Why Being on Time is the New Late

For those of us who are naturally punctual, a habitually late person can drive us into a state of fuming, apoplectic rage- leading us to believe the other person is wasting our time through their own disorganization- or even worse, that they just don’t care about our time. Lateness is often viewed as disrespectful, inconsiderate, and just plain flaky.

And the business world tends to agree- in the Western world at least, time is money- and lateness reduces productivity, causes scheduling clashes and cascading delays.

Therefore, if you are a naturally late person, you are probably negatively impacting on your career success. Unfortunately it doesn’t matter how late you work, how good you are at your job, or how often you apologise: being late causes distrust about your reliability.

These days, arriving at a meeting or at work ‘on time’ actually means you are late. 5 minutes early is now considered ‘on time’ so that you can prepare and be ready to start work. This has been a fairly standard way of doing business for years: which begs the question: why on earth do late people continue to be late?

The thing is…you probably really don’t mean to be late. There’s an excellent chance that you don’t even really understand how it happens, and that your life has a constant miasma of stress and guilt hanging over it as you dash from place to place apologizing. Punctual people just can’t understand how you sent a text saying you were about to leave the house at 8:30, but somehow turned up at the office 5 miles away at 9:37. You can’t really understand it either. You know they’re angry, and you struggle to explain yourself in a way that makes sense.

But it’s ok, because finally there’s some behavioral research to make sense of it for you.

It turns out that there are different ways the mind processes time. Neuro Linguistic Programming explains that you can be an In-Time person or a Through-Time person.

‘In time’ people are your classic late-comers. They are so firmly in the moment that they really struggle to predict how long something will take. This is the person that wants to get lots done, so they decide to make some ‘quick calls’ before heading out of the house to work. They then get lost in the next task and before they know it’s 9:20! They then compound the problem by apologizing when they do arrive late, yet then get buried in another task like checking unimportant emails before actually getting started on the meeting, by which stage everyone else is so annoyed they can barely concentrate.

A through-time person on the other hand, rarely gets ‘lost in the moment’ and sees time as very linear. They can predict how long things will take and reschedule capably when things are running over time.

Workplaces, of course, have a mix of those two types, in varying degrees.

I mentioned earlier that the Western world views time as money, but there are many other parts of the world that view time differently- giving credence to this idea that there is more than one way to view time in a business context. For example, while Northern European and American view of time is quite linear, Southern European views of time are much more relaxed and based loosely on events and relationships rather than strict definitions of time. Asian cultures tend to have a longer-term view, where business deals are reached at slowly and through much ritual. For a very good article on this topic, see here.

If you are naturally late here a few simple suggestions that will help get you to those meetings
and social events on time…i.e. 5 minutes early!.

1. Write out what specific tasks you need to do in a day
2. Allocate time to these tasks
3. If you are not sure how long tasks time, time yourself
4. Ask someone who is always on time, how long it takes to get to meeting venues
if you need to travel, they always give themselves plenty of time
5. Recognise that you will always thing you can do more in a set time than is realistic
do under promise on deadlines and over deliver!

If the above just doesn’t sound like you, maybe a move to Spain might be an idea, sunshine and a chilled approach to time.

While Spain may not be your next job destination, we can help you find your next UK based role!
Call GSR2R on 0203 696 1215

Until next time,

Cheryl