This is what it looks like to be a lazy, unpunctual person who doesn't care enough to be on time for an appointment with a friend.
Friend suggests meeting at the cat café at 10:30 am on Thursday 15th.
What my brain registers: "meet at the cat café on a Thursday". This is an improvement - I used to get muddled up with days of the week, but now I'm pretty good at them, although I have to pay extra attention if something is on a Saturday or Sunday because I do sometimes mistake one for the other.
I then anchor the approximate time in my mind by thinking of it as "meeting my friend for coffee" which fixes it as a mid-morning event, as I use "coffee" as a sort of number-avoiding code which my brain will understand as as indicating some time between 10am and 11:30. I'm much better with "straight-after" times for meeting up, eg "straight after school drop-off", "straight after work".
I ask my friend to text me the time and date, because there's a reasonable chance that I'd write down the date or time wrong if I did it myself. I set a reminder on my phone to enter the appointment on my calendar when I get home.
I get home and write the appointment on my calendar in pencil. I check three or four times that the date and time I've written is the same as the information in the text. I go off and do something else. I go back to the calendar later, and check another couple of times that they match. If they do, I write it in in pen. If not, I ask someone else to double check for me.
As the day of the appointment approaches, I start to plan the bus journey. Ideally, I have a paper copy or a print-off of the bus timetable. It's even better if it's in large text. That way, I can cover up the columns on the table I don't need, so that I don't read the wrong row or column by mistake, and then use a highlighter pen to show the information I need. Otherwise, I make the text very big and hold a ruler to the screen, to help keep me on the right track.
If the bus is the sort that shows up every 10 minutes, I relax a bit and take a note of the time of the bus that is the one before the one that will get me there on time. If it's the sort of bus that is infrequent, I stress a bit, and write down the time of the bus that will get me there on time.
I have lived in the same house for a long time, so I now know what time I need to leave in order to be at the bus stop with time to spare. If I'm starting my journey from an unfamiliar place, I'll need to spend 30-45 minutes (probably. I don't actually know as I don't really have a proper sense of time. Enough that my tea will go cold, and I'll be stressed and miserable) with Google maps and a calculator working out bus routes and walking times.
I take a post- it note and write down the appointment time at the bottom. Above that, I write the time of the bus. Above that, I write the time I need to leave the house. I stick the post-it in my diary, on the page with the appointment date.
The night before the appointment, I check my calendar, and see that I am due to meet my friend the next day. I get a sheet of A4 paper and a felt tip pen and write down my schedule for the day. I include the information from the post-it. I remember to include a few 15-30 minute gaps for dealing with stuff that comes up unexpectedly, because I know that when stuff does come up, I won't be able to prioritize as effectively as most people can. I make sure that everything I need is packed and ready for the next day.
On the day, I follow the schedule I have written for myself. In the past, I've set timers, in an attempt to keep on track, but they don't work well for me, because I don't really notice how time is passing between the start and finish. I've been doing The Organised Mum Method for housework, and she does timed music playlists which are incredibly useful as I can hear the music changing, so I've started making my own playlists for measured amounts of time.
On the day, I follow my written schedule, and hopefully arrive at the bus stop on time.
Once the bus gets in, I go the café. It's 20 minutes before our table is available so I go to the shop next door to browse. This is a big danger time. I set a timer on my phone for three minutes before the table is free. Without the alert, I could easily let 30 minutes pass without checking the time, thinking that only 5 minutes had passed.
I leave the shop and make it to the appointment on time.
I realise that most of the steps are things that punctual people do anyway, but the main difference seems to be that they internalise the process, and don't forget to do them if they don't write themselves a reminder note. I basically have the timekeeping skills of a distractible 5 year old, and I don't ever improve to the stage where I can do without the prompting of very a sensible adult. When I tried to internalise the skills, I couldn't do it and was always late, so I had to become my own sensible adult and set up systems to prompt myself. This works, BUT because the system relies on the prompting of my past self, it all falls to pieces when unexpected things happen.
So if I write the date wrong, or read the timetable wrong, or read my reminder note wrong, or deal with a homework crisis which means I don't finish writing my plan for the day ahead, or my mum phones and interrupts my schedule, or I don't hear the alarm on my phone, then I'll probably be late, because although I've learned how to give myself sensible timekeeping instructions, I haven't yet learned how to cope without those instructions.