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?

This is what I thought each and every time I read another sentence!

Why do you expect everyone to change for
you!

Maybe @RhaenysRocks and @godmum56
I agree with the clocks and timers.

I do think I can estimate time in a way that DD and DH just don't seem capable of doing though. If I'm out somewhere and I text DH to say I'm leaving, I'll be back by 9.45, I'm generally back between 9.40 and 9.50. DH seems to have zero sense of time. He'll say "back in 30 mins" and rock up 2 hours later!

This. ^

Adhd time blindness. The only way I manage is to convince myself for example that the train leaves at 11.45 rather than 12. I often find that I'm ready but instead of leaving the house, I faff around and then forget essentials like my handbag or to ensure my phone is charged up. All because I think Ive got plenty of time. So I'm either red faced and sweaty late or there an hour before I need to be.

Just to note anyone who follows the advice to get there early and go to a coffee shop - which is what I usually do.

Always, always get your drink in a take out cup. Because otherwise you will end up either gulping a too hot cup of coffee, having to leave it or being late anyway because you are ‘just finishing your drink’. With a take out cup with the alarm set on your phone / watch 5 minutes longer than it takes you to your meeting, you can calmly put the lid back on and stroll up the road with your half drunk coffee.

There's part of the issue, if I was running late I would forget the drink and just go. Either get a drink at my destination or go without. You wont die without a drink for 4 hours.

I often find that I'm ready but instead of leaving the house, I faff around and then forget essentials like my handbag or to ensure my phone is charged up. All because I think Ive got plenty of time.

But probably 99% of people who manage to be on time do all that the night before - clothes chosen and hanging up ready to put on, devices charged, bag packed with everything needed - keys etc - and put by the door or with the shoes you're planning to wear. So in the morning it's just get dressed, pick up bag and leave the house, with no last minute faff and panic.

Hair and makeup - most people going to a meeting will pop in the loo on arrival at the venue, won't they? So that's the time to check hair and makeup, not at the point you should be leaving the house.

You need to.know yourself. Both my DS and I can set an alarm 15 mins before needing to.leave the house and get up, shower and dress and leave on time. My DH and DD both need one hour plus 15 mins of faffing time once they think they are ready to leave. You just need to be realistic about which camp you fall in to.

I'm now getting confused, does 'time blindness' mean 'I can't look at a clock/watch/phone and understand it' or 'I'm too busy/important to look at a clock/watch/phone to check the time'?

You’re thinking about your and not other people.

OP you already planned to leave too late. To ensure being on time you need to routinely plan to arrive earlier than you need to so you allow for things like a cancelled train.

For a meeting I would be getting the train an hour earlier then needed and finding somewhere to have a coffee for example.

From what I’ve learned on this thread it apparently means that people have no concept of time, they cannot see it and that time freezes so when they look at the clock and it says a specific time, they then spend 15 minutes or more pottering about and in their mind still think the time will be the same as it was when they last looked at the clock 🤔 And that if you don’t potter about it means that you have to get to the station/ venue early which is far too painful and boring for people with time blindness to do. Also add to the fact that this only applies to upper/ middle class people because those that are always early or on time are working class who are used to being on time due to “on the dot clocking in at the work place” and that it’s actually polite to arrive a few minutes Late! 🤷‍♀️

I’m just as confused as you!

To add, I set alarms, the last one is a 15 minute ‘leave now alarm’ where I already have everything ready and 15 minutes is getting out the door.

I genuinely don't understand how people need to search for keys, lanyards, bags, coats, shoes. Those items have set places and are only ever kept there so I never have to search for them
Drink and snack is either prepared the night before or first thing in the morning when I get up.

I have set places too but still put manage to put things down again in random places so have to have strategies to manage that.

Sometimes I already put my phone if my bag for example but I didn’t remember.

I used to be a get up and put in 20m person but now it’s like an hour and 20m and I do less in the time.

Same here @Macaroni46 . Keys, lanyard, purse etc all live in my handbag.

DH on the other hand leaves keys, lanyard, glasses etc all over the place and is often rushing around trying to find them before leaving the house (late).

This was genuinely a big part of the reason I loved living in Brazil. Whenever I arranged to meet someone, they'd say "English time?" and I'd go, "No! Brazilian time please!" They'd then be so late that I seemed early 😂

Even at my job, which had a definite start time, I'd rush in all flustered and apologetic, and they'd be like "What's the matter? Chill out!" The boss wasn't Brazilian but I think she'd just resigned herself to approxi-time for the sake of her mental health.

To a point I do this too, ask me where my book is, not a clue. Can i hell find my nail clippers, nope. But the really fucking important shit, it has a place, i do not deviate from that place. Unless my house is falling down as I walk in, those things go to their place. And if at some point i discover my keys are not in my right pocket, i panic madly till i find them usually in the door.
Again it comes down to what's more important to you.
I can buy another nail clipper, I can pay the fine on the book, I cannot just walk into another job, and a locksmith is hella expensive when the whole entire lock has to be drilled out and new one put in. As I have found out, to my cost.
Therefore some things are super important to me, I make sure I dont fuck them up. The rest, I really dont care about the rest. It just happens I've trained myself to be early, so I'm generally early for everything now.

But some of the reasons one here for being late, I had to put some cups in the dishwasher, no, you really didn't, I have to do such simple tasks because waiting is too painful. Never mind the others who are waiting for you, their pain doesnt matter. Despite them probably going through the exact same scenario you did, without putting the cups in the dishwasher because they knew that would make them late.

Plus I thought we were all welded to our phones now, I know I am. Mines either on charge or in my left pocket.

I've just found my book on the windowsill, why tf it's there I do not know.

In my retirement, I give mathematics lessons of 55 minutes duration to adults/employees and older students/youths. I accept that a number of people have issues with lateness issues, preparation problems, parking, etc -- so I build some extra planning in to my timing.

1:00pm first lesson
2:15pm second lesson
3:30pm third lesson
4:45pm fourth lesson
6:00pm fifth lesson
7:05pm watch "Jeopardy"

These gaps are meant to be forgiving for people who have a small degree of planning blindness or moderate lateness difficulties.

It is 7:30am right now and my first (1pm) today is Elaine. Elaine has, for more than six months NEVER arrived and been sitting at her desk, books open, pen in hand, at 1pm. Her best start time has been 1:04, her worst 1:26.

Just now, I sent her a text msg: "Elaine, Thursday, See you at 1. Don't forget to leave your house in the car before 12:25pm" -- all becuase a normal drive her place to mine would be 19 minutes according to search engines. It takes 2-4 minutes to park locally and about 1-5 minutes to walk to and to enter the venue.

The 2:15pm student has a perfect record.

The 3:30pm student is having lesson 26 today and has had just one late start (by 6 minutes).

The 4:45pm student has a perfect record.

The 6:00pm student is usually on time or 3-5 minutes early. Sadly, in the last five weeks, she had a 35 minute late start and a 12 minute late start. Never a text message or a call.

My mood suffers on Thursdays. When Elaine is late, she still expects a full 55 minutes attention. Of late, I have forced several 2:10pm terminations to allow me a quick bathroom break and to "honour" the following student for his superb punctuality.

Elaine will not be allowed to book the 1pm slot next year. I just can't take the risk.

ADHD classic time 'optimism'

My mood suffers on Thursdays. When Elaine is late, she still expects a full 55 minutes attention. Of late, I have forced several 2:10pm terminations to allow me a quick bathroom break and to "honour" the following student for his superb punctuality.

Elaine’s lucky to be getting a class at all if she’s over 15 mins late. What if you added something to the T&Cs to say that no classes will carry on more than 1 hour over the start time, so that students with later slots aren’t affected by earlier students running late?

These gaps are meant to be forgiving for people who have a small degree of planning blindness or moderate lateness difficulties.

But all those gaps are your time which you are not beng paid for. If each lesson is 55 min, plus 5 min turnaround time, I make that 4x15 min, or one hour, that you are losing each afternoon to accommodate latecomers.

And I'd be shutting Elaine down at her official finish time, regardless of how late you started. She is taking the proverbial.

I look at a clock, it says 10:10, I say to myself "I need to be leaving in 20 minutes. I'll call it ten, to be on the safe side. Leave at twenty past." What doesn't happen next is the translation of ten minutes into a specific series of actions, even though I know what needs doing and roughly how long it takes.

My brain simply doesn't compute that time is passing, or it does but can't attach meaning to it. If I could explain it, I might've found effective ways to compensate by now

Think of something you can recognise but not understand - Russian, perhaps? You can look at the printed text and see it's Russian. You might even know the alphabet, so you can make a stab at sounding the words out. But this doesn't help you understand the text and what it says.

Someone telling you to just fucking read it will do nothing to improve the situation. You understand that it's Russian and can spell the words out, you simply don't know what it means.

That's really not a perfect analogy, but it goes some way to illustrate that "I understand time and how to set reminders" can co-exist with "I am not capable of completing a set of actions to a specified time-frame."