With a friend of mine it is an issue of understanding how much time it takes to do something. I’ll pick him up 30 minutes before we have to be someplace, and every time he asks, “what are you doing here so early, it’s only a 10 minute drive?” Except, it isn’t a 10 minute drive, it’s a 20 minute drive, add in the amount of time it takes to get back to the car, then park and walk at the end, and 30 minutes is the appropriate departure time to arrive on time.
This time distortion isn’t just for travel, but also for other tasks like cooking, eating, showering, shopping, etc. He plans for everything to take much less time that it actually does, so even when he’s genuinely trying to be on time, he’s late.
Of course, sometimes this is the problem:
That is referred to as a problem with executive function.
I’m always early. The people I’m around who are usually late have ADD and become distracted. One friend told me that with a digital timepiece, she just can’t get it that 11:59 is going to turn into 12:00–the sequence just doesn’t register.
Seems like the dog got the better end of that deal. Look at all those tasty snacks.
A friend of mine is almost always late to things, but I know that he can be on time if he prioritizes it. Part of it is that he’s legitimately very busy and his job is erratic and generally requires that he constantly shift priorities, and being on time often falls off the top spot.
But part of it is that he systematically underestimates the time it takes to do things. He mentioned that he lives “5 minutes away” from somewhere and I pointed out that he’d have to drive like 75 mph to cover the distance in 5 minutes, ignoring the time it takes to get in the car. Absolute best case scenario was over 10 minutes, and probably more like 15.
This is a drive he does every day. If you estimate that something you have never once accomplished in 5 minutes takes 5 minutes, you’re going to be late a lot.
This is totally correct, I am one of the best procrastinators in the world.There are times I look at what I am doing and realize that I am washing the windows because I am putting off changing all the sheets, so I still get stuff done when I’m procrastinating. Often, being on time (10-15 minutes early) is part of me procrastinating. “I can’t start changing the sheets because I want to be sure to leave at X time for Y event.”
This! A family member, my cousin, was infamous for always being late for everything. If he offered to run you to the airport to catch a flight, it was wise to lie like hell as to when your flight departed. I know at least 3 people who missed their flights because of him, and he really cut it close to when he would ride me to the airport.
The appointed pickup time ( say, 12 noon ) would come and go: no “Bob”. You tell yourself, “oh, well I padded the time” in vain reassurance all will be well. Time goes by and when you’re at the point of being too late to make other arrangements ( after which your hair is graying by the nanosecond ) he comes by, all nonchalant and breezy, chowing down on some deli sandwich that he got along the way. A sandwich he could have forgone to be on time. As I laid into him with basically an indignant “What the hell??!!”, he blithely tells me I’m worrying too much “we don’t have to leave at noon, it’s only a 30 minute drive!”. No, it’s a 40 minute drive in the best of conditions what with traffic tolls for parkways and bridges ( and the infamous backups thereof ). Also, it’s not like just because he dumps me off curbside I’m home free, as we all know the security or whatever check-in process can entail.
The facts of the matter piss me off enough, the time distortion and all. It’s the fact that if one agrees to come at a certain time to pick someone up, that he agrees in good faith. That knowing that someone is depending on you should be all the impetus required to see to being on time. But that’s what one can get by relying on someone with an infuriatingly relaxed attitude to punctuality.
That video always makes me laugh, but sometimes I do spare a thought to that poor, embarrassed young lady who probably wanted the earth to open up and swallow her by the time it was all over.
Sure, maybe . . . that’s not a very insightful/useful observation, though. This is just as true about every human behavior. “People who don’t do X don’t do it because they don’t care enough about X to do it.”
I suspect that my sister has a similar issue. She has a couple of learning disabilities, which weren’t properly diagnosed or understood until she was an adult, and started talking with a doctor, but one of her learning disabilities is that she has a seriously difficult time grasping how much time is passing, unless she’s staring at a clock. Without a clock in front of her, if she’s involved in doing something, she can’t tell the difference between the passage of ten minutes, and the passage of two hours.
When she was younger, and would regularly go out with her friends, it could take her hours to get ready for the evening, and she would usually have no idea that it had actuallly taken her that long.
This is the alternative explanation to an executive function problem. Perhaps the dog cannot keep focused on the goal, and is easily distracted (executive function). Alternatively, the dog is more food motivated than goal motivated, and does not have any executive function problem; the dog just has a different set of priorities.
I say that, because I think the same thing applies to people being late. Some people have difficulty managing themselves in a way necessary to arrive on time. Whether that’s time distortion, distraction, planning, or something else. Other people are perfectly capable of arriving on time, if they want to, but it usually is just not important to them.
A long time ago I started referring to “backing out of the driveway time” (what punctual people call “when we’re leaving”), and that seems to help a lot. If people know “we’re leaving at 5:15” means they have to be in the car and buckled at 5:15, not just starting get their shoes on at 5:15, that seems to help with the disorganization.
It does help with deciding how to respond. When I finally realized that my sibling just simply didn’t care to be on time, that their schedule and needs will always, always be the most important factor in anything, I changed my response to her.
We starting doing things on time. At a restaurant we ordered and started dinner without her. The kids opened presents and blew candles even if she didn’t show up on time to their party. We left without her if she didn’t show up.
I stopped trying to accommodate someone who never have two thoughts to what our needs were. Had her issues been different and it seemed she cared, and tried, but struggled, our attitude would have been more accommodating.
In my experience (as a punctual person who observes many non-punctual people), non-punctual folks just occasionally miss flights, often show up late to events, etc. They might try more for big things (i.e. a flight where you can lose money), but they still sometimes miss it. They don’t really try for things with low consequences (i.e. being late to a movie or a show, being late to a party, missing the first 5 minutes of class, etc.).
My friend, whom I mentioned upthread, is absolutely capable of arriving on time for something with a specific timeline associated with it – but, that said, he sees no reason to be early, and for him, timing it so he gets there just as a movie starts (for example), he considers to be the ideal. Also, with the exception of something like a flight (where being even a minute late is a failure), he considers being a few minutes late to be “not late.”
But, in the case of social activities, that’s where he regularly shows up late. “We’re playing D&D on Saturday, we’re starting at 1pm” seems to be interpreted as, “we’re playing D&D on Saturday, don’t get here any earlier than 1, but because we will probably be socializing and such, anytime between 1 and 2 is just fine.”
In this case it’s not caring enough to fulfill a promise. It may not be a big promise, but it’s not like they don’t feel like doing the dishes, it’s something that affects other people and it’s the other people that they don’t care about.
One time, when I was in high school, I told a friend I would be at his house at 6:00. He laughed and said, “Okay, see you at 6:30.” This ticked me off, so I swore I would be there at 6:00 - I’ll be damned if it wasn’t 6:30 when I pulled into his driveway. For me it was a matter of not realizing how long things would take, which would lead to me doing one or two last things before I left because I had plenty of time. Wrong. I still misjudge how long things take, but I’ve learned to pad all of my estimates so that these days I’m usually on time or a little early.
Whatever X is, there are also some people for whom X is much easier to do than it is for others. The same amount of effort doesn’t necessarily produce the same sort of results; so the same amount of caring about something also isn’t going to produce the same sort of results.
I used to be chronically late, until I realized that it was hurting other people. Not just inconveniencing them, it was making them sad, angry, and in some cases heartbroken when I just wouldn’t change.
So I did change.
I just had to face the fact that I have ADD and no innate sense of time passing. That I underestimate how long “one last thing before I go” will take, and my innate optimism makes me think “Best case scenario, I can make it in 15 minutes.”
(To be honest, yeah, I did make it in 15 minutes once, but that was on a Tuesday night when I hit all the lights right, with the wind behind me).
My iPhone has been a godsend. The instant I agree to an event, I put it on my calendar WITH AN ALARM SET FOR 30 MINUTES BEFORE I HAVE TO LEAVE. If it’s really important, I leave my ringer on loud that day.
And yet, when it goes off a week later I look at my phone and think “Cookout at George’s in an hour? Who put this in my phone? Oh, right, is that TODAY? And it’s noon now? NOON, how did that happen? Wait…who’s George?”
Yeah, hasn’t helped my memory, or my ADD. But it’s an area where I have to compensate, or I end up hurting other people. Like George… (Oh, yeah, George! Of course… I’d never forget him!)
That doesn’t matter. Don’t make a promise that you don’t care enough about to keep. This is not a tough problem, just don’t commit to do something at a certain time if you can’t be there… Nobody is making you do that, there’s nothing wrong with saying you don’t know what time you will be there or do that or whatever it is.
