I am Always Late

Being chronically late is essentially procrastinating something inevitable. It may be some highly anticipated event or a nightmare that vanishes when you finally wake up breathing heavily and dripping with perspiration. If you are someone who has been accused of being a serial dawdler, been deemed as one of those irritating passive-aggressive or blatantly called a disorganized disaster waiting to happen, you at least are not too late to read about how you can change your tardy ways.

Understand it is not your fault you are always late. You probably grew up in a household where being late for appointments, dates, holiday functions or even work was standard behavior. Even bills were not paid on time, such as important car loans or the mortgage. The environment you inhabited as a child greatly influences your perception of the world and, as a result, you did not realize that not everybody waited until the last minute to get dressed. Nor did they spend fifteen minutes searching for a matching sock and another fifteen minutes bewailing the fact that someone put the toilet paper roll on backwards before finally racing out the door, only to be late–again.

Take this scenario for example: a friend is throwing another friend a baby shower and you are supposed to be there one hour ahead of time to decorate. Instead of taking a shower and preparing to leave at least 30 minutes before you need to be there, you suddenly find yourself with less than 15 minutes to get ready. Why? Well, according to the excuses you give our friend for being late, it was because you had to run to the store to buy shampoo, the cats needed fed, you were reading led TV reviews online because you were thinking about buying one and your car’s gas tank was on empty.

As you are telling your tale of woe you notice your friend rolling her eyes and looking irritated.

Sounds familiar?

10 Ways to Avoid Being Late

1. Researchers investigating chronically late people have found that many have difficulty estimating how long it takes them to perform an activity. To discover how long it takes you to do things, start writing down everything you do in one 24 hour period and exactly how long it takes you to do them.

2. The next time you need to be somewhere at a specific time, move back that time by one hour.

3. Learn to say no. Many people are often late because of others taking advantage of them.

4. Don’t let little things distract you. If you are out of shampoo, improvise with dishwashing liquid instead. Your hair won’t fall out!

5. Start planning your days instead of just letting them happen. Write down where you need to be, what time you need to be there and if anything needs to be done before these appointments.

6. Review and change routines that may be taking chunks of time away during the day. Change when you check your email (which can turn a quick five minute check into a sixty minute chat session).

7. Don’t be afraid to ask your punctual friends for help.

8. Attend a few counseling sessions with a professional, if you sincerely try and cannot alter your chronically late behavior. Underlying psychological issues may need addressed before this problem can be solved.

9. Ask your punctual friends with help getting organized.

10. Seriously think about how you would feel if your best friend was late for your birthday party, your wedding or other important occasion. Realize how being late affects everyone and not just you. Remember that being late is viewed as inconsiderate and sometimes obnoxious behavior.

With a lot of prioritizing, organizing and understanding why you are late, you too can master the art of being on time.

Kathleen Hubert is a blogger who writes on a variety of different sites. Check out more of her work at LED TV reviews

I must say that being always late is becoming an easier and a more common practice, maybe because the number of excuses for being late is drastically increasing. “Sorry, I lost my limb right on the way here!” “Oh, those kids, you know – they never let you do anything you need on time.” “My apologies, today’s traffic is just horrible, I was waiting there for a half an hour at least before we moved forward!!” “Oh, God, sorry – I just can’t help being late, it’s something genetic and all guys in my family are just like this!”

Be sure, my dear friends, that being always late has nothing to do with your family habits or the problems you usually mention in all those numerous excuses you are used to cover up your behavior with. Being late is linked with such things as thoughtlessness, laziness, a lack of responsibility for your own life and for the life of other people around you, as well as for certain inabilities or fears. In particular, one of the latest trends in the world of reasons why the people are late is believed to be the fear of coming first and waiting for the opposite side to arrive, which can sometimes be linked to many awkward moments and unwanted situations.

For those who are trying to combat their chronic lateness, who are willing to put some efforts into getting rid of this problem and willing to change something in their life, there are interesting tips to think over.

• Believe that your being always late can never be associated with anything good or positive. Making other people waiting is a thing that will always evoke anger and make you look arrogant in the eyes of other people.
• Never think that other things can be more important than your being on time for a stipulated meeting.
• If you see that you’re getting late and will not make it for the scheduled time, call the people you’re going to meet and let them know that you’re late. It will make you look at least responsible for the other people’s time and help the people who would need to wait for you plan their time in a more efficient way.
• Do not think that coming earlier to the meeting or dinner will make you get bored waiting for the other party. In our epoch of the most advanced technologies, it is possible to take the best of some free time you’re going to have while waiting. You can get a lot of other work done: arrange your further schedule and meetings using your smartphone, read and edit a report, read some online newspapers or other documents, and much more.
• Finally, by arriving to a meeting on time, you’ll get the opportunity to enjoy a stress-free course of the day.

In college, when I used to receive a task to write an essay and bring it to my instructor in 7 days, I was usually saying to myself: “Well, I have a plenty of time, I’ll be back to this assignment later on”. Two or three days after I used to think: “Maybe I should start dealing with the paper already?” The fifth day was always critical: by that time the necessity to start working on the assignment had been pressing a lot, therefore, I used to try imitating the work on the essay by creating a new file in my PC and looking through some related pages in the course book or in Internet. In the end of the ends, in the majority of the situations I was getting to the point in around 2-3 hours before the deadline. Chronic exhaustion, stresses, lack of success and personal progress, low self-esteem – those were the outcomes of my usual practice to put things off all the time.

Do I need to mention, in how many other ways the habit to procrastinate can affect your life? People can lose their businesses and fortunes, lose their friendships and destroy their lives because of procrastination. Unfortunately, a real danger of the problem of chronic procrastination has not been fully recognized by our society yet. Moreover, many specialists tend to connect this problem with time management and inability of a procrastinator to plan his/her time. This is a great misinterpretation of this problem, and trying to help procrastinators by giving them recommendations to improve their time management skills is a big mistake!

Some experts tend to define procrastination as “an addictive disorder”, or simply as an addiction. Yes, all procrastinators do have a strong addiction: they try to escape from doing the things they do not want or hate doing by one or another reason. Therefore, they choose to postpone doing things, like other addicts use substances to postpone dealing with mental or psychological problems they face. As a solution for the problem of putting things off all the time, many psychologists offer looking for a reason of your procrastination and trying to eliminate it. Well, do you believe that it is really going to work? No way! Chronic procrastination is something like alcoholism or drug abuse: will an alcoholic stop drinking if he finds the reason that has brought him to drinking?

As I could observe, all chronic procrastinators have a cyclic way of living with their problem. Usually, when they figure out that their life has become unmanageable and their habit of putting things off is getting out of their hand, they start feeling guilty about their helplessness or not doing anything to change their habit. They check out information on the net or look for some books and articles related to the problem, learn all those easy tips on how to get rid of chronic procrastination, and make up their mind to start a new life without procrastination. Next morning they make a list of the things thy need to do, schedule everything very precisely and feel very proud of their work! Yes, sometimes they even have enough of willpower to complete some first tasks on that list! Finally, they think: “Hey, that was a good start! I got a great progress!” And after this – everything goes on the same way as it was before: panic before the deadlines in school, doing the work in the last minute, being late and frustrated.

This example is quite an illustrative picture. Real chronic procrastination is a very hard problem – probably, the hardest one that we will have to fight with. Getting rid of this terrible habit is connected with a very responsible approach to SAYING what you are going to do and DOING what you have said. That is why a huge motivation will be necessary. But I’ll tell you what: do not wait till you have “a dentist situation”, when your delays of going to the dentist have led you to the necessity to remove all your decaying teeth and replace them with implants. Getting the job done on time is much easier and more pleasant, isn’t it?