Why We’re (Often) Behind and What We Can Do About It
One of the (few) perks of having a ~45-minute commute to work is that it’s afforded me the chance to regularly listen to a wide variety of audiobooks and podcasts. Since personal reading time has become scarce while raising 4 young kids + building a career at a fast-growing tech company, these “car reading sessions” have become somewhat of an unexpected sanctuary. They’ve also exposed me to some funny and insightful ideas.
During one such “reading while driving session” this week I was listening to a TedTalk called “Inside the Mind of Timebender” (by British author Grace Pacie). She caught my attention when she mentioned that for her entire life she had always made it to her Zumba class “right on time”…. Until the day her teacher announced “Here’s Grace, we can start now!” With great embarrassment, Grace realized that the reason she was always “on time” was because the class had always waited for her to arrive before starting. Without meaning to, she had become someone who was always late. Like the White Rabbit in “Alice in Wonderland”, she was constantly rushing from thing to thing, without ever finding the time to catch up.
As someone who (embarrassingly) is often 3-5 minutes late for meetings, I confess I winced a little when I heard that story. It hit a little too close to home.
Being late is a topic that’s been fresh on my mind ever since a hallway conversation I had with my company’s Chief Marketing Officer a few weeks back. While waiting for an elevator, he noted to me offhand that he’d been troubled by how many employees at our company were regularly a few minutes late to everything, including key meetings. He said “I don’t know what causes it, but it’s become part of our company culture. And it’s something we need to change.”
But it’s not just my company. Running late (especially at work) isn’t something new. A recent survey found ~20% of the U.S population is “consistently late”, especially when it comes to their jobs.
Chronic lateness isn’t just annoying – it’s expensive. In 2006, a consulting firm determined that the average American CEO is late to 8 out of every 10 meetings. According to their estimates, CEOs being late by 10 minutes every day costs the U.S. economy ~$90B in lost productivity (!!!)
But if it’s such a big problem, why are we always late?
The Innocent Flaws of “Late” People
If you’re like me, you don’t ever intend to be late. You know, in your head, that being early is a great thing to do. You may have even promised your spouse, your kids, or your boss that you’ll be there early. “This time, things will be different” you tell yourself.
But there are several “late traps” that many of us fall into. I’m fairly confident about these because I regularly suffer from every one of them.
- “The One More Thing” Trap: How many times have you looked at the clock and thought “I have just enough time to do [some little task]”? It could be sending that last email, asking one last question as part of a conversation, quickly picking up the toys before leaving the house, etc… These small tasks are so tempting precisely because they’re so small. The cost seems inconsequential. But those small tasks add up. You may have had 5 minutes before, but now you only have 1. This is especially difficult for people (like me) who get a kick from checking things off their “to-do” list. Remember that lateness is much like overeating (but instead of eating just “one more slice of cake” you’re just doing “one more thing”)
- The “HyperFocus = Time Bending” Trap: A few years ago my mom remarked to me that it was very surprising that out of my 6 six siblings, only myself and one of my sisters didn’t have ADD (attention deficit disorder). But she then said “I wonder if do have a form of ADD, because while you don’t have trouble paying attention, you easily become hyper-focused. The world could be burning down around you and you wouldn’t notice it if you were ‘in the zone’”. My wife has noticed the same thing over the 10 years we’ve been married. People who can intensely focus have a way of distorting time in their minds. We get so deeply invested in a problem or project that when we look up and notice that several hours have passed in what only felt like minutes, we’re shocked. We’re unconsciously “timebending.”
- The “You Got Lucky 1X” Trap = Greg McKeown, author of the New York Time’s best-seller “Essentialism”, once told a story of a woman who always thinks it will take her 5 minutes to get to the store because she made the journey in 5 minutes once. The truth is that it usually takes 10-15 minutes. In and of itself, that would not be a huge problem, but unfortunately, she perennially misjudges how long things will take and is always late as a result. This is sometimes called the “planning fallacy” and refers to our tendency to underestimate how long a task will take, even when we’ve done the task before.
- The “Social Pressure’ Trap = This is related to the planning fallacy but has a subtle twist. One famous study found that if people estimated anonymously how long it would take them to complete a task they were pretty successful in estimating correctly. This implies that often we actually know we can’t do things in a given time frame, but we don’t want to admit it to others (especially if the person asking us is someone we want to respect us like a boss, a co-worker, or a spouse). We end up overpromising and under delivering.
- The “Terrible Meeting” Trap: Many (most) of our work meetings are not organized well or efficiently run. We start late, spend several minutes with small talk, and then meander through the bulk of the meeting without making much progress. Then, suddenly realizing that our time is almost up and we haven’t accomplished any of the meeting’s original purposes, we panic. Sometimes this results in rescheduling the meeting (and wasting everyone’s time). Or more commonly, we finally buckle down and get into the meat of the issue in the last 25% we have, and are willing to “go a few minutes over” since getting everyone together is so hard/expensive and we want to extract as much value as possible. This then begins a snowball effect of running late from meeting to meeting for the rest of the day as the cycle repeats itself.
- We Don’t Compute that Lateness = Rudeness: This last point is the one that makes most “late” people extremely uncomfortable (like Grace Pacie did) once they finally realize it. I’ve written about my own revelation on this point previously. The fact of the matter is most late people don’t recognize that they’re coming off as rude when they show up a few minutes after they were supposed to. It’s not an intentional slight. But it’s rude nonetheless. As author Karen Joy Fowler once said “Arriving Late is a way of saying that your own time is more valuable than the time of the person who waited for you.”
Combatting Your Inner Temptations to Lateness
So how do you avoid the traps? As a frequently “late” person this is where I frankly feel a little hypocritical writing any advice. But these are some things that have helped me overcome (or at least mitigate) my worst tendencies.
- Plan/Prep the day before: Write down what your next day looks like (using a calendar app or even a simple to-do list). This really helps visualize where you need to be/when (which is great for preventing forgetfulness). I try to “create the next day” on paper each evening before I log off from work. Below is a quick example of what my “next day planning” looks like (I use Evernote for this, but any app or paper will work)
- Set timers: If you’re like me, you easily get into “hyperfocus” mode and can easily lose track of time. I’ve combatted that by leveraging the annoying sound of my phone alarms. After mapping out the next day (see above) I set timers for ~3-5 minutes before each of my meetings. This typically gives me enough time to snap out of deep focus, wrap up a meeting/task, and then make it to my next appointment on time. (note: I really recommend setting ~5 minutes before you need to be somewhere rather than setting a timer for exactly when you need to be there. We all need transition time. Here’s an example of what my timers look like each day. (2-5 minutes before appointments).
- Embrace the art of the 15-minute buffer: Build in 10-15 minutes between appointments. This not only helps prevent decision fatigue, but acknowledges the reality that stuff is going to happen. Life rarely runs exactly on time (ex: your meeting runs over because your boss isn’t done talking, you take 7 minutes longer than expected to type out an email, you need to go to the bathroom before your next appointment, etc…). Remember that you can’t teleport from place to place. Whenever you can schedule your meetings at least 15 minutes apart. You’ll not only be on time, but be more mentally prepped as well.
- Assume that things will ALWAYS take longer than you think: Estimate your time and then add another 15-20% to it. Think your task will take an hour? Book 1 hour and 15 minutes on your calendar. Similar to adding 15-minute buffers between appointments, but instead adds a buffer to the task time itself.
- Create a “shallow work” block: This is my method of fighting against my tendency to “squeeze one more thing in.” I know that I want to get all those little things done, so I literally just created a space of time (usually ~30 minutes per day) to take care of all the small miscellaneous tasks (ex: clearing out emails, unloading the dishwasher, getting the mail, etc…). This prevents me from being tempted to do these things when I really should be transiting to my next appointment or meeting. I know there’s a dedicated time to do them and so I can stop worrying about them.
- Learn to Say No: Sometimes, overcommitting is a sneaky culprit behind lateness. Be realistic about what you can achieve within a given timeframe. Learning to decline additional tasks or commitments when your plate is full can alleviate the pressure and help you stay on track.
But If all else fails, you can always try this…
