who want to be less dependent on technological failures:

1. Be sure that you use full capacity and all functions of your devices or technologies. Do not keep any device or technological tool only because it is a brand new and fashionable one, but can not satisfy all your professional or personal needs. Avoid using the technologies which can not bring the expected utility, otherwise you will lose more than win.

2. Always look for more information about your new device or technology. My dad had to spend 4 hours to learn using his mp3-player because he was feeling shy to bother other people and asking for directions. Spare your time and ask your friends, relatives, shop assistants, distributors about new functions and new opportunities that can be opened to you by using your new device or technology.

3. Update your technology. Just a decade ago our mobile phones were quite simple and could offer us hardly something more than just mobile connection. Now, we can use these devices as a photo camera, internet service provider, file storage and God knows what else. If you have the latest model of Samsung or Nokia mobile phone with a powerful high zoom camera, give up using your old digital camera: at least you will save your money and time for battery replacement.

I hope that this article did not make you think that I am an opponent of technology. Technological innovations and inventions are doing a great job for the humanity, and technology is extremely useful until it does not stop helping people to progress and advance. So, technology itself can not be blamed, the problem is us. In our epoch of multiplicable gigabytes, increasing number of web-sites and space ships, a great deal of people use too many various devices and technologies in their daily life. As a result, we frequently spend our time on less important things and sometimes even waste those precious minutes and hours of our life for solving various avoidable technical problems.

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…

There are internal and external time killers. External ones include all factors or circumstances, which grab our attention easily and make us lose control of our time. The list of such time killers is quite long:

• Delays when leaving home (looking for the keys, etc.)
• Delays on the way to the work (traffic jams, etc.)
• Chatting with the colleagues
• Using MSN and other IMs
• Problems with the PC and Internet connection
• Looking through spam messages in your e-mail box
• Looking for files, pens, coffee cups, etc.
• Talking on the phone
• Vendors and visitors
• Smoking and coffee breaks
• Surfing on the net and reading various blogs
• RSS and various e-mail subscriptions, and so on

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:

• Our inability to say “No”
• Our tendency to doing a lot of things at the same time
• Our inability to estimate the time necessary for competing one or another assignment
• Our desire to be useful and help everyone around us
• Our natural tardiness
• Our drive to communication
• Our neglect to making notes
• Our habit to start our work without thinking properly about all necessary resources
• Our inability to prioritize
• Our usual lack of normal sleep and rest
• Our habit to rely completely on our memory
• Our natural absence of mind
• Our habit to procrastinate and leave important tasks for the end of the day
• Our bad habits, such as smoking, snaking and so on.

The list is quite impressive, isn’t it? Some of these habits are sourced from our social norms of behavior. For example, if a colleague comes to ask for some little help, it is considered rude to refuse. Moreover, such factors are taken as parts of our working routine. However, sometimes we really waste a lot of time for walking along the corridor to prepare a drink, or looking for office-manager to get some blank paper sheets, etc.

Is it possible to get rid of all these time killers? Sure thing it is. But the key point is: in order to win the battle against time killers, it is necessary to fully understand the problem. We have to admit being dependent on time killers and acknowledge that they are really strong and powerful enemy to fight against. This understanding can help us to achieve maximum effectiveness and productivity. Remember that killing the “time killers” is a very important and necessary step toward effective time management and optimization.

This time, my friends, let’s look closer at the main problem of the majority of us, Her Majesty Laziness. Nowadays, there are quite a lot of various techniques and strategies to assist people in fighting against laziness. They are available online or in a specialized literature. Once upon a time, while surfing on the Internet, I came across one interesting and very easy tactic to overcome my laziness. This technique really worked for me, and the most important fact is: it actually does not require any special state of mind, excessive enthusiasm or will power, any special preparation or knowledge. The tool I want you to try is something that can be easily done even by the laziest person on earth.

However, let me begin with talking about several myths connected with our laziness. To be proper, two of the myths, which do not allow many people understand better their laziness and start their battle against it. Here we go: it is supposed that laziness is an ineradicable personal trait. This is not true, because laziness is actually a special behavioral pattern, a habit, which certainly can be changed. Another myth is connected with the definition of laziness. We usually think that “Laziness is a condition when I am not doing anything“. This is so very wrong, because when we are lazing, we can be eating, watching a TV, listening to music, talking on the phone, playing a PC game, reading books, etc. etc. All of those are actions, and real laziness is the condition, when those activities start taking 6-12 hours a day and affecting our life. Therefore, laziness means being involved in quite useless activities (to some extent) for very long time.

Now, let’s get closer to the point. The tactic we are going to test has a certain mission: in order to beat laziness we can try not doing anything. Let’s suppose that you have something urgent or important to do, but you feel lazy to do that. It’s ok. First of all, let’s apply the strategy we were talking about before, and make a plan. You should schedule your activity, so take a piece of paper and write down on it, when you are going to start doing the task and for how long you are going to be busy with it. For example, “Today from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.” or “Tomorrow from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.” The most probably, when the mentioned time has come, you start feeling lazy again. What actually do you need to do to fight with it?

Ok: when the scheduled time came, give up doing what you were doing before, get up from your place and stand in the middle of the room (standing is better than sitting or laying down, I hope you understand why!). Do not do anything and just go with the flow of your thoughts, until you start feeling like you are ready to start doing the task you planned to do. Not doing anything and just standing still is quite unpleasant and hard, so it will eventually come to your mind that you need to start doing your task. So, take your time for choosing from two alternatives: the thing you need to do, or doing nothing, From my own experience, I can tell you that the longest it took me to stand and wait for the inspiration to come, was 5 minutes. Hint: do not think about how complicated and long the task can be, just think about doing the first step. It’s like pressing “Start” button on your computer: find the way to begin, and it will be easier to proceed.

You can apply the same tactic in the situation, when you start feeling lazy in the middle of doing you task or assignment. Go back to the room and stand still doing nothing for a while. Believe me, very soon you will feel like being back to your task. This technique is applicable for any sort of tasks or activities, in any situation. And it’s advantage is: there is no need in making extra efforts or persuading yourself that you need to start working on something. Moreover, do not try to control your thoughts and just go with the flow. Most probably, inspiration and motivation will come soon. Good luck!

Every second we make a choice connected with doing or not doing something. Certainly, these choices have certain influence on our future. Very frequently we have to enter a fight against ourselves in order to achieve one or another important goal. This fight is for making ourselves do the things we do not want to do, or avoid doing the things we would like to do, in order to advance in this life, achieve success, obtain or win something, improve our reputation and so on. In terms of such fight, an effective self-motivation can be one of the most powerful weapons of ours. Below you can find some tips on boosting your self-motivation and achieving your goals.

1. Everything you do and any of your decision should lead to a certain result, directly or indirectly. The way you organize all your activities influences your self-motivation to a great extent. Try to organize your daily routine and activities in such a way that you will enjoy doing everything you have to or decided to do.

2. Try to select the most important ONE goal and work on achieving it without spending your time and efforts for something else. One of the most common mistakes is trying to achieve many goals and doing a lot of not important things to achieve those goals. Too many goals always take too much time to achieve. That is why it is essential to choose only one goal (for the moment) and do everything possible to achieve it.

3. It is very important, especially in small things or actions, to minimize the time between making a decision about something to be done, and actually doing that. If you say to yourself “I should do that”, it means that you set up a goal of doing something for uncertain time. It can unconsciously leave a feeling of something undone and some discomfort connected with this. It is the best to complete the task as soon as it is possible and not to look for the reasons to feed your laziness.

4. Do not think about possible difficulties or obstacles. Instead, think about how useful it will be, the thing you need to do. Thinking about good and positive sides of what you are about to do can be a good self-motivation. You should have a clear picture of what you are trying to achieve, and thinking about your goals will help you to find the most effective ways to attain it.

5. Look for someone’s support. If you face difficulties when doing something, find someone who can help you. Find an apprentice or a partner. However, sometimes it is good to find a competitor: a good competition is a very powerful motivator.

6. Make a public promise to achieve something. Take this responsibility and, if you are a man of your word, you will have no other way but doing what you have promised to do and achieve what you have promised to achieve.

7. Try to find some inspiration. It can be a book or a personal story of one of your friends. Sometimes we feel motivated for doing absolutely impossible things after only listening to a song or watching a movie.

8. Be always sure that you will succeed, and never say to yourself “Oh, I’ll never make it!” If the task you need to complete is very difficult and bulky, try to begin with small things. Every long way starts with a small step, followed by many many other steps, big and small. The main thing is to start. Even if you have a lack of time to move toward your goal, you can spend just 5 minutes every day. Collect your small achievements, one to one, and after every small victory you will feel positive and optimistic. Go on moving along the path towards your goals, step by step. Soon, when you turn back, you’ll see that there’s quite a long way behind you…

If you are trying to get rid of your laziness and change your life, it is very important for you start to value your time. Every day we are involved in hundreds of various activities, have a lot of duties, obligations, chores, entertainment activities and other things to do, so learning what we actually spend our time for could be very effective for us to estimate, how much of time is usually spent on unimportant and useless things. Knowing this will, undoubtedly, help us to maximize our effectiveness, avoid work overload, reduce stresses and achieve better personal and professional success!

My friend Carla is a secretary assistant, she works in a huge marketing company in Northern California and spends her time mostly in the office in front of her PC, answering calls or requests, and helping the employees with their daily routine. Once she decided to change her life, the first thing she did was writing down all her regular activities and how much time was spent for every each of them. She has been keeping records of every little thing she was doing for 7 days, including even going to the rest-room, and in the end of the ends, she summarized and calculated the total time for everything done. The results were really shocking for Carla.

She found out that she was spending 3,5 hours a week looking at herself in the mirror while doing make-up, fixing her hair or just looking at her face!! Another 3 hours were spent for idle drinking coffee, consuming doughnuts and chatting with her colleagues. 15 hours were spent for surfing Internet and chatting with her online friends (not too very useless activity though, but 15 hours is too much). More than 9 hours were spent for various relaxing activities in the office (reading magazines, checking out e-mails or playing PC games). Almost 7 hours were spent in some shopping-malls and markets while doing shopping for personal entertainment. Finally, watching TV proved to take about 10 hours of her time every week. Therefore, she realized that she actually had 48 more hours a week available for more effective and useful activities! Believe it or not, this little research really changed her attitude toward her personal time.

I know that some very conservative companies ask their employees to keep records of all their activities and submit such reports later on for the consideration of the top managers. Well, I personally think that it is too much, but it is hard to deny that this simple and effective technique can help to understand that everyone needs to value our own time. It really works for many people! Try it, do a little study of the way you spend your time, and you will definitely find out something to think about. And remember that knowing how we spend our time is only a little step ahead: the most important thing is to start feeling sorry and unhappy for every minute wasted… Our time and our life is in our own hands.

Your sister asked you to babysit her child, your boyfriend calls you every night and makes you listen to his mindless jokes, your colleague regularly asks you to cover up for her or help her to finish the report as soon as possible, your best friend is looking for a job and repeatedly asks you to talk to your boss about him. Isn’t this familiar to you? “No” is such a simple word, which, however, is sometimes very difficult to say instead of “I’ll be glad to help you!” How many times you have said “yes” and agreed to do something which is not important to you? In how many situations you should have said “no” but felt responsible or polite to the others? Tell me truly, was it always the best solution, to say “yes“?

One of the first rules for those, who want to learn how to prioritize, is to get rid of enforced things and “duties”. You should learn to say “no” in those situations, when the others try to force you to do something that is not in your plans or has nothing to do with your personal goals and values. Learn to set personal boundaries and protect your own sanity, otherwise you will soon feel exhausted and overloaded with your own issues and your “obligations” to help, to be there, to listen, to look after, and so on. Be selective and choose only the battles you truly want to fight for other people. Do not go with the flow, and only in such case you will be able to achieve your personal and professional goals.

Now, you can say “Wait! You want me to say “no” to my friends and people who really need my help in order to save my time? You want me to ignore their needs and earn a fame of a hard-hearted and ill-mannered person?” And I will say – “No!“This is the last idea I would like to promote, because in our daily life we do really need to help and support our friends and close people a lot. All I want you to understand is that saying “yes“to never ending non-critical daily demands that are re-placed onto your shoulders can take your attention off your own priorities, affect your chances to achieve success and limit your personal freedom to a great extent!

Certainly, reliable people who are always ready to assist and support are of a great value in any society, however, there must be limits. Moreover, frequently your friends do not seem to appreciate your readiness to help at any time. That is why you must learn compromise. Certainly, when it is really necessary and does not ruin your plans, you can babysit your niece one day or talk to your boss about your friend as a new potential employee. This way you will demonstrate your love and concern about your close people. However, if you can not do this by some reason, do not be afraid to say “no“, politely but assertively.

Our society is stricken with “a disease to please“, that is why saying “no” is strictly connected with certain fears of breaking down the people we love by refusing to help them, as well as fears of hurting someone’s feelings or being rejected for such behavior. The only way to prevent all these negative effects of saying “no” is to deliver the message in the most effective way. There are some tips for those, who want to master this effective technique:

• Do not accompany your “no” with weak and unrealistic excuses. Ask for some time to think over the request and find the most rational and clear supportive arguments for your negative answer.
• In some situations it makes sense not to say “no” directly, but use some verbal signs to demonstrate your negative response. However, if you know that the person you are dealing with can be too very insistent and will go on bothering you all the time, it is better to say a direct and assertive “no“. Moreover, for some people only aggressive “no” will work: “Are you kidding? Me, picking your laundry on Sunday morning while you are out of town?“
• Use logical explanations for your negative answers. Make a person understand that there is something more important to you than the request. “You know, I would gladly give you a lift, but Mrs. Hauer have asked me to pick her up, and you truly hate each other, don’t you?“
• Use non-verbal signs to show the person that you do not really want to do what is requested. Speak with a firm and assertive voice and look into the person’s eyes when saying “no“. Be honest and polite. Some of the best ways to start your speech are: “I’m sorry, but I must turn down your request this time because…” or “Oh, I wish I could help you now, but…“

Do not think that a refusal to give a hand to other people with their daiy duties is something to be ashamed of or feel guilty about. Saying “no” is an honorable answer! You and only you are the master of your personal time, and nobody else has a right to trench upon your time and use it for satisfying own needs. Learn to say “no” and be ready to hear “no” from other people as well. However, the effects can be really positive: you will be valued and respected for your “yes” and for your “no“. The main idea is to make people around you understand that saying “no” does not turn a person into your enemy.