What about self-respect? If you make an appointment, do you think so little of your own word that you care not whether you keep it?
You’ve said this kind of thing a few times. Which is absolutely foreign to me. I know some people are more attentive to detail than others - I wonder if this is similar to such inattentiveness taken to an extreme.
If that happened to me I would seriously wonder if I were experiencing some kind of seizures, causing me to “lose” portions of my day. Strikes me as tho it might be an interesting experiment to set up a video camera (if your residence makes it practical) and comparing your different-duration routines.
In a combination between that and cultural differences, my mother used to organize these religious retreats, involving people from half a dozen towns. Often she only knew personally about half of the people attending. She’d give them starting times between “6 o’clock Friday” and “8 o’clock Friday”, depending on where they came from.
By the twentieth or so time she was doing this, everybody was getting there between 19:50 and 20:05. For Spain this is the kind of amazing achievement that should make front page news.
I apply that trick when giving deadlines to people, setting them to take into account the delays that I know are going to happen. Easier for me to work that into my calculations than to try to change somebody’s clock.
I think Dinsdale is thinking about petit mal seizures… you know, that might need looking into.
Wow - sorry I missed all this during the weekend away from my computer!
What was running through my mind all weekend after reading the first 30 or so posts was the question “What are they getting out it?” (they being the late ones.) Hate to invoke Dr. Phil :eek: but he tends to try to get people to ask that question of themselves when they have a destructive behavior/habit/relationship they can’t break and it seems applicable here.
Different answers for all the different reasons people may be late. Getting fuel for their OCD? Getting relief from the anxiety of wasting one’s own time by being early. Getting the rush of the “my life is so hectic” drama. Getting back (in a passive/aggressive way) at the gf who is still doing her hair when you arrive on time. Or maybe not getting much of a benefit for being early, but less of a personal penalty for being late. Costs you less to be late (my friends will forgive me anyway or what kind of judgemental, self-righteous, morally superior people are they anyway?) than the cost of all the planning and effort it would take to be on-time?
What a waste of my own time it would be to try to keep a log book or all my friends different time tendencies and create custom invitations for each in order to gather everyone together at the same time. Your mom gets extra points for going above and beyond the duty call of a gracious hostess!
No because people who are late is the group being discussed and is therefore the specific group.
As for seizures, this is getting ridiculous. It’s just that punctual people have trouble comprehending how any brain but their own works so they cannot conceive of losing track of time. Here’s what would be grand; if people would accept that humans differ quite spectacularly so just because the earlybirds are constantly conscious of time (and oh-so-righteously so :rolleyes: ) does not mean that people who aren’t are having seizures.
Time sense is not natural. It’s societally induced. There is one tribe in Indonesia that pays no attention to time. If you take all clocks and windows away from people, they don’t default to society’s time; they default to circadian rhythms that are built in.
Folks who are late are coming under a pretty nasty browbeating by the earlybirds and it’s ridiculous. Enough, already. If you have a friend who’s always late, and you keep expecting friend to change, you’re the foolish one. Rather than try to change them, change yourself the way Nava’s mom did. Recognize. Adapt. Wise, in other words, up.
Quiddity, that trick only works if the “late people” are consistent. It wouldn’t have worked with this boyfriend I had who was always late, but between 30 and 240 minutes.
I’m punctual but it’s not “inborn”. I work at it. When I’m in a new place or doing a new job, I make an effort to determine how long the new routines take so I can work the new timetable. I make an effort to pare down my “to do list”: if I don’t have time to do something, I don’t take it up; if someone gives me an unavoidable duty too many, I make sure everybody who gives me duties is clear on the new schedule. I refuse to drop what I was doing to start on the latest urgency rightaway unless the people from whom I was already working are OK with it.
I also recognize that, same as I can read maps and not everybody can, I can figure time and others can’t, and it’s Not My Job to teach them something their momma should have. If you’re late by a consistant amount, I can take that into account when I tell you when to come; if it’s between 30-240 minutes, there’s going to be times when you come to pick me for dinner and I’ve already eaten because you were supposed to be here at 7pm and it’s 9 already… would you like some? I made enough for two!
I must be missing something obvious. I don’t understand why this is so difficult. Isn’t it just simple addition and subtraction? Add up all the time segments for the activities that are required to effect getting there and subtract those from the time you’re supposed to arrive.
And voila! That’s the time you should leave to arrive on time! 
What if all the bad drivers of the world had this attitude: “I’m bad at driving. Don’t expect me to change. Adapt. All you good drivers just stay off the road if you don’t like it.”
Quiddity - do you understand the request that several people have directly made of you, that you document the prevalence of ADD/ADHD/brain dysfuntion in persons who are habitually late?
If you understand the request, do you understand that you have not responded to it?
I did, twice. You really ought to read a whole thread before you get snarky with someone.
For many people, that’s true. We buy watches and set timers to aid ourselves in being punctual. We live in THIS society; not in tribal Indonesia.
I lose track of time all of the time.
But if I know that I have to be somewhere, I do something to make sure that my “losing track of time” doesn’t go on very long.
I’m no more naturally organized or time-aware or punctual than you are. I change what I do because the outcome is important to me.
No it doesn’t. Because, again (I really wish people would read what I’ve already written), in people with ADD the behaviour is not consistent. People aren’t sure why but it may have to do with fluctuating levels of serotonin.
Good for you. You haven’t got a malfunctioning executive function. It is that bit of your brain that enables you to do those things.
Congratulations! That’s exactly what people who have to live with people with ADD are told to do. See, you have it figured out.
I’m not sure it’s really a disorder or anything like that… I think it’s possibly a slightly different way that people think, coupled with differences in individual people’s reinforcement for it.
I am one of the habitually punctual, usually show up between on-time and 5 minutes early, etc… types. I’m also a slob, to a great degree.
My fiance is also kind of a slob, but she’s one of these habitually late types. She has figured out how to be places on time, but it usually involves concentrating on that one thing until she gets there, or else her attention is grabbed by something else, and she’ll be late.
I actually ran into this yesterday. On Saturday evening, we were discussing going to eat lunch at a particular place we like. They start serving lunch at 11, but if you get there much after that, you’ll have to wait in a fairly significant line.
We talked about it, and said that we’d get up early in order to get there by 11.
So 9 o’clock rolls around yesterday morning, and I was awake. It was like pulling teeth to wake her up.
Once we’re up, I took a shower and got dressed. She took her shower, had to put lotion on, make tea, screw around, get dressed, etc… and when all was said and done, we ended up at the restaraunt at about 10:48. There was already a line, but not a huge one.
If I hadn’t pestered her constantly to get a move on, we’d have been late, in spite of having awakened two hours early.
If it had been me, the thought process would have been as follows: "Hmm… I want to get there by about 10:50. It takes me about 20 minutes to get there and park. (10:30). It’ll take me about 30-40 minutes to get a shower and get dressed. (9:50). I should probably tack on another 5-10 minutes just in case. (9:40).
It’s not like my fiance doesn’t know exactly how long it’ll take her to do the usual things in getting ready, it’s more like she doesn’t account for the non-essential things she decides to do in between(“OMG! We have to take out the trash now!”), or for things like parking.
One important thing about being punctual is making it a priority. If that’s what’s important, you’ll achieve it. If it’s not, then you won’t be on time. Case in point- my fiance thought it was very important to take out the trash BEFORE we went to eat, despite the fact that it might make us late, and that it didn’t smell bad or anything like that. That’s the kind of faulty prioritization that makes people late.
There’s a piece of your brain that does this. I bet you can follow a set of instructions when they’re given to you, too. You also remember consequences from the past and apply those lessons to your current activities. That’s because your executive function is functional.
Be thankful. The people who are missing this function have a very hard time of it; not in the least because of the attitudes of people who cannot and will not understand.
Not for nothing one of the more famous books about ADD is You Mean I’m Not Lazy, Stupid, Or Crazy?
That’s because ADD causes people to behave in ways that seem lazy, stupid, selfish, etc. People punish ADD kids over and over again for the same thing thinking they are stupid or wilfully disobeying when the truth is that they have trouble remembering and applying lessons from the past. As in, for their whole lives. Some learn to mitigate. People who are habitually late can buy special timers and watches and reminders.
So if you must (BTW, this is all aimed at the general ‘you’) make ‘helpful suggestions’ to people who are chronically late, what you could do is point them to
resources
they can buy to help them.
:rolleyes: Have you seen anybody say that? No. You’ve seen people who are late anguish about it and you’re all doing a great job of browbeating them. Nobody’s excusing themselves; they’re saying they can’t manage to change even though they want to. Classic ADD. Classic.
That’s because your executive function is working fine. One of the really great software programs for folks with ADD features the ability to set multiple reminders for people to stop what they’re doing and do something else.
What people also don’t get is that ADD is not the inability to pay attention, but a disorder of attention such that people are inattentive to things that don’t interest them but hyperfocused on things that do. To the point that they lose track of time. Completely. Consistently. Throughout their lives.
In short, they are not you so that you are able to keep time does not mean they can.
I know a number of people who have ADD and not a one of 'em is chronically tardy. They compensate for their problem with watches, timers, notes, electronic calendars and other techniques to ensure they’re not a burden to the people in their lives.
Okay, so you do not understand. Thanks for clearing that up. (Tho I guess we could debate whether your obduracy reflects a choice or results from a “broken brain”! ;))