Is punctuality a choice?

Great Debates
41

I missed this earlier. I am going to try this. I have discovered I just can’t make the things I do go smoothly, so I’m always looking for alternate ways of coming at the problem.

(For example, I often lose my sunglasses. Instead of stressing about them every day, I just have lots of sunglasses. In my office, in my house, in my car. The 1/2 dozen pairs get lost and re-found interchangeably, but 99% of the time I can locate one. I’m so much happier having taken sunglasses off the list of things I have to worry about.)

42

Captain, I think we’ve encountered a rift in the time-space continuum.

This really strikes me as incredible, unless your “getting ready in the morning” includes something a heck of a lot more than waking up, getting cleaned and dressed, caring for pets, and feeding yourself. Takes me maybe 25 minutes to shower, dress, and fix breakfast and lunch. Then I have up to 20 minutes to sit down and drink coffee, read the paper, and chat with my wife and kids. But at 6:45, I’m on my way out the door, because the train isn’t going to wait for me.

I’m not sure why Obsidian took it so critical to be asked if she had a diagnosed disorder, because the behavior she describes certainly strikes me as incredibly far from any range of normal I have encountered. In the other thread she states that she “just can’t” hang her keys up when she comes in the door. Bullshit! Instead she chooses to be distracted by cats, people, mail, packages, etc. If she wanted to say, “Everyone wait 5 seconds while I hang up my keys” she darn well could. But she has made a choice as to how she is comfortable living her life.

And she and you have found a way to surround yourselves with folks who tolerate your tardiness and/or are just as (IMO) selfish as you.

Anyone who thinks that “my internal clock wasn’t set correctly” is an acceptable explanation/excuse, has a far different worldview than I.

43

I want to reaffirm this as well from someone who is “chronically late”, because that importance doesn’t make a difference. Just a few weeks ago I had my PhD qualifiers (far more important than $100) of which if I failed more than one, I would have to retake them all. Despite that these exams were pretty much my whole life for 3-4 weeks, I was still 10-15 minutes late for 3 of the 4 exams I had to take. Ironically enough, the one to which I was on time was the only one I failed.

The first day I was 10 minutes late (even though I left with the same amount of time I know to expect to get to class), so I left 10 minutes earlier the next day… and I was still 10 minutes late. The third day I left 10 minutes early and was somehow 20 minutes late. I honestly can’t tell you how it happened that way.

44

Question for the “I lose track of time”, “I get distracted”, and “I have to be an hour early” people: Do you wear a watch, and do you look at it frequently? I wear a watch always, and if I am somewhere with no clocks, I look at it quite often. I don’t think I could function in my life without having a pretty good idea what time it is, always. My brother chooses not to wear a watch, and constantly asks me what time it is. This drives me insane. My take on it is that if you choose not to wear a watch, that you have no excuse for losing track of time. I am constantly looking at my watch and recalculating in my mind how much time I have available for whatever task I am planning. The estimate of available time is constantly revised as I continue each activity.

45

Good point. Same with clocks. I’m not sure there is a room in my house (other than bathrooms) that doesn’t have at least one clock in it.

46

It’s not a question of where you stand. ADD is proven scientifically. Science is about fact. Funny how this board is awash in scientists when it comes to religion but not when it comes to - oh - science. :rolleyes: Frankly, it’s as useless a question as ‘do you believe in diabetes’. Mind you, not everyone who is chronically late has an executive function disorder but plenty of people do. The estimates of ADD in the adult population start at 4%. That’s a lot of people.

47

Some people claim that they are merely oblivious to time in the normal way. If that was the case, you would expect those people who are often tardy to show up very early sometimes as well because of this deficiency. That rarely happens.

I am habitually tardy with some things and exactally punctual on others. It is about priorities and how much trouble I think I will get in for it. I may arrive to work 35 minutes late and give a dirty look back to anyone who gives me a dirty look. However, I have to pick up my kids by 6 sharp and I have a 53 minute commute to get there. Someone better not stand in front of me when 5 pm hits because I am walking out that door. I have never been late for a child pickup in 4 years.

48

I haven’t seen anything from you concerning the incidence of ADD (or your beloved broken brains) in the habitually tardy.

Nor, by my layman’s understanding, does the mere existence of a valid diagnosis of ADD necessarily condemn one to a life of lateness.

But please show me your “science.”

49

My morning isn’t complicated: wake up, take a shower, get dressed, eat, leave. I honestly can’t tell you where extra time shows up or disappears, because there’s little room for variance from what I can tell.

You are right about the distraction and hanging up of keys. I HAVE to put my keys, my coat, my shoes, etc. in EXACTLY the same place, or I will not be able to find them. I’ve been 10 minutes late to work because my keys were on the wrong side of the dresser and I had no idea where to look for them. About half the time when I get home, I get distracted and put my coat in the wrong spot. Come morning, I can’t find it. The choice is, I should know to keep myself focused when I have these sorts of rituals because I know how it affects me, but it takes a lot of effort, more for me than for many others.

This is very unfair of you. For me, as said in an earlier post, this lack of understand must be like when I see someone who is out of shape and can’t figure out why they can’t get motivated to exercise. Sure, it takes a lot of effort for me but I have no idea how the amount of effort I need compares to theirs. If I’m going to accuse them of consciously “choosing to be fat” or “choosing to be unhealthy”, it’s just as unfair as accusing me of “choosing to be late” or “choosing to be disrespectful”. There absolutely is a choice, but it is not necessarily the choice that it appears to be.

This is dishonest of you. I never said it was an acceptable excuse, it was simply the explanation of why it happens. An excuse implies that I expect people to accept what happened in light of the excuse; I was not looking to be excused. An acceptable excuse is “Sorry, there was a nasty accident, and they closed the road so the medevac could land.” An unacceptable excuse is “Sorry, I was going to be on time, but my show was almost over.” An explanation is simply telling you what happened. I’m not looking for sympathy, or approval or whatever else. I simply want you to understand that when I’m late, it’s not because I’m disrespecting you, or even expect you to be okay with it, my tardiness has nothing to do with you, so stop taking it so darn personally.

50

My random observations on this topic:

I have minor problems with lateness and messiness (I used to be much worse, but I’m better now): out of every 5 times, I am probably late once, and as for messiness, I let mail pile up a bit- enough to annoy me or make my BF think, “why doesn’t she just file that away?”

I think the problems of lateness and messiness are related in a way. It seems like there is a “spectrum” of punctuality and tidiness. Some people are really bad at it, and some people are really good at it.

Punctuality and tidiness, to me, are habits (emotional habits, in a way), and sometimes good habits have to be learned. Learning is hard, or we’d all flip a switch and be punctual starting…now!

When I look back at the “old days” when I was late 4 times out of 5, I recognize that I was unhappy, and the “expectation of punishment or disdain” was like this self-perpetuating hatred I was putting on myself- like I deserved punishment and my lateness was “asking for it.” It took a while for me to get out of the habit of “hating” myself by being late (stressed out, anxious, expect punishment/disdain, mad at myself, etc) and work more toward the habit of feeling like I deserve to reap the benefits of being somewhere on time (no stress, no anxiety, feel prepared, feel contented). Maybe there are different causes of lateness, but mine is definitely psychological.

So, is punctuality a choice? Yes, in the same way that getting sober is a choice- it’s not all that easy to master and it takes a long time to perfect (if being sober isn’t a habit with which you’re familiar).

Of course- my experience, my opinion.

Signed, Always In Training

51

Yes, I have a watch; though it is currently broken, I still have a cell phone and check the time as I feel it is needed. My bedroom alone has four different clocks in it. I don’t have trouble waking up on time or whatever. The problem isn’t that some amount of time passes and I can’t tell you if it was closer to five minutes or five hours; I have a very good internal clock and don’t often “lose track of time” in and of itself. However, I do easily get distracted or forget about the more mundane things, and those small distracts and mundane things, though small in and of themselves, can easily add up to a substantial amount of time.

52

If I might comment on this - and please don’t take this as a criticism; I just want to point out how this relates to previous discussion: Even though this was a very important event, I still believe that had it been my previous example where a million dollars hung in the balance, that you could have done it.

You knew that you would still be allowed to take the test if you were late. So while it was important to be on time, it wasn’t crucial. And in fact you did fine on the days when you were late.

I notice that while you were 10 minutes late the first day, you only left 10 minutes earlier the second day: Was it your plan to arrive at the exact moment the test was starting? I wouldn’t think so. I’m sure you realize that your decision was illogical, yet you did it because for whatever reason, you were more motivated to do what you were doing than to leave earlier. You rationalized to yourself that you were addressing the problem, but surely, deep down, you must have known that you really weren’t.

I’m doing a similar thing right now. I have a project that I should be doing, but I am posting on this board instead. It’s not a logical course of action and I know it. It’s just that the risk of my getting fired isn’t big enough at the moment to motivate a behavior change for me.

53

This is definitely a similar point, and yet another reason why it’s not a lack of respect for the “offended” person. Similarly, as you might guess, I’m not a very tidy person… but I used to be VERY tidy when I had less on my plate. When people ask why my desk is so cluttered I tell them “My space reflects my state of mind.” I could clean it today, and it would be that cluttered again within a couple of days.

Similarly, as demonstrated by the clutter in my space, the clutter in my mind makes it very difficult for me to think “Okay, to get ready, first I wake up, and make coffee, then I start the shower, and…” I think along the lines “Okay, I need to get ready”. I just plain don’t think about all the mundane details and it bites me in the butt more often than not. It doesn’t mean I don’t still do the mundane things like shampoo my hair and brush my teeth in the morning (I assure you that I do), I simply don’t assign any “time” to them as an individual item and instead assign “time” to the entire process of getting ready.

54

For those who are always late to work; how would you feel if your boss was always late with your pay?

There is no reason to be habitually late. It’s about prioritizing and making other people’s time *more important * than your own. If you look at it that way, you’ll never be late.

I’m rarely late. Like, maybe a couple times in a year. The places I arrive to late are things that don’t require my timely presence, like going to visit my dad. I tell him I’ll be there at 2:00 and I get there somewhere between 2 and 2:30 because we stopped for gas or something. I’m never late if food is being served and I’m never late if I’m attending a function as a group.

I was raised to be punctual. We had a curfew and we weren’t allowed to be more than two minutes late (to allow for differences on clocks). I never even owned a watch until about 20 years ago. If I was more than two minutes late, I was grounded the following day (unless there was a really, really good excuse).

55

I’m very sloppy, disorganized, and clumsy, and yet I’ve always been anal about being punctual. While being organized is helpful, I don’t think its the answer all on its own.

I think some people are better equipped at being punctual than others, but I don’t believe tardiness is akin to some kind of disability. I think it can be an engrained habit tied to maladaptive behaviors (like OCD), but no one is helpless against these things. However, I think everyone should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. A person who is chronically late may be a first-class jerk, or they may simply be trying to juggle too many activities in their life. You should befriend people who’s sense of time matches yours.

I think the OP is wrong by equating tardiness with lack of respect. Some cultures place different emphasis on timeliness than others. For instance, this summer a coworker–a Cuban guy–threw a party at his house. I showed up an hour late, along with another coworker (an Anglo). When we stepped into the house, we expected everyone to be there but we were the first guests to arrive. I was relieved, but my fellow coworker was livid that the party was so “late”. It occurred to me that she was experiencing culture clash by expecting a Cuban party to function on Anglo time. She thought the lateness signified lack of organization and planning (the host was actually showering when we arrived), whereas I realized that–like black American parties–the party actually starts an hour or two after the time printed in the invitation. Different cultures have different time zones and grace periods. People should not look to offend others by being tardy, but people should also be aware that not everyone was raised to fear the clock.

56

My boss is exactly like you. Say he has a paper that needs to be filed in court in another city. The court closes at 4:00 PM. It takes exactly an hour to drive to the court if there were no traffic. There is always traffic. He needs to print out the paper, photocopy it, assemble it correctly, walk to the parking structure, get in his car, start the car, exit the parking structure, drive to the court, park the car, walk to the courthouse, go through security at the courthouse, and take the elevator to the proper department. Let alone that the traffic will add an extra 20-30 minutes on to the trip. So he continues to edit the paper, fussing over relatively minor details, until 3:00, at which point he just begins printing out the paper. He’s thinking “It takes an hour to get to court”, so he leaves himself exactly one hour. He has missed more filing deadlines than I can count.

57

I’m not sure the million dollars is a fair example. I’d sit around and waste a whole day and skip my shower or whatever to make sure I’m early as hell and won’t miss it. My goal isn’t to be early as hell, it’s to be there when I expect to be there. If I added an extra hour to all my preparations, I would probably always be early, but that’s a little extreme and unnecessary, don’t you think?

This is a slight omission on my part. The first day I had thought that by being late I would not be allowed to enter and take the exam. Since the proctor was different on the forth day (the one I was actually on time for), I thought similarly. Granted, I “knew better” the other two days.

To a certain extent you’re right, but I didn’t want to be early, I wanted to be exactly on time because I wanted to maximize my study time. I could have left work 20-30 minutes earlier and probably been to the exam 20-30 minutes early, but that would have been 20-30 minutes less studying which I felt would make a difference since I hadn’t quite finished covering everything I wanted to cover. Hence, my thought process was, I was 10 minutes late, only leave 10 minutes earlier. You’re probably right, that a wiser choice would have been to leave 15 minutes or so ealier, but hindsight is 20-20.

Unfortunately, that just isn’t the way my mind generally operates. I just don’t compute for those extra “nickle and dime” things. For instance, like I said earlier, my workout itself takes about 2 1/2 hours, so it lives in my head as 2 1/2 hours, even though when I add in changing, going to/from, showering, etc. it ends up being about 3 hours. Sometimes I account for that, sometimes I just plain don’t. It doesn’t matter how much I force myself to think of it as 3 hours, it still lives there as 2 1/2 because of that.

…I have a feeling that only makes it more confusing.

58

For me? Once I noticed, I’d stop the workout. But chances are, I’ve misestimated the time it takes to shower and misestimated the time it takes to get to my destination (both directions. Those “30 minutes” are probably 15-60 minutes each.)

The thing is, the “every now and then I glance at the clock” phrase - even knowing that I need to check the clock and constantly thinking “check the clock. You need to leave at 5:00pm” The clock would probably end up being checked at 4:37 (too early) and then not again until 5:12 (too late).

Of course, I could have canceled the whole workout and spent the time staring at a clock instead. (Which still doesn’t work) But that seems like a poor choice, too, far overbalancing the other way.

It isn’t thinking “oh, they’ll wait for me.” (which would be explicitly saying that someone else’s time isn’t valuable) Rather, thinking “It’s 7:20 already? Damn.” Often because I thought I had a 5 minute task and 20 minutes in which to do it when both of those time estimates were dead wrong.

And yes, I might very well miss the million if I didn’t get there the week before and plant myself at the spot.

59

I was raised under similar circumstances (not quite as strict with the grounding, though). Both of my parents are extremely punctual. I remember weekends with my father where we would be woken up 2-3 hours before church services, so we could around an hour early because “to be early is to be on time, to be on time is to be late, and to be late is unthinkable”.

Knowing how bothersome my tardiness can be, I am generally extremely graceful when other people are tardy (yes, even for things like pay checks); unless someone is unfathomly late (like two of the examples I gave earlier), I just let it slide. Further, I generally try to give arrival times to people taking into account how tardy they are as I expect most people who are familiar with me do to me. For instance, I give my girlfriend a time at least an hour earlier, just like when I tell her I’ll be there, I generally tell her about 30-40 minutes AFTER the time I’m actually aiming for. I give my punctual brother the actual time, and the one that’s even less punctual than me a date about a week earlier (seriously).

I’ve gotten a lot better, but it really is really hard for me to account for those small things (thanks lowbrass for the excellent example of what I’m talking about). If the item is something I do all the time (like work), then I can eventually figure out how much extra buffer to allow, but the moment it’s something slight different (like going to a work buddy’s house about 2 miles from where I work), all that extra “nickle and dime” stuff goes straight out the window, and I forget to account for it.

60

Dinsdale, I took it personally because it was said with disdain. I took it personally because it hit a nerve, to be honest.

It’s pretty obvious I probably have ADD. I was never diagnosed because my parents felt I was being this way deliberately. If I just cared enough, if I just put my mind to it, I would be able to be attentive. I was choosing to be distracted. I tried as hard as I could from a very young age, but I could never quite get there. I could never remember all the things I needed to remember. I could never not spill things. I “chose” to make their lives difficult. I “chose” to make my life difficult, full of punishment and distain from my parents. I “didn’t care” about anyone I loved or anything I did.

(It occurs to me now that if they really believed this, they must have thought they had one sociopath asshole of a six year old, I tell ya)

I actually don’t think I’m that outside the norm, though. I think there are lots of people like me. Look at the other people in this thread. Look at the late people in your life. They will continue to insist they can’t control it. You will insist they can. And around and around and around. Of course I look like an outlier-- you’ve already decided the vast majority of late people are just being selfish jerks.

Look, you’re not going to believe us if you’ve already made up your mind. If we are telling the honest truth and you’re calling bullshit, what am I supposed to do? You want to come to my house and watch me? You want me to make my roommates and boyfriend post in this thread to attest to this? You want me to post a minute-by-minute diary of my day? It pointless. I’m very interested in exploring/learning about reasons why people are like this, and usefull suggestions for change. Calling me selfish and insisting it’s a personal choice is both insulting and useless. The vast majority of the time, the person I screw over is me.

The problem is, we’re having a debate of anecdotes, and this thread is probably in the wrong place. I can’t cite that I’m telling the truth, and you can’t cite that I’m lying (or delusional). So we’re just going to indefinitly shout into the wind.