An insight into the mindset of someone who is persistently late.

[deviantfeline]

There's always loads of posts on AIBU about people who hate those who are persistently late and how there no excuse for it. Also lots of people claiming 'time blindness' or inability to plan that causes it.

I'm often late. I hate it but my brain doesn't seem to be able to calculate periods of time in a way that means I can plan appropriately. Today was one of those even though I thought I totally had this. Reflecting on what went wrong here's a timeline.

I needed to get a train at 12pm to a meeting. They are once an hour and so couldn't miss it. I set an alarm at 11am that told me to go and get ready to leave for the station. It's a 3 minutes drive and a 2 minute walk from the car park. I know that at this time it's hard to get a parking spot so I factor in time to find one. I'll leave at 11.40 ish then. I spent the morning working from home.

11- alarm goes off. I think oh I've got loads of time and carry on working thinking I'll stop at 11.15 and get myself ready.
11.15 - think I'll finish the email I'm writing
11.23 - finish email and pack bag
Realise my make up and hair need a touch up and I've got loads of time so do that
11.32 - result. I'm done and ready to go with time to spare. This is easy! Find coat and shoes, locate car and door keys, put cups in dishwasher, find umbrella as it's now raining and my phone charger, kiss dog goodbye and give her a treat, lock up house.
Get in car. Somehow it's now 11.47?! How the hell did that happen? It was 11.32 wasn't it? Fuck fuck fuck.
11.52 - arrive at car park having had to stop at a zebra for 2 mins for loads of people crossing. Hadn't factored in the high street would busy as it's midday.
No car parks as predicted! Drive back up the street and finally find one. It's 11.58. Grab my stuff and sprint and get on the train as the doors are closing.

Despite my planning i screwed it up again. I've noticed that I have a time blindness for the time it takes between 'I'm ready' and actually going. In my mind that would take 30 seconds yet it somehow took 15 minutes?!

Its almost worse when I leave plenty time as my brain starts telling me I've got time to do other stuff rather then just leaving! Also I can't visualise the time passing since I looked at the time at 11.32 and getting in the car. That time seems to be the black spot for me to time manage with any ability.

Crisis only slightly averted but I'm soo cross with myself. So you 'on timers'. What would you have done differently and what was my biggest error?

Haven't RTFT because there's way too much smugness and finger-wagging from the habitually punctual.

IME the only way to avoid being late is to work yourself into an agony of anxiety and stress at least 45 minutes before you need to leave the house. The cortisol surge gets you out the door.

You need to read Dirty Laundry by rox Emery. I'm reading it now. She has adhd. There is a chapter on time blindness. It's a brilliant book. It helps cope with stuff like this and takes away the shame and self loathing. Got any other symptoms of adhd? Untidy, forgetting to shower, losing keys and purses, hyper focus?

This.

(or at least this is what I should be doing instead of a similar 'always late never sure how' dance like the op!). Drives my friend's and family nuts but I honestly don't plan to be late there's just always last minute things to do (yes to dog,, dishwasher, hair, finding stuff etc)

This is me. I have inattentive ADHD. Classic case of late diagnosis at 40 when the kindergarten teacher mentioned she thought my daughter might have it and I started reading up on it. So I have not trained it out of my system by the time I had kids, as some have mentioned, rather it was kids who pushed me to the edge of my coping and masking strategies, which I didn’t know I had until they no longer worked. (Burnout to boot. Woohoo.) I know when I have to do something by, it’s more the other things I think I can squeeze into the remaining time that I misjudge.
I also live in Switzerland where there is a saying “Swiss time is 2 minutes before the time.” So I guess I have had to scrape it out of my dna it to some degree. I’ve been here nigh on 20 years and I tend to catch my train these days but I’m still am a sweaty mess for each and every one. I don’t know that it gets better. I just really, really try to be on time, even if I’m a sweaty mess. (I see it as a cardio bonus 😂)

What does help and I do always congratulate my past self on is when I have my stuff ready in advance. This includes items that live in the bag e.g touch-up make-up, brush and chargers, water/thermos cup on counter ready to fill, having a smartwatch so that can ping my smartphone when I can’t find it, and setting multiple alarms on said smart watch, not just one, eg 11am “stop working” but also 3 mins later “no really, stop working” 5mins later same again. Another one when I have to be downstairs. Another one when I need my shoes on & bag in hand and then another one to actually be out the door. I add a buffer appropriate to the time of day for kids/cats appearing with wants and needs. I have checklists for different types of outing so I don’t forget stuff. For repetitive actions like going to the office I know my time slots but for sporadic outings like airport, early morning classes I sometimes teach, meeting people, I set many multiple alarms and aim for one train earlier. You can always work more at the other end or go for a coffee if you’re early. But if your brain overrides the earlier train then at least you’ll still make the one you NEED to get. DP also now tells me fake times to leave and/or schedules it in (kids are the same as me despite being half Swiss) which I used to resent him for but now appreciate. Oh and we have clocks in every room so we can glance at the time whenever and wherever. No more excuses.
i will now stop writing this post and go pack my bag for lunchtime 😬
Good luck!

My DH is exactly like this and I'm convinced he has ADHD. (His mum is the same and she was diagnosed this year).

But you get ready every day. You don't have to "judge" it, you know from experience. You know how long it takes to get to work, school, your best friends house or whatever. Google maps can tell you how long an unfamiliar journey is, then add on about 30-50%. It's not a magic talent or ability, it's maths.

I left the house at 8.25
Hair still wet but its curly so mousse on it and I'm flying 🤣

I left the house at 8.25
Hair still wet but its curly so mousse on it and I'm flying

This. It's prioritising your own activities over others. Anyone can improve habits, even those with ADHD.

I understand how you feel, OP. I struggle with timekeeping, but I think for me I actually find being early very difficult. To me, it’s dead time, and I’ve really had to force myself to accept that it’s much better to wait five minutes for a train to arrive than to end up waiting 20 minutes for the next one because I left the house too late.

My mother was always late when I was growing up. She hated it, but it frustrated the hell out of me that she’d never do anything about it. We’d be running out of the door with her giving this pained running commentary about how she couldn’t believe we were late again, why were we always the last to arrive for anything, we should be there by now, why was it always the same etc…. yet she’d still be frantically be grabbing cups and throwing them into the dishwasher, fluffing the cushions on the sofa, clearing things off the table. When I’d ask why she was doing all this when we were already late, she’d look at me in horror and say “I can’t just leave it!!”

I vowed I would never be like this. If I was running late and the dishwasher wasn’t on or I hadn’t tidied something away, it could wait until I got back - no way was I going to stress myself out even more than necessary. And for years I thought I’d really got it right. But eventually I realised that while I don’t deliberately make myself late, I try to cram as much as I can into every minute. For example, I can walk to my local station in eight minutes if I walk fast, so I’ve really tried to train myself to leave 10 minutes before the train is due. But if I’m ready 12 minutes before it’s due, I won’t think “Great, plenty of time” - I’ll think “What can I do that will only take two minutes?”. And then inevitably it will take more than two minutes and I’ll be running for the train again.

Similarly, the trains leave our station at the same times every hour, except for a couple of times a day when there’s some minor variation. Yet if I’m rushing to make the 5:25 and have forgotten it’s actually the 5:27, I won’t feel pleased when I get there in plenty of time - I’ll feel massively frustrated that I’ve got to sit there and wait when I could be doing something. I try really hard to avoid this mindset, but it’s deeply ingrained and I really struggle.

So be stressed. Better than making other people stressed. Or is only your stress important?

When I was younger I used to really struggle with some of the things you mention- the surprise at how long it actually takes to leave , last minutes jobs etc. To counter this I now aim to be extra early for things.

Now, if I HAD to be on the 12pm train and there's only one an hour, I'd aim to take the 11am train and take my laptop if I had work to do. I do as much as I can the night before to prepare and in the morning still rush like crazy to keep myself on track. I motivate myself by knowing the reward of lots of chill time to spare, when I'm already in the right place, is coming!

Don’t get me started on this. I see someone with a kid who lives near me and attends the same school as my child persistently late every single morning. They set off at the same time as me so they should be on time as I get to the school gates around 5 minutes before they open. However, what she likes to do is let her kid (no older than 6) swing about on some railings and climb on someone’s garden wall for 15 minutes while she twats about on here phone, not really watching her child or worried that he may have an accident/ fall off the wall. They then end up being late and they are just starting to continue their walk to school as I’m almost home! The logic?? I have absolutely no idea. The mind boggles!

No but there are various strategies that people with dyslexia can use to help them and I would expect someone with "time blindness" to do the same.

How long is your drive :) It takes me about 10 seconds to walk to my car.

However, I might have to run back to check that the front door is locked...

If it's not a routine work trip, I always get the train before the one I actually need to get as well but I think that's just borne out of experience knowing that if I need a particular train it will be cancelled so better to get the one before, even if I then need to go and hang around a coffee shop for a while.

make your alarm the countdown clock

and do your adrenaline-fuelled panic-stricken 😱 last minuteness while it plays

or an alarm that’s a sound or song a little bit longer bc having the sound playing while you are doing stuff keeps you cognizant of the time passing

so instead of an 11am alarm saying ‘get ready’ that you then switch off & in the silence think ‘plenty of time to do a bit more work’

you have: 11am alarm saying ‘get ready’ that you leave on giving you the length of La Macarena to run round getting ready

playback radio is also useful for longer tasks - loads of times I stick Ken Bruce on & know once Popmaster starts that’s 30mins up

it’s an easy way to be aware time is passing and have a noticeable cutoff point rather than your brain filling a silence with ‘I’ll just do xyz..’

My mind works exactly the same way as yours . It’s the extra tasks that do the damage and time blindness.
Contingency is key and you have to fight the part of your brain that knows that the journey is three minutes and parking is 2 minutes.
So - when the alarm goes at 11 STOP working. When you have the urge to do a job at home tell yourself it can wait. Leave at 11:30 and tell yourself that it will be ok to be on the platform early.

The description of the way you think seems normal to me but I'm rarely late because I stick to my plan. I've long since got over the delusion that I can stretch time to suit my convenience and I know from experience, "I'll just do...., it'll only take a minute" can consume many minutes when you add all the "just do" stuff together. On the rare occasions I am late it is usually because of things outside of my control such as a car accident on my chosen route.

At some point you get fed up of rushing and berating yourself for, what you think is, poor organisation. Your problem is not organisation, it's execution. You had a plan, you didn't stick to it. I make a plan and stick to it.

This. People with dyslexia, ADHD, anxiety, OCD etc can develop good habits and manage their lives well. Maybe it's more of a challenge for some, but it's certainly achievable.

It's a 3 minutes drive and a 2 minute walk from the car park

I don’t have an opinion on the rest of it but this is ridiculous. A three minute drive? Surely it’s quicker, and better in so many ways, just to walk straight to the station? Even if it’s pissing down you aren’t going to get much wetter than on the walk from the car park.

This is really insightful as I am completely the opposite. If I am ready 2 minutes early, I just go, I'd never go and find something to do for that time.

All that said, my mum seems to manage to get everything done that she needs to do, including all the little jobs, and is still on time for everything! Time is like elastic for her.

And you can time the walk much more predictably than the drive, assuming there aren't three sets of traffic lights on your way that make pedestrians hang around for ages (or a level crossing).

I agree. I think almost everyone I have come across who are persistently late are generally rude and arrogant and think they are so important that everyone should wait. They generally don’t have a valid excuse for being late. One of my colleagues years ago was late for work which had an impact on me. Her excuse was that her daughter had asked her to straighten her hair at the very time she should have actually been at work! Another time was because she’d forgot to shower so thought she’d get in the shower with 5 minutes to spare before setting off meaning she had to dry her hair too (as she’d washed that).
I sympathise with people with disabilities who are just unable to do it for one reason or another but I have zero sympathy for those who just think it’s ok to potter about while others wait for them.

Yes, it's the gleeful attitude that's annoying. I have a friend who is always late, and has the same 'tee-hee-hee' attitude. She also has problems with authority and I think she feels like she's winning against the system when she is late - like her subconscious says, 'Doctor's appointment at 8.45? Fuck that - you're not the boss of me, I'll get there for 9.10.'

Twattish, very.

I am time blind.
I however am the opposite to you in that I just can't ever arrive reasonably on time, say 10mins before train.
I would be there at least 25 minutes beforehand, because in my head I have to account for all variables and be sure that I allow the maximum possible.

So in your case my morning would have been thought through like this.
While I am home I am generally in control because I can leave anything I don't want to do, but afterwards, once I leave the house everything is unpredictable.
Traffic and parking are my 2 main concerns to be honest. In my mind a 3 minute drive is at least 10 , and parking and walking could be anywhere up to say 25 mins. Obviously even if I encountered traffic and couldn't park nearby I still wouldn't wish to be running to the platform so I'd want to arrive say11:45/50 so that 's more time to factor in.

In your shoes I would have set off driving from home at 11:15.
If there was no traffic and I found parking I'd be waiting for ages, but that's life.
I would like to be able to be a bit more reasonable, but in my head I'd rather wait than be late because that feeling of having to rush makes me overwhelmed and shutdown.