And it’s not only about the annoyed look on your friends’ and colleagues’ faces when you finally arrive. Experts say that people who are perpetually tardy have a harder time keeping jobs, tend to harm their relationships, and have higher stress levels, while research shows that unpunctual students struggle in school. “Punctuality is all about prioritization, [it’s] both a skill and a practice,” says Rashelle Isip, a productivity consultant based in New York City and author of The order expert’s guide to time management. “The good news is that you can become better at it if you’re willing to learn, make mistakes, and change your habits.” “Being chronically late is not necessarily always due to poor time management,” says Pauline Wallin, a licensed psychologist based in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, who teaches workshops on procrastination and chronic lateness. “If it were, people would learn from their experiences and change their behaviors for next time.” Instead, experts say being chronically late stems from emotional and motivational factors, as defined by six different procrastination-prone personality types. Understanding which one you identify with can help you reverse-engineer your tardiness and stop it before it grows into a bigger issue. That means that if you have mixed feelings about where you’re going (such as work, a doctor’s appointment, or a lunch date) you may subconsciously delay your arrival to reduce the anxiety you’ll feel once you get there, she says. If this sounds familiar, Isip recommends getting to the root of why you’re hesitating in the first place—is it a job you don’t enjoy, or maybe a friendship you’re done with? She also advises making commitments more intentionally. “If you know you’re going to drag your feet to get somewhere, maybe it’s not the kind of thing you ought to be committing to in the first place,” she says. If that’s you, Sapadin suggests taking on less and giving yourself extra time between tasks to ensure you’re happy with how they turn out. Hopefully, this will also result in you arriving places on time. To change this behavior, Isip says dreamers should cultivate awareness of how distractions can easily derail their focus and prepare accordingly. She suggests silencing text threads, turning off non-essential notifications, and learning to laser-focus on one task at a time. The latter is easier to do when you take breaks, allowing your brain to rest from time to time. If you think this is your personality type, Isip says to remind yourself that you’re still limited by the same number of hours each day as everyone else and that your ambition of accomplishing that “one last thing” often means you’ll leave your friends waiting on you as a result. The solution, Isip says, is for people who plan poorly to learn to consider that sometimes a multitude of tiny delays may pile up without them noticing. Take transportation, for example: “Travel time often includes time spent walking, driving, flying, taking the train or bus, entering a building, taking the elevator, logging into a video session, unpacking one’s belongings, and grabbing a hot beverage,” she says. Isip explains that such people can check traffic or weather ahead of time, plan out the fastest routes to their destination, and prepare extra time for all the tiny and unexpected delays they’ll have to get through along the way. “Be mindful of how much those small tasks will add up,” she advises. The key to overcoming this behavior is to get to the root of why you may want to rebel against the person you’re supposed to meet or the task you’re meant to do. You should also be more mindful of the commitments you make so that you don’t find yourself consciously or subconsciously putting off things you don’t actually want to do. “We all have a huge storage of templates of behaviors we routinely fall back on in any given situation,” says Joaquim. Recognizing where a bad habit began can help correct it. “The key in all this is developing your self-awareness,” she says. She adds that having a clock within eyeshot is also helpful because if you’re more aware of something in your conscious world, it’s more likely to impact your subconscious. This works in a similar way to the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, which happens when you become aware of something new to you (a song, a trend, a particular dog breed) and think you see it everywhere. If you set up reminders before you go somewhere, Wallin says it’s best to have them go off 10 minutes before you need to leave so you have enough time to wrap up the task you’re on and get moving. Thinking back to the personality types described above, this advice is most likely to help the distracted and poor-planning groups. A study published in 2011 by the Intervention in School and Clinic journal, showed that teachers were able to help perpetually late students at one school by keeping an eye on when they arrived and providing positive reinforcement like verbal praise when they did so on time. Asking friends for help with accountability and validation can have the same effect, encouraging you to be more punctual. “Talking through your lack of punctuality with a friend is a great way to acknowledge that you have a problem that needs fixing,” Isip says. Friends can also be helpful if they tell you when they are about to leave to meet you, Isip says. That way you can be more mindful of leaving on time as well. Making an upfront verbal (or textual) commitment to arrive on time may also be the boost you need to motivate you to get out the door when you need to. Changing your goal starts with getting comfortable with arriving early and envisioning how nice that extra time can feel. Use it to decompress, browse aimlessly on your phone for a bit, catch up on emails, or even do a quick meditation. Imagine being in a state of no rush once you get there and then getting to see your friends’ and colleagues’ faces as they arrive. Not only will it be helpful to those relationships—Wallin says arriving early, “may turn out to be an especially positive experience” for you as well.
