Lay out the clothes you’re going to wear. Complete any tasks you might normally leave for the morning, like writing emails or printing out documents. Pack up your bag or briefcase with everything you’ll need the next day. Have everything ready so you can make a quick breakfast, or eliminate the need for morning cooking altogether by making some overnight oats.
If you tend to walk in the door and leave your keys on the counter, your wallet in the bedroom, and your phone on the kitchen table, you’ll spend too much extra time looking for everything when you could be on your way. Every once in a while, you’ll probably forget an important item and have to go back to retrieve it, making you even later. Instead, the moment you walk in the door, empty your pockets of all your essential items and put them in the same place every time. If you keep everything in your purse, put that in the same spot in your house every time, too.
You can go even further and put the items in your car as you think of them.
Anticipate that these things are going to happen fairly often. Being on a stalled subway car is not a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Leave early enough to overcome unanticipated delays and still get there on time. Avoid completely unnecessary delays like stopping for gas. Fill your car the night before. Make sure your subway pass is loaded with plenty of fare, and eat at home, instead of stopping at the fast food drive-through for breakfast and waiting in line. Check traffic and the weather when you first wake up to see if anything might hold you up, and leave early enough to make up for any anticipated extra travel time. Remember, too, that the possibility of delays in bad weather is high. Leave a sufficient time buffer to absorb the worst typical delay. In cold weather allow an extra five or ten minutes to clear frost, snow, and ice from your vehicle. You could even use an app to help you best plan the fastest and easiest route each day. If you ride a bus, know the route, have your fare, and keep cab money on hand in case of emergency. If you are depending on another person for a ride—have a plan B!
If you can’t stand waiting, have something you can read in short segments almost everywhere you go. This makes it easy to be early, since in the 10-15 minutes you have before an appointment/event, you can get a few pages of reading done. It’ll feel like you’re getting something done (and you are) while you are waiting.
Sometimes, it’s hard to know exactly how long it will take to get somewhere. If you’re preparing for an important meeting, like an interview, you might want to drive the route or do the train commute in advance of the meeting day. Time your trip so you’ll know what time you need to leave the house. Don’t forget to add 15 minutes to the overall trip time to account for delays. If you figure it’ll take 40 minutes to get to your meeting site, leave 55 minutes early just in case something trips you up.
Place your clock on the other side of the room to help force yourself to get out of bed. This gets you up and moving, and makes it impossible to hit the snooze button. Try stretching, splashing your face with water, and brushing your teeth right away to wake your body up more quickly. If you can’t get out of bed on time, you may be going to bed too late. Go to sleep earlier to see if that helps. This makes it a lot easier to get up on time and helps you stay on task during the day. Unless you know otherwise, assume you need eight hours of sleep every night.
Time yourself a few days in a row to see how long it actual takes you to perform certain tasks. Use a stopwatch and record the times over the course of a week, then average the times so you’ll have an accurate indication of how much time to plan for each activity.
When you discover a sinkhole, try to change your habits around the activity to make it faster. For example, standing up while quickly checking your emails makes it hard to lose an hour randomly surfing the web.
Consider printing out a schedule you can reference throughout the morning. Post it up in your bedroom, office, kitchen, and other places where you’ll be sure to see it.
Utilize timers, alarms and reminders throughout the day as well. For example, you might want to set your phone to vibrate or ring when you have 10 minutes to go before your next class or meeting. Some people intentionally set their clocks several minutes fast in order to trick themselves into getting to places early. You could try this to see if it works for you, but many people find that they just mentally adjust their concept of what time it is to account for the extra minutes, and they end up late anyway. Knowing what time it really is will help you stay grounded and punctual.
If you’re not sure whether your issue is chronic, ask your friends and family to tell you honestly whether they consider you a punctual person. If punctuality is truly an issue for you, you won’t have been able to hide it from them. Check to see if your tardiness is the result of passive aggression. Being late can be a form of resentment at having to be a certain place to do a certain thing. If you think this is the case, try to change your events around, or otherwise practice accepting that which you can’t change. [12] X Research source Don’t be too hard on yourself if you have trouble being punctual, though. According to a study conducted in San Francisco, 20 percent of the US population has the same issue. [13] X Research source
Think of how you feel when someone else is the one who’s late for a meeting. Do you appreciate having to sit alone in a restaurant while you wait for your friend to show up half an hour late? Be kind to people that are late while also telling them how you feel. Eventually, being late all the time will erode people’s faith in your reliability, creating a negative impression that could eventually extend to matters other than punctuality.
Examine the areas in which you’re more likely to be flippant about punctuality. If there are certain people you don’t bother meeting on time, or a certain class you always come to 15 minutes late, it’s possible that the people and the class just aren’t that important to you. Try to spend your time doing things you care about doing, and do them with intention. Show up on time and be all in. When you care about what you’re doing, and you’re living with integrity, it feels right to get there on time.
You’ll be much less stressed out on a daily basis, and you won’t have to make excuses and apologize all the time. You’ll probably experience a professional boost, since you’ll no longer be late for work. Your personal life will be uplifted as people begin to see you as a reliable person and trust you more. Being habitually punctual tends to have the effect of actually allowing you to be late from time to time, since people will start giving you the benefit of the doubt.
