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?

Yes this.

If I was needing to get a train at 12 with a short drive but unpredictable parking, I'd leave the house at 11.30. I would actually get the 11am train, because all kinds of things happen to make trains late or cancelled.
I also dont put more stuff in the dishwasher, I mean why? Unless you are turning it on because it's full, just leave those things on the side or in the sink if the dog can reach them. And even if you are turning it on, a few items can be left out or you can put it on when you get back. They dont take a day to wash items, see also washing machine or pile of wet clothes that need to go out. Leave them, the world won't end.
Same with hoovering and all the other reasons people have for not getting out on time. It will wait, it will all still be there when you get home. Unless your worried robbers will think your a slattern?

All these things you do that end up making you late, no one else does. And you end up missing trains for a few cups, ffs a few cups and a bowl make you late.

As for the wasting time waiting for the train when you get there early, so what, at least you caught the train. If you really cannot think of a single thing to do for 15 minutes in this age of smartphones, internet access everywhere and shops that sell papers, magazines and coffees I'm sorry but there is no hope for you.

There was only one 'boss' there who is a team manager rather than a boss and he wasn't stopping anyone doing anything, it's just politeness and a social constraint which is admittedly, possibly not helpful, where people don't want to order until the whole party has arrived.

And the fact that when someone hasn't bothered to tell anyone that they're going to be late, and it's a group booking you have the whole 'they're probably be here in 5 minutes, let's hang on' mentality then after 20 minutes you have the 'is she coming? she said she was coming but is anyone sure? has anyone heard from her today? shall we just go ahead and order? conversations, with some people wanting to go ahead and others saying' i'm sure she's coming, she said she was looking forward to it..i'll text her. wait 10 minutes for a reply. No reply. Oh she probably didn't see the text, i'll call her - no reply.

Which has taken up more time and at the point people just want to go ahead and order, she wafts in and arses around for another 15 minutes and complains that she feels pressured by impatient staff to order when she in her mind, just sat down.

Also if you can't handle 2 minutes at station what are you doing on the extremely interesting train for 20+ minutes?

Answer: you're completely fine because the extremely painful wait at the station is just made up self serving bullshit attempting to pathologise your basic lack of consideration and self centredness

@TheWildRosePlayer wow, what a pain that sounds

and all for one person. No wonder team
lunches are out for now. I would have been the person saying “let’s order” in the past but in this new world, I just wouldn’t go too.

11.32 - result. I'm done and ready to go with time to spare.

Except you weren't ready to go.

That would have been coat shoes & out.

With time to pick up an umbrella!

If I had ADHD I’d be spitting feathers at this thread. A friend has ADHD and finds all sorts of executive function stuff difficult. She works really hard to manage it. She doesn’t sit around saying “oh the passage of time, who knew?” and complaining that having basic concern for others is “too painful”.

I agree. If someone is unable to take into account traffic jams, lack of parking, accidents , road works because they simply cannot bear to wait at a train station I’d say they’re completely and utterly selfish, self centred and full of their own self importance. You made a great point about them not wanting to wait at a train station but don’t mind the train journey itself whilst also sitting around doing nothing! I mean, what happens if they get to the station and have missed the train, they will still have to wait for another but then all of a sudden the wait doesn’t seem too ‘boring’ or ‘painful’ for them! As far as I’m concerned most people do this have a passive aggressive attitude of “I’ll get there when I feel like it, not when other people say I should get there”!

Exactly the point I mead earlier in the thread. The huge majority of people with ADHD who have posted on here seem to have strategies in place to manage their time. It’s the ones who don’t want to wait around at a station for a train who seem to have an issue with timekeeping’

Surely by writing that down you can see where you went wrong. You need more of a buffer. People saying oh 10 minutes of waiting on a platform is wasted time. It isn't. You can do loads in that time! Reply to your friend who messaged you, check emails, etc.

If I am getting a train at 12 noon I would plan to be there by 11.45. You allowed 5 minutes to get there and park. I would have allowed 10 or even 15 minutes. So that takes us to 11.30. Allow a bit longer in case you are delayed leaving the house for whatever reason - dog is sick, someone knocking on the door. So I'd leave at 11.20. But at 11.20 you were still writing your email!

But they don’t even need to “feel the passage of time” to not be late. They just need to know basic addition. For example, if they look at a clock and see it’s 11.30am and say they then decide they want to load the dishwasher before they leave. They have loaded their dishwasher 100x before in their lives and know it takes approximately 6 minutes to fully load and turn on. Then, regardless of looking at a clock again after the task, they must surely know that the time must be (give or take) around 11.35-11.37am? Likewise, if they know from previous experience that to kiss and treat a dog takes 2 minutes, if they do this straight after the dishwasher, the time now must be around 11.37-11.39am. It’s just addition. They don’t need to feel or sense anything surely? If I’m going to the cinema to see a film that’s 120 minutes duration, it’s irrelevant whether the film is dull and feels like it’s gone on for 6 hours or if I’m really immersed in it and it feels like an hour, I KNOW that by the time the film has finished, 2 hours exactly have passed, because that’s how long it the film is. Maybe people who struggle with lateness should time how long it takes to do certain tasks (and then factor in a generous buffer for daydreaming) and then work backwards from the time they want to leave .

My alarm wakes me at 6am and it takes me an hour approximately to do my regular morning routine - the same series of tasks each day. (10 mins in the shower, 10 mins drying and getting dressed, 15 mins breakfast, 20 mins brushing teeth and doing hair and make-up, 5 mins putting shoes on and grabbing handbag, umbrella and lunch).

Even if you took all my clocks away from me once my alarm went off and I’d have no way of knowing the time, I’d be ready to leave around my same time each day with a small margin of error (6.55am-7.05am). Not because there’s anything spectacular about my internal clock or perceiving time accurately but because I know from previous experience how long each of those tasks takes interrupted. I don’t have to “feel” or “estimate” anything. I just add up the total duration of each task.

yup as I have already said, very few of us can "feel the passage of time" that's why we use clocks and alarms AND TAKE NOTICE OF THEM.

tbh it seems completely mad to me that you'd go to all the effort of paying for transport, spending time getting there, and then just turn around and not go in yourself because she was running late, despite presumably wanting to see the exhibit! It's not like it was a cinema and if she missed the start there was no point in her coming, she could have gone in and caught up with you and you could then have gone for a drink together or whatever.

It doesn't make the friend any less at fault, but there is a whiff of the martyr about it. I tend to organise things I want to do, then if someone else wants to do it as well, bonus, if they are late or drop out that's their problem. You usually can't change other people's behaviour but you can sometimes change the extent to which it impacts upon you. The original fault was hers, but it was your choice to change it from a 'mildly annoying minor change of plans' to 'pointless to stay, whole evening was ruined.'

@TheWildRosePlayer I haven't said anywhere on this thread that people who are ND shouldn't try. I've absolutely had to. And I have done so out of consideration for others. When I worked as a frontline psychologist it was unacceptable to be late for client sessions so I had to find ways (generally becoming chronically early!)

There has to be some give and take though if someone genuinely struggles. I'm not talking about "it's too boring to wait on the platform for 10 mins" - that's a BS excuse IMO, and that does seem rather a self centred attitude to take. I'm talking about people who do have executive functioning challenges and find those hard to manage. Berating them repeatedly won't help. There's got to be a balance between them making an effort and others allowing some margin for error. I always prioritised the "big consequences" stuff when working with time blindness challenges - being on time for work, flights, trains, medical appointments etc. Then we'd work on the things that had lower level consequences such as causing annoyance in a personal relationship. Once a client could be on time for work and not fear losing their job because they missed the 8am train yet again, for example there is then cognitive capacity and a foundation to work on other things.

Sometimes, it is important to challenge the "lateness is rude and if you're 5 mins late you are dead to me" types as well. It's worth noting that the kind of irritation and judgement about even relatively trivial lateness expressed on this thread by some people is also an example of cognitive inflexibility, it's just of a different kind than someone who is time blind. But as a society, that kind of rigidity in thinking about being on time and the things it signifies if you are not (lazy, inconsiderate, selfish, etc) fits with our social and cultural norms in the UK.

I'm talking here about being able to take a "both/and" perspective that means people who struggle with timekeeping should make efforts to improve it and minimise inconvenience to others, and those who dislike poor timekeeping and feel compelled to criticise even the smallest instances of lateness might be advised to pick their battles and focus on the things that are most important to be on time for.

So you don't do anything about poor timekeeping?

I was reading this thread earlier today, smugly thinking 'Yes, I recognise this, but I've got much better and it's hardly ever a problem now'. And then, in the last hour, I did it again.

Needed to pick up DD at 3.00, was 35 mins away. Aimed to leave at 2.00, spent 10 minutes 'just quickly finishing' something, ended up not leaving till 2.10, realised I'd forgotten something and popped back to get it, on the way there was a problem with the bus, frantically tried phoning ahead to make other arrangements for DD but no luck, ended up jumping in a taxi, got there at 2.57, having thrown money at the problem. Gah! (I really have got much better, though! This was a rare relapse.)

You always need more time to get ready than you think you will. So saying I have loads of time is always going to be a no no. When the alarm goes off, do not ignore or think about it, just move

So I am very bad at time keeping so I am chronically early as a result.

My though process for the same thing would be:

All day fixated that I can not be late and miss the train- to the point I struggle to get anything else done-

So I would get the hour earlier train and then grab a coffee to work from there to burn some time closer to the appointment as all time prior to leaving would be tainted by the panic of being late- I would get to the parking for half past also

What was it that made you spend 10 minutes just quickly finishing something when you knew you had to leave the house at 2?

but even people who feel like this should understand that there are things that are negotiable (about when/where/how and even if) they are done, and things that aren't?

So things like finishing the work she was doing, putting on shoes and coat, getting an umbrella, driving to car park were essentials.
Sending 1 last email, fixing hair and makeup, cups in dishwasher, treat for dog, etc, weren't.

So even if you are an 'arrive exactly on time and not a minute before' person, you could just reallocate lots of the non-essential things so you don't have any 'wasted' time, but are still 'on time.' Lots of people who get places early don't just stand there staring blankly into the distance like NPCs or SIMS, they do the extra things then and there, once the essentials have been achieved. So in OP's example I would have put off things like the one last email/fix hair and make up etc. UNTIL I was at the station 10 mins early, then done them. So same amount of things achieved but without the pressure and rushing.

Like if you fancy a coffee for the journey, you can make it at home to go, or get one at the station. If you get to the station and don't have enough time to buy a coffee then you probably didn't have time to make it at home either!

A combination of (a) wanting to get it off my desk today (because it would have taken longer to complete tomorrow for technical reasons that are too boring to go into) and (b) knowing I had 25 mins of buffer, so thought I could afford to lose the 10 mins. Obviously in hindsight I'm aware it would have been better to leave it for tomorrow.

Someone has literally just posted earlier in the thread that they find jobs to do because they find it ‘too painful’ to wait at a station so this will potentially make them late, they know it has the potential to make them late but go ahead and do the tasks anyway.

I'm sure it's not hard for you to grasp that for many neurodivergences being overstimulated and overwhelmed can be neurologically painful.

The same can be true of being underestimated and underwhelmed.

It is emotionally dysregulating in the same way that being overstimulated is so often it isn't really a choice to go and do something while you wait but it becomes a need instead.

Oh here we go again! I have already said in an earlier post that the majority of neurodivergent people who have posted on here realise they struggle with time keeping and they put strategies in place to help them to get to places on time!

That particular poster I was referring to made no reference that they were even neurodivergent, just that they find it ‘painful’ to wait around at stations! At the end of the day, you put strategies in place to make sure you get to places on time. You can’t go through your whole life being late, missing trains, keeping people waiting because you find it ‘painful’. People HAVE to put strategies in place to manage your time which, an awful lot of ADHD/ neurodiverse people have stated very clearly on this thread that they have done so! I also find it painful to do basic chores such as cleaning etc, I hate it but I still have to do it!

I have diagnosed ADHD/Autism and can completely relate to what OP and others have described. I just wanted to use my own experience to say to those who are struggling to “understand the logic” behind these issues, or who ask the (reasonable) questions about why do we not think about x,y,z and put in preventative measures - the whole point about these sorts of executive function issues is that there IS no logic or awareness available whilst I am in that time blind mind state.

I vastly overplan everything because I know I’m likely to muck things up, yet even with a ridiculously overplanned schedule, I almost ALWAYS forget some crucial detail which then makes me late. So it’s not a case of not caring or making an effort. Another thing for me is that nothing really seems real until it’s imminent, I can’t explain that, but it means that I always feel things are just vaguely sometime in the vague future, as I don’t need to do anything about them yet… until suddenly they LOOM and I’m already running late!

Lastly, in case it’s helpful to anyone reading - I think a huge part of my struggles with those last minute “cups in dishwasher “ types of tasks is a kind of compelled feeling that I have to complete the whole routine - even if I’m late, I find it impossible not to complete every task I would normally do in the morning. Eg I couldn’t decide to leave dishes or not straighten my hair even if late. It’s like my brain just takes over and I find myself acting out those tasks even whilst part of me knows I’m late. So there’s little if any access to the thinking part of my brain who cares about consequences etc. That comes later when I berate myself, but it truly feels like it’s not under conscious control.

I think unless you have a friend that's constantly late you just don't know how horrible it is to be left standing there.

I also had a chronically late Friend that didn't update how late they were.
I waited for ages and then went home without telling her.

Also I noticed the late people don't tell you the truth.

Have you left yet to my friend,yes she says.
So I then left to meet her,but that time she hadn't even showered.
So she lied.