People who are habitually late (or are late even once, when it counts) project incompetence, self-centeredness, and even a lack of integrity.
This article provides 10 useful tips to be on time every time:
- Have a central place where your time commitments are recorded, whether that’s an online calendar, Outlook, a smartphone, a dayplanner, or just an index card with your schedule on it.
- Don’t schedule events that aren’t that important to you. A lot of the time we let ourselves show up late because the event we’re showing up to isn’t all that important to us.
- Don’t check your email or voicemail right before you leave. That “last quick check” will almost always take more time than you think. If you thought there’d be nothing important in your email, you wouldn’t bother checking.
- Plan for trouble. Always add 25% to your time estimate to get anywhere or do any task.
- Set up the night before. If you are someone who has a hard time getting going in the morning, make sure you set up the night before.
- Set your clocks ahead a few minutes each — by different amounts.
- Learn to better estimate how much time things take. Use a time tracker app to learn how long typical tasks take you to complete. Record these times, and refer to your record when estimating the time needed for similar tasks.
- Schedule events 10 minutes early. Always have 10 minutes of work with you to fill the slack time.
- Set reminders. Use your calendar program’s built-in reminder function to send you text reminders at set intervals before each appointment.
- Schedule events for “off-peak” times. Learn the times that traffic or other factors might make you late, and avoid scheduling during those times. For instance, give yourself at least an hour to get settled in every morning before your first meeting, don’t schedule meetings immediately after lunch, avoid before-working-hours events, etc.
