Are You Always Late?

Are You Always Late?

I pride myself on being punctual — actually I pride myself on being ahead of schedule when I am meeting with clients or attending a meeting. Are you always late? Are you on time? If you’re always late you are, in effect, disrespecting the person with whom you’re meeting, the other attendees at a meeting you’re attending and it is, frankly, in bad form.

Why are you always late? Does time truly get away from you? Do you forget to write appointments down in your virtual or paper calendar? Do you need to set a timer or alarm in order to get yourself to meetings on time? Do you have an assistant who could be called upon to remind you of pending meetings and to get you out the door in time?

It’s thought that people who are always late are “creative and/or artistic types.” Even if you work in a creative field, being late is disrespectful to the person with whom you’re meeting. Don’t fall into the cliche of the “absent minded professor.” Don’t become known as, “John, he’s always late.”

Here are things you can do to assure you’re on time:

1. Set a timer on your computer, your smart phone or use an actual timer for 15 minutes before you have to leave for a meeting. Give yourself that 15-minute window to wrap up the task you’re working on and get out the door.
2. Set another alarm to remind you to get out the door.
3. If you know you have a meeting coming up in an hour, don’t get involved in a time consuming task that will be hard to break away from.
4. Give yourself breathing room in your schedule. Build in a buffer for calls that take longer than you planned for, projects that were more time consuming than you’d imagined.
5. Enlist someone in your office to remind you of your appointments and get you out the door in time.

Are you always late? What is your reason for being late? Can you determine what it is? If you can pinpoint it, you can work to address it in the future.