Time Getting Away from You?

Here's my top tip for the chronically tardy among us. Tell your friends!

My fabulous fucklings: the poll was taken and the people have spoken. You wanted a get-your-shit-together tip this week, and so you shall have it.

Today we’re going to talk about being late and how to avoid it—also known as “It’s Just Not That Hard to Show Up on Time, Welcome to the Hill I Will Die On.”

For starters, please know that I’m not talking about running five minutes behind here and there, or even ten to fifteen on rare occasions. Nobody’s getting blackballed from book club for having had the misfortune to get caught in a funeral procession on their way to yesterday’s meeting. Shit happens.

However, and as with so many conditions, when tardiness becomes chronic, it’s a problem.

On the bright side: chronic tardiness is an easy problem to solve, and today I’m going to show you how.

(If you have no trouble being on time most of the time, then I salute you. Truly, you are my people. But I bet you know someone else who could benefit from the mic I’m about to drop, so for their own good—and that of humanity in general—I hope you’ll check out the tip below and spread the word.)

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Time is on your side (if you let it be)

When I was writing Get Your Shit Together, I found myself wondering how so many people can be so bad at being on time—even otherwise mature, responsible adults who are pretty good at life in general.

Furthermore, I know plenty of dummies who manage to show up promptly for a 7PM dinner res; the ability to be on time did not seem to me to be related to book smarts or common sense.

And so, after engaging in deeply unscientific observation of my own chronically late friends, I came to the following conclusions:

• It’s not that they are inherently rude or disrespectful. (For if they were, we would not be friends in the first place.)

• It’s not that they are psychopaths who take perverse pleasure in keeping me waiting. (Well, all but one of them. I see you, Catherine.)

• And it’s not that they do not own a clock, watch, cell phone, microwave oven, sundial, or any of the many timekeeping tools available to the modern man.

No, it finally dawned on me that the root cause of my typically “with it” pals consistently showing up 30+ minutes past due and saying things like “I’m sorry, time got away from me!” must be this:

They don’t actually know how long it takes them to do things like “get ready.”

For instance, I have a friend who will text jumping in shower, gimme 15 mins, even though she has never taken a sub-fifteen-minute shower in her life. Forty minutes later, cue the next message: leaving now, sorry, time got away from me!

Rinse, repeat.

I have to assume—again, giving them the benefit of the neither-intentionally-disrespectful-nor-gleeful-psychopath doubt—that if my friend and others like her KNEW how long they usually spend prepping and primping, they would be able to set aside enough time to accomplish such a task before we meet up, instead of trading exclusively in guesstimates and goodwill.

I mean, there are only twenty-four hours in any given day, and even my three-year-old nephew can reliably count to twenty-four. It’s just not that hard to manage time, assuming you understand what makes it tick.

For my part, I’m lucky that time and I understand each other. I know how many minutes I need to shower, put on makeup, and get dressed, plus or minus shaving, blow-drying, etc. I don’t know why I know this; I just have an innate sense, like my cats when they post up in the doorway for their dinner every single day at the stroke of 4:00PM, the furry little wizards.

But even for the temporally challenged among us, I’m here to tell you there is hope.

Time will stop trying so hard to get away from you if you can learn to give it the space it needs to do its thing. You have the power to repair this relationship—and you can do it by way of a single strategy that is super fucking simple and has the potential to completely transform your life.