Is punctuality a choice?

Great Debates
61

[QUOTE=Blaster Master]
The same thing happens to me in the gym. I know for a particular work out about how long it takes within 10 minutes or so (barring lot’s of superfluous conversation), but as it draws near the end, I forget to account for time to change weights, drink some water, do my intermediary exercises, etc. and I end up thinking I have more time left than I do. That is, my thought process goes much like this: I have two exercises left, then cardio, I have 75 minutes. Assuming each exercise takes 15 minutes (correctly), and 45 minutes for cardio, I’ll be done just in time. But I forgot to account for the ab set I do between sets (1 or 2 minutes), I forgot to account for getting a drink of water between each exercise (1 or 2 minutes), I forgot to account for using the restroom before hitting cardio (2 or 3 minutes), etc. Next thing I know, I’m short 5-10 minutes, and I have to really think back to figure out where I lost time).
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The amount of times that you “forgot” in this example is extremely high. I’ve often found that when we forget things, it’s a psychological way of not wanting to remember. In a sense, it’s a way to allow ourselves to do what we want when we actually know that what we want doesn’t comport with reality. For you, how does this forgetting work? Do you forget other things, like the colors or words or the like? If not, why do you feel that forgetting in regards to time should be different?

62

[QUOTE=monstro]
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.
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I’ve found this to be a Brazilian thing, too, at least among those I’ve met in the U.S. If you make the mistake of showing up to a Brazilian party, dinner, wedding, etc., at the proposed time, be prepared not only to be the very first arrival, but probably to find that the hosts/planners have not come close to finishing the preparations. It drove me bonkers until I learned to just add a couple of hours to any scheduled start time, and roll with it. (Actually I still have trouble acclimating to “dinners” that sometimes get started at midnight or later, but… baby steps.)

I guess it’s a cultural thing that’s self-perpetuating, in that no one is ever going to show up on time if they know nobody else will.

63

Is punctuality a choice?

Well, I don’t think so. As a punctual myself, I believe I was born that way. I didn’t make a choice to be punctual, punctuality is all I know. How am I hurting anybody else by being punctual? I remember when I first realised in my teens that I might very well be punctual. It seemed that everybody else was different, all laid back, while my own punctual feelings grew daily and I felt like a freak. When I first sat my parents down and told them that their son was punctual, they were very understanding and accepting, something that I am grateful for.

It can be tough when I get verbal abuse, like when I’m walking down the street and some guy calls me a ‘sick punco’, but I believe that in time we will come to see that being punctual is nothing to be ashamed of and punctuality will be widely tolerated. I will definitely be marching in this year’s Early Pride festival.

64

I think a certain amount of chronic lateness can be due to upbringing and cultural expectations. In my family, being on time was always a top priority. For example, my dad got home from his job in the factory at 4:30. He would come proceed to wash up, change out of his dirty clothes and come back downstairs. Dinner would be served at 5:00. Not 5:15. Not 4:45. Certainly not at 5:30. And it wasn’t because otherwise he would complain. That was my mother’s way, too, and she was very comfortable with it. And let me tell you, if we kids were not AT the dinner table at 5:00 there was heck to pay. Why, that’s just the way it was done. To behave otherwise was simply unspeakable.

In my husband’s eastern European culture, however, time was a vague concept. Maybe growing up as a displaced person and war refugee had something to do with it, too. After all, if the Nazis are about to capture you and put you in a “work camp,” and meals would be obtained whenever food could be obtained, the idea of being in a particular place at a particular time was kind of irrelevant. My husband’s parents were ALWAYS late. If you invited them to dinner at 2:00, they might show up then, or maybe 2:30, or maybe 4:00.

It used to drive me crazy with rage, until I realized there was a flip side. If I was late getting something ready, it didn’t matter!

Now when it comes to getting to the airport or to the theater, that’s another story, so I have learned to tell him that the plane leaves at 3:00 when it really leaves at 4:00. Forty years later he knows exactly what I’m doing, of course. I’ve also learned that if I really want to be someplace on time, I tell him what time I’m leaving. If he’s ready to go, fine. If not, I leave without him.

He also is a very optimistic person. He just assumes there will not be a 45-minute backup at the Holland tunnel, that there will be no accident on Route 1, and that all the lights will be green. Then he fumes and frets when stuck in traffic.

So, yeah, he’s one of those chronically late people, but in his case it’s not that he’s intentionally dissing folks selfishly. It’s just the way he is. Could he change? Yeah, some. And he has, some. On the other hand, he doesn’t yell at anybody else who makes him late.

65

I am neither too early or too late. I show up exactly when I am meant to be there.

If I have a 3:00 meeting at work, I show up a little before. I expect people to be ready at the specified time. Showing up late show disrespect to me and to anyone who has a meeting after me.

Social functions, on the other hand, I like to be fashionably late. I don’t like showing up while people are setting things up.

66

[QUOTE=Heffalump and Roo]
The amount of times that you “forgot” in this example is extremely high. I’ve often found that when we forget things, it’s a psychological way of not wanting to remember. In a sense, it’s a way to allow ourselves to do what we want when we actually know that what we want doesn’t comport with reality. For you, how does this forgetting work? Do you forget other things, like the colors or words or the like? If not, why do you feel that forgetting in regards to time should be different?
[/QUOTE]

For me, I think forgetting is my brain/psyche’s way of simplifying things. It’s way of saying, “I can’t deal with all this chaos shouting at me, there are too many details, so I’m going to pare it down to the bare necessities, or else we’ll never get anywhere.”

My short term memory is also poor. If you tell me something, I have 2-5 minutes tops to write it down, or it’s gone. If I talk to someone else or see something interesting before I do so, it’s gone. I think things like colors are in long term memory.

(And I found his level of forgetting unsurprising)

67

[QUOTE=Blaster Master]

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.
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This part, about not wanting to be early because of the wasted time, is the part that leads to the whole “makes a choice issue”. Because that’s where the choice really is- to risk being early or to risk being late. It’s also the part where the late person values their time more highly, or doesn’t respect the other person comes in. Somebody doesn’t want to waste time by being 20 minutes ( or an hour) early, but they’re perfectly willing to make the other person waste 20 minutes ( or an hour) waiting.

68

I think it’s hopeless to answer the OP’s question, because there are different reasons people are late: some have ADD, some are bad at estimating time, some have cultural/familial habits in play, on and on.

Here’s another that hasn’t been brought up, I think: there may be a genuine psychological quirk in play. For a time, I had a friend who was ALWAYS late. ALWAYS.

By exactly 20 minutes.

Now, she was always full of excuses, but the thing is, if the problem was truly the random phone call/lack of gas in her car/missing keys and so forth, obviously she would arrive being late by random amounts.

Being exactly 20 minutes late requires just as much planning and effort as being on time, it seemed to me, so finally I called her on it. It took some arguing, but finally she admitted that she simply couldn’t bear to have to wait for anyone. That sitting by herself in a public place kicked off a whole anxiety chain of thought. Never mind if it was before the appointed time, she would start worrying that the other person(s) were going to stand her up, that they didn’t care about her or her time, even that they’d planned to leave her sitting there all alone as practical joke.

So, to avoid ever having to wait for another person, she came 20 minutes late.

She thought this was a reasonable solution to her fears. Maybe so. But from my side I saw it as “Waiting is a horrible pain, too horrible for me to bear. THEREFORE I will deliberately inflict this horrible pain on everyone else.”

The exact opposite of “Do unto others” as it were.

And, once I got that idea in my head – that this person was deliberately trying to torture me at each meeting – well, who could be friends with someone who tried to harm you every time you met?

(Yes, I could have been all big and understanding of her psychological problem, but I’m not that crazy about waiting around in public either.)

69

If it’s not a choice and not a mental disorder then the only explanation left would be vast cosmological forces arranged against you. Or a brain slug.

70

BlasterMaster, is there some reason that you couldn’t take your study materials with you and hang around outside the door, finishing the study time? That would seem to me to be the solution to that particular problem. I have done it many times myself.

Also, why not get a watch that has a little alarm? You’re working out, you know you need to finish by x time, but your problem is that you do not look at the clock often enough. So why not set a little alarm to go beep at the right time?

71

In order for it to be a choice it has to be intentional. To be intentionally late one has to realize the time it is, and what time it takes to make the appointment. As such I contend that people who are usually late are not making a choice, as they typically don’t have the skills to manage time.

Now one can argue that once one realizes that they are usually late, and that is a problem, that person can make a choice to address that shortcoming, but it is still not a choice to be late, it’s a choice for not addressing your lateness.

72

[QUOTE=Blaster Master]
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.
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But now you HAVE computed for it. You don’t have to compute it every time. Why can you not say to yourself, “Gee, self, I thought my workout takes 2 1/2 hours, but it turns out it takes 3 hours. So I’ll allow 3 hours for my workout, from door to door, from now on.”

Does your brain never process new information? When you move, can you remember your new address and telephone number, or does your brain keep feeding you the old one?

Seems like a strange form of doublethink: you know it’s really 3 hours, but you also know it’s 2 1/2? Even though you know it’s in your best interest to recognize the 3 hours as the correct figure?

73

[QUOTE=Heffalump and Roo]
The amount of times that you “forgot” in this example is extremely high. I’ve often found that when we forget things, it’s a psychological way of not wanting to remember. In a sense, it’s a way to allow ourselves to do what we want when we actually know that what we want doesn’t comport with reality. For you, how does this forgetting work? Do you forget other things, like the colors or words or the like? If not, why do you feel that forgetting in regards to time should be different?
[/QUOTE]

I imagine you’re being a little facetious with “the colors”, but you’re not far from the truth. My memory and thought processes work in, what I understand, are very unusual ways. That is, I can specifically remember anything if I put forth the effort to do so (like most people), but other times I’ll forget things like “important” conversations as recently as earlier in the morning or names of people I know very well. I’ll remember directions to a place I haven’t been in months or years, but get lost (at least, as close as I can get to getting lost) going to places I go all the time. Similarly, as far as thought processes, sometimes I have to spend an excessive amount of time on simple arithmatic, othertimes I simply “know” the answer to a fairly complicated problem, and can’t explain how I arrived there. This carries over into conversations as well, where one moment I’ll dumb something down so much it offends the person I’m talking to because it makes them feel stupid, but other times I’ll talk completely over his head and not know how I can possibly make it any simpler. But to me, each explanation seems equally complex (or not so, as the case may be).

I understand that, in many cases, that sort of behavior can be treated as a psychological underpinning, such that I think I want to remember, but deep down I don’t. For instance, when I was in middle school, I was somewhat of an underacheiver because I simply didn’t study, didn’t do homework, didn’t pay attention, whatever… Now, I’m a 4.0 PhD student, but my habits have only changed slightly. I almost never study for exams, and when I do, only briefly, I only do work that’s graded (including not doing text book readings or practice problems), and I still don’t pay attention by playing videogames, instant messaging, or even sleeping in class. One could argue that I was unconsciously choosing to underperform. The difference is, there, the habits (or rather, lack thereof) I can change to improve my performance are obvious; I could have paid more attention, studied, etc.

For my punctuality, it seems it would require a complete rewiring of how my mind functions… keeping day planners, setting alarm clocks, whatever, doesn’t seem to change it. The only way I’ve found to correct it is to REALLY think of the time I have to be there as much earlier than it actually is, but even that is a fragile illusion. For instance, the ONLY way I can get to work before 7:00 is to think about it as if I have to be there by 6:30 and plan for that… but in that case, I’ll get there anywhere from 6:20 to 6:55ish. I REALLY just plain don’t understand how some of the people I can work with can show up every single day within 5 minutes of their scheduled arrival time.

74

I live in a northern Canadian city (Edmonton Alberta)… My commute takes me from litterally one side of the city to the other…

In the summer, spring and fall, I am almost always on time or early. In the winter, I can leave 20 minutes early, and show up 20 minutes late (or worse). I am an excellent winter driver (I can go 60 km/hr while others go 40). The problem is Edmonton has two things going against it regarding winter driving. we are experiencing a population boom, due to our exploding local economy, and many of the people on the road “freak out” at a mere 8 inches of snow over glare ice. They Drive 15 km/hr (actually more dangerous in a properly equipped car (snow tires, and aware driver) ) and slow things down hideously. The other thing is our “traffic infra structure” is built for a city of about 750,000 population, and we are pushing if not exceeding 1 million, due to the population boom).

Where I work, a “rarely” have to open up the builkding for other employees. If it is minus 40, and wind chill turns that into - 60, or worse, I am there early and have a pot of coffee brewing by the time they show up. Even if I have to wake up at 4:30AM to get there for 7 AM.

As it is, other than that I have little regard for punctuality. I show up when I show up, and I leave when my work for the day is done. (Unless I am expecting a call or an early appontment). My boss understands, and gives me the benefit of the doubt when it comes to my “personal interpretation of “the clock””. he knows I give more time than I take, and that he can generally call me on a day off, (emergency) and not expect me to put in for a salary time bonus because of it.

I really think people are too hung up on “punctuality”… I am more spanish than swiss that way, I guess, but respect everyone’s right to form their own ideal.

Waiting on someone for a lunch/dinner date; well 10-15 minutes is acceptable… (no reason/excuse/call required). It balances out to this, for me, Am I more glad to see the person, or more pissed off about the time they kept me waiting? I tend not to make dates with people that will leave me, or cause them, to be pissed off by a few minutes of opportunity to explore the self, or read a book, day dream or otherwise occupy the time spent “waiting”.

But that’s just me…

Regards…
FML

75

[QUOTE=Dinsdale]

But please show me your “science.”
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http://depts.washington.edu/hhpccweb/article-detail.php?ArticleID=354&ClinicID=6

See also:

http://www.addvance.com/help/professionals/neurocognitive.html
Note that Kathleen Nadeau is one of the experts in ADD

www.add.org/pdf/Fact_Sheet_Final.pdf

http://www.webmd.com/content/article/89/100385.htm

I could go on for a long time but you should be getting the gist by now.

76

[QUOTE=mstay]
If it’s not a choice and not a mental disorder then the only explanation left would be vast cosmological forces arranged against you. Or a brain slug.
[/QUOTE]

No, the explaination is that being punctual is just something some people are shitty at. It’s not a cause for a shrink. It’s not an intentional, spiteful choice. It’s something I’m bad at, and I’m working on. All deviations from perfection are not mental disorders. Sometimes they’re just aggravating personality traits.

Blaster Master, you sound very familiar to me. My life is much the same.

77

[QUOTE=Blaster Master]
I REALLY just plain don’t understand how some of the people I can work with can show up every single day within 5 minutes of their scheduled arrival time.
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Routine. You learn how long it takes to get dressed, brush teeth, do hair, make breakfast, feed the cats, toss out the trash and plan accordingly. Then you don’t stray from the plan.

Sleep is precious to me. So I have trained myself to squeeze all getting-ready-for-work activities within 30-35 minutes. This means I shower the night before. I have my clothes laid out (and ironed) the night before. I’ll locate keys and wallets the night before. I don’t chitchat or daydream, even when I really want to. I do these things because I know 1) I’m a space cadet in the morning, 2) I really want to maximize my sleep, and 3)I really want to get to work on time.

Blaster Master, it seems like you’ve got a lot of excuses. You know what your problems are, so the most obvious answer is to address them with small, achievable goals. Why not shoot for 30 minutes early and then target practice so that you arrive closer and closer to the scheduled time? That way, you train yourself to get into a routine and learn to be more conscientious of the passing time.

One thing I’ve learned, being a quirky individual myself, is that it’s alright to beat to a different drum as long as you don’t inconvenience others, or use your quirkiness as a crutch for personality flaws. I don’t care so much that I’m generally disorganized because I have trained myself to get it together when it matters. So if your tardiness hasn’t been a problem for you or others, then I wouldn’t worry about it. But I think you are perfectly able to learn punctuality. Having a Ph.D will not free of this burden. Absent-minded professors still have to show up to class on time. And when you show up late to receive the Nobel Prize, they may just decide to give it to someone else. :wink:

78

[QUOTE=Blaster Master]
I REALLY just plain don’t understand how some of the people I can work with can show up every single day within 5 minutes of their scheduled arrival time.
[/QUOTE]
Most of them probably aren’t really. They may walk in every day within 5 minutes of their scheduled time, but I bet most of them are varying something toward the end of the trip, when they no longer need the cushion. For example,I’m supposed to be at work at 8:30 , plan to get there at 8, and get there anywhere between 8 and 8:30 depending on the traffic. If I get there 30 minutes early, I might hit the ATM and pick up breakfast. If I’m ten minutes early, I just get coffee, and if I’m right on time, I go straight to work.

79

[QUOTE=doreen]
Most of them probably aren’t really. They may walk in every day within 5 minutes of their scheduled time, but I bet most of them are varying something toward the end of the trip, when they no longer need the cushion. For example,I’m supposed to be at work at 8:30 , plan to get there at 8, and get there anywhere between 8 and 8:30 depending on the traffic. If I get there 30 minutes early, I might hit the ATM and pick up breakfast. If I’m ten minutes early, I just get coffee, and if I’m right on time, I go straight to work.
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This would be me. I usually try to plan to be where I have to be half an hour earlier than I actually have to be there. If I end up arriving half an hour early, I find something to do - read, get coffee, do some shopping, whatever. I’d rather be the one waiting than make other people wait. I suppose I’m the opposite of StarvingButStrong’s friend, in that I can’t stand the thought of making other people wait but have no problem with waiting myself. Even when I’m meeting with a friend that is ALWAYS 10 minutes late, I end up getting there 10 minutes early on the off-chance that she might, just this once, be on time. (She never is.)

Seriously, I am known among my friends for being the most laid-back person ever when it comes to waiting - once I waited over an hour for a friend to show up and I was only mildly annoyed. But for some reason I can’t be as lenient when it comes to myself. Go figure.

80

[QUOTE=HazelNutCoffee]
I’d rather be the one waiting than make other people wait.
[/QUOTE]

Absolutely.

And if I’m meeting my mother, we both show up early and then do what we were going to do earlier than planned. It’s all good. :smiley: