Inside the Mind of a Timebender Why Im Always Late
i’m
scared of the clock
i’ve got to finish in exactly 18 minutes
what’s the problem just measure how long
it takes
and finish when you have to but that’s
what i say to myself
every saturday morning when i go to my
zumba class
i need to leave at 9 15 every week
i seem to leave about 5 or 10 minutes
later than i have to
i get there before the class arrives so
i imagine i’m on time
until one week the teacher said
here’s grace we can start now and i
realized
i’m always late they always wait for me
how embarrassing i hate being late
why is it so hard to be on time
so i decided to look it up you can find
anything on the internet
and i found a piece of research by a
company called yougov
that said twenty percent of people are
late for work
at least once a week so i’m not alone
but when i looked for a book on the
subject i was amazed
i found sixty
books on time management but they all
seem to be written by people
who had no problem with punctuality
the advice was measure how long things
take
and leave home earlier they didn’t seem
to understand my problem
i found seven thousand books on
procrastination
but i couldn’t find seven on lateness
what’s the difference procrastination
is about starting and lateness is about
finishing
but there’s more to it than that
procrastination impacts your own life
it stops you doing what you want to do
lateness impacts the lives of the people
who wait for you
i did find one book it was called never
be late again
written by a psychologist who understood
because
she had the problem she said lateness is
a bit like
overeating but instead of eating one
more chocolate
you just squeeze in one more task before
you have to leave home
she divided late people into different
categories but when it came to
explaining how to
never be late again it seemed to boil
down to
measure how long everything takes and
leave home earlier
that’s a bit like telling an overweight
person
to eat less it’s not that easy
so i decided to do my own research it
was fairly easy to find my subjects
they’re the people who arrive just on
time or a little bit late for events
and i discovered that we have a
different
attitude to time a different experience
of time
every minute isn’t the same length for
us we can speed up
or slow down in fact we get
deeply engrossed in what we’re doing and
lose all track of time
i call it time bending
we can vary the speed at which we work
we can do amazing things before a tight
deadline
we actually enjoy the adrenaline buzz it
makes us feel alive
we love tight deadlines but take away
the deadline
and we can slow right down and spend all
morning watching tv in our pajamas
but it’s not all bad we also have some
positive characteristics as well as as
well as being late
we don’t mind taking on a task even if
time is short
and we uh we don’t mind being
interrupted so we’re flexible
we will drop what we’re doing if you
need our help so we’re responsive
and we don’t mind too much of our plans
get changed
so we’re adaptable
but why are we late i’d like to share
with you
the seven strange secrets in the
subconscious mind
of a time bender number one
we are hesitant to finish things
we we don’t like to close anything down
until we
really have to we seem to get stuck in
what we’re doing and not want to move on
number two we don’t like to be
early it’s not logical
but any time vendor will tell you that
we can aim to be on time
but not before time we might have time
in hand
we might think we can be early but then
just before we leave home
we squeeze in one more task just got
time to empty the dishwasher
number three we’re not good at measuring
time
because time will speed up and slow down
for us
we’re really not sure how long anything
takes us
how long does it take to empty the
dishwasher
strange secret number four
deadlines are really important to us but
they must be real
we can’t make a deadline up we if we
plug a deadline from the air it doesn’t
give us the adrenaline buzz we need to
get moving
strain secret number five we believe we
can
teleport from one task to another
without any preparation time
if we need to leave the house at eight
o’clock
we actually think we can stop what we’re
doing eight o’clock and instantly be
ready to leave
even if we live on the 10th floor we
somehow think we can just jump in our
car and drive
off number six
we are total optimists we somehow think
that the lights will always be green the
roads will be empty
and we’ll find the perfect parking space
we don’t leave enough time for things to
go wrong on the journey
and number seven and this may be the
strangest secret of all
we do everything back to front
stephen covey this famous time
management guru
told the world that highly effective
people start with the important and the
urgent
well we turn this on its head we start
with the non-urgent and the unimportant
and we don’t get round to the important
stuff until that
deadline clock is ticking and then
we can focus really well and get things
done just in time
so how does this make me late for zumba
i need to leave home at 9 15 for a 9 30
class
i get up at 7 30 have a shower go and
make tea
empty the dishwasher water the plants
start looking at social media
get absorbed in emails vaguely aware
it’s eight something
then all of a sudden oh no it’s
nine quickly rush to pull on my sports
gear quickly do my face and my hair
and check the time it’s 9 15 i’m on time
then i go and find my sports shoes
get a bottle of water from the fridge
put on my jacket
make sure i’ve got my phone check i’ve
got my keys
just locking the door suddenly realized
i’ve forgotten to have any breakfast
rush in time to grab a cereal bar
and drive off praying the lights will be
green
but hang on a minute i’m not always like
this
my life isn’t completely out of control
i can be on time when it matters
so i started to think about this and
realized that
i do have some control over my time
keeping
so i wrote a list and i called it
my secret scale of acceptable lateness
and i realized that i can be early for
a flight weddings and funerals
job interviews i really should be early
for school college
work client meetings
and really like to be on time for my
exercise class
my choir rehearsal my hairdressing
appointments
i don’t really need to be on time
for meeting friends family parties
and i can always be late for dinner
parties and
music gigs with a support band and
cinema with adverts
so what’s going on here what’s the
pattern
well i saw that i can always be on time
when there’s a real external deadline
with consequences
if i’m late for check-in i don’t get the
flight
if i’m late for a job interview i don’t
get the job
but i can be late
when there’s no real deadline and
no real consequences i’m late for social
occasions
i’m late for my family and my friends
and i had never realized this before
but the real light bulb moment was when
i realized
that means they see me as always late
i say i can be on time when it matters
and i’m late for the people who matter
to me the most
so i started to think about the people
who have to wait for me
because i have to admit i don’t spend
much time thinking about them when i’m
rushing through the lights trying to get
there on time
and i realized that although they don’t
tell me what they think
they’re too nice they do tell each other
what they think
and they do share their opinions on the
internet
so i did learn a few home truths that
way
but i also discovered that as well as
time benders who can be late
at the other end of the spectrum there
are people who are really
anxious about being early
they are so horrified at the idea of
being late
that they build in loads of extra time
for their journey and they can be 20 to
30 minutes early
now they hate lateness more than anybody
and they wait for us for longer than
anyone else
so we drive them really mad i call them
the time
keepers now a time keeper and a time
bender are unlikely to be really good
friends
but we all know opposites attract so the
chances are
they’ll end up as a couple
now i feel bad about this and i’d like
to do something to help
so on behalf of us time benders i’d like
to answer the question
that you always have how can you get a
time vendor
to be on time because my book isn’t just
about what makes us late
it’s also about how we can be on time
so and i discovered that actually the
thing that you do
to try and get us to be on time has the
opposite effect
and you all know what it is you lie
about the start time
you tell us we’ve got to be there 10
minutes or even 30 minutes earlier
than we really have to now this will
work the first time it’ll work the first
few times
but once we realize what you’re doing
we’re going to stop believing in
believing you and we’re going to start
factoring this in
so in the long term it’ll make us later
what you have to do and i really don’t
want to tell you this
you have to make that deadline real
if you say you’re leaving at eight
o’clock and we’re not ready
you have to leave if you say dinner’s at
seven
and we’re not ready you have to start
we’re going to be very upset that you
haven’t waited for us
but next time we’ll take that deadline
seriously
and as well as more ideas for partners
i’ve also got ways that we time vendors
can get ourselves to be on time
because once we understand what makes us
late we can find ways to
outwit our subconscious minds
so for example if we know we don’t like
being early
can we build in a pre-event activity
so if you’re going to the theater can
you meet your friends for a drink
beforehand
maybe you can offer somebody a lift you
might be a little bit late for them
but you won’t miss the main event we
know we don’t like finishing things well
perhaps we could put off going to bed by
getting our clothes
and our bag ready for the next morning
we can’t change our innate personality
but we can change our behavior
but before i finish i’d like to just
take a step back
and look at the bigger picture because
time management is a concept created
over a hundred years ago in the
manufacturing belt of america
where efficiency and productivity were
the keys to competitive advantage
when the world is predictable efficiency
is what you need
but for resilience you need to be
prepared
for change when the world is
unpredictable
flexibility is what you need
when your customers needs are changing
responsiveness
is what you need and when the future is
not the same as the past
adaptability is what you need
so maybe a century later
it’s time for a new look at lateness
maybe the resilient companies best place
to
face the future are those where most of
the employees
are just a few minutes late for work