Do you have friends, relatives or colleagues who are always late? Or are you perhaps one of those people who – no matter how hard they try – just can’t manage to be punctual? But why is that actually the case and how can you learn to be punctual?
Sorry, I’m late – Again! 5 Tips For More Punctuality
Gradually Reduce Unpunctuality
The first option is not to switch directly from being late to absolute punctuality, but to approach the new way of life in small steps. While 25 percent of women and 27 percent of men say they are never late, the remaining respondents to a survey admit to being late at times. According to their own statements, 37 percent of men and women are usually only one to five minutes late. It is six to ten minutes for 30 percent of women and 26 percent of men. It is also exciting that one percent of men admit to being between 31 minutes and an hour late. In general, women are considered to be the unpunctual sex.
Use An Alarm Clock
However, the mere will alone is often not enough. After all, the fundamental problem of people oriented towards their own time lies in the fact that they simply forget about time. So they need a mechanism that keeps reminding them to watch the clock. You can use an alarm clock, for example in your smartphone, for this. So plan a sufficient time buffer and set the alarm clock accordingly.
Put The Clock Forward
Our third tip is: put the clock forward a few minutes. Yes, this tip is not particularly creative, but rather falls into the category of “classic punctuality”. However, based on the first two tips, it is and will remain absolutely effective. As a self-time-oriented person, you have already learned to concentrate more on time and to look at the clock again and again. If it is five, ten or even 15 minutes ahead of you, trick yourself and hurry up. However, there is another basic requirement for this: You must never think: “Oh right, the clock is ten minutes fast”, because then you will pry your own mechanism out again.
Never Place The Alarm Clock Within Reach
Yes, despite time pressure and the snooze function, it’s sometimes just damn difficult to crawl out of bed in the morning. So you keep dozing off or deep in thought until you’re already late, and that delay continues throughout the day. If you’re four minutes late for every appointment, every meeting, and every appointment of the day, aren’t you actually kind of on time? If you got up on time in the morning and started the day ten minutes earlier, you might not be seven minutes late all day, but actually three minutes early.
Sometimes Unpunctuality As A Symptom Rather Than A Cause
Did all these tips not help you? Then maybe it’s time to check whether the unpunctuality could be a symptom of a deeper problem. It often results, for example, from pathological procrastination, which in turn can be an expression of depression or the onset of a burnout syndrome. So do some root cause research. This is the only way you can tackle the original problem and then get rid of the “tardiness” symptom again.