I had the best of intentions. I really did. The night before the first day back at school I got everything ready.
The school bags were packed, uniforms were laid out ready to be put on in the morning, I was all set.
We were going to head out the door in the morning with plenty of time to spare so we would arrive at school feeling nice and calm.
Yet somehow it just didn’t happen. Despite all my planning and good intentions, we still ended up rushing towards the school gates to get there just in the nick of time. This happens more than I care to admit. And I’m really ready to try and tackle the issue head on.
So I’ve done a bit of research and found 5 reasons people are always late, and crucially, what we can do about it.
1. Your internal clock isn’t as accurate as you think it is
We all tend to think that we have a pretty good idea of how much time is passing, but you might not be as good at it as you think.
I remember back when I was in school, the teacher asked us all to put our heads down on our desks and close our eyes. Then she told us to wait until we thought a minute had passed, and then put our hands in the air.
From what I remember, very few people put their hands up at the 60 second mark. Some had their hands up really quickly, while others were way over a minute.
All of which goes to show that we can’t always trust our intuition about how much time has passed. You might think that you were only upstairs doing your hair and make up for five minutes, but actually over ten minutes has gone by and now you’re running late.
What to do about it.
You can work to retrain your brain so that you can estimate time better. Play games with yourself to see if you can guess how much time has passed while you’ve made a cup of coffee, or had a shower. Over time you should find that you’re able to estimate time much more reliably.
In the meantime, simply make more of an effort to check the clock as you get ready in the morning, so you know you’re keeping track of how much time you actually have left before you need to leave.
2. You don’t like the idea of being early
Some people love being early for things. It makes them feel calm and in control of situations. Other people though, find the idea of being early hard to cope with.
One reason behind this is that we feel that we loose valuable time by being early. Leaving the house earlier than we ‘have’ to means stopping doing the things we want to be getting done at home. And then we arrive at our destination early, and have nothing productive to do there.
The other main reason behind a dislike of being early is that it makes us feel self-conscious and uneasy. We feel like people are watching us, wondering why we’re so early, why we’re just lurking in our cars or in the street outside the school.
What to do about it.
The main way to get around this reason for being late is to change the way we think about the time we spend waiting when we get somewhere early.
You want to move away from thinking about it as wasted time, by planning something productive to do in that time. So for me that might be planning to fit in some Instagram time while I’m waiting outside the school gates to pick the children up. You could plan to use the time to do your weekly food shop on an app on your phone. If you’re with the children before school then you could use the spare few minutes to go over the spellings they are learning, or practice some times tables with them.
Making that spare time feel useful and productive will help take the sting out of being early. And being busy will help stop us being so conscious of what other people might be thinking about us.
3. You plan on being on time
This follows on nicely from the last reason why some people are always late.
Most of us don’t plan on arriving late to places, but if we feel uncomfortable with being early then what we end up doing is planning to get there right on time. Now, this really rings true for me. I know that the drive to school takes around ten minutes, so I’ll often end up heading out the door ten minutes before I need to be at the school gates to pick the children up.
The huge problem with this is that it doesn’t allow any margin at all for delays.
So if the timing is off and I hit red lights at both sets of traffic lights, then that ten minutes is suddenly not quite enough time. Or if I have to dash back into the house for something that I’ve forgotten, it might only take a minute or two, but that’s a big chunk of the ten minutes I allowed to get to school!
What to do about it.
This one is pretty simple at least. Stop planning on getting to places on time! Plan to get to where you need to be ten minutes early. So when you inevitably hit that third red light, it won’t end up making you late.
4. You’re trying to do too much at once
I think multitasking is something we’re all pretty guilty of these days. We scroll through Facebook at the same time as watching TV. There are ten different tabs open on our computers and we flit between them all, checking our emails, reading the news, updating twitter. We think this is making us more productive, but it’s really not.
The truth is we would all be much more productive if we just focused on one task at a time.
One of the problems with multitasking is that it makes it harder for us to have metacognition. Which is just a fancy way of saying, it makes us less aware of what we’re doing. So when we rush around in the mornings, doing ten things at once, we lose track of time really easily and end up being late.
What to do about it.
The best thing to do if you often find yourself losing track of time is to set an alarm to go off five or ten minutes before you need to head out the door.
So you can go ahead and juggle drinking your coffee and putting a load of washing on, while finding your children’s shoes and putting your make up on, safe in the knowledge that the alarm will go off and tell it’s time to drop any unnecessary tasks and get out the door.
5. You always do one last thing
As in, you always try and fit in ‘one last thing’ before you leave the house.
You think you have a few minutes to spare, so you quickly try and put a load of washing on. Or go through the mail that’s just been delivered. Or run an armful of the children’s toys back up to their bedroom.
These jobs are never quite as quick as we think they’ll be, and so we end up stressed and rushing out the door after we’ve done them.
What to do about it.
Just walk out the door.
It’s that simple. If you are pretty much ready to leave, and feel the urge to go and do ‘one last thing’ before you head out the door, tell yourself ‘no’. At that moment, just get your things and get out of the house. Whatever the little job is, it can wait until you get home again later.
So there you have it.
Five reasons people are always late, and ways to hopefully try and break the habit and start being on time (or early even!).
I think for me, there are several reasons behind why I’m often late. It’s a real mix of pretty much everything on this list, so I really have some work to do. But I’m actually feeling quite hopeful that with some work I will be able to make some changes.
Are you often late for things? Or are you the complete opposite and find yourself always really early for everything?
Please do let me know in the comments, especially if you have any other tips or tricks to break the lateness habit!
I am always late! Although this week I’m doing surprisingly well with the school runs – I hope that hasn’t tempted fate! Great tips though, thank you! #bloggerclubuk
I love this post! I think the best point you make is rather than planning to be on time, plan to be ten minutes early. I do this and sometimes despite planning to be early sometimes, I will be either on time or a few minutes late. So I always think if I was aiming for on time I’d be really late then! Thank you for sharing with us at #BloggerClubUK
I’m always late for things. My problem is I start something knowing I don’t have enough time to finish it, but not wanting to waste the hour or so I have with the intention of stopping when it’s time to leave. Then inevitably, I end up thinking one more little bit and end up late
Thanks for linking up to #BloggerClubUK 🙂
Debbie