h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Really I should write an entry on this, but it would be so much in the first person that I'd like to collect other people's view first.

What can I say - I am always late. Since school. Never been in a job where I wasn't reprimanded for coming late. Never for my work, but for lateness.

It's just that when I am concentrating on something - either at home before I leave, "Just" putting one more load in the washing machine, wiping out the washbasin, hanging up a few socks, getting the ingredients for lunch out...... or reading the paper or whatever or concentrating on doing something at work .... I can't just drop it and go because the clock says it's five to five or half past seven or some other arbitrary time.

Someone once said "I was born a half an hour late and have been trying to catch up ever since." Good excuse!

And - the few times where I have been on time, either the train I was catching or the person I was meeting was delayed anyway. So that's even less incentive to bother.

Comments please! -

Do you hate people coming late ?
Do you find it impolite?
Do you have any tips for improving punctuality?
Can you cultivate a feeling for time?
Is it a good idea to interrupt something you are working on just because it's time to be somewhere else?
Is punctuality a virtue?
Is being late a bad thing?

Any stories - has being late or on time changed your life?

A quick search of H2G2 showed me that there is no entry on the subject so far.....

Do you hate people coming late ?
Yes.

Do you find it impolite?
Yes.

Do you have any tips for improving punctuality?
Estimate how long it's going to take you to get somewhere. Calculate time you should leave to arrive on time. Leave at that time no matter what.

Can you cultivate a feeling for time?
Yes.

Is it a good idea to interrupt something you are working on just because it's time to be somewhere else?
Yes.

Is punctuality a virtue?
Yes.

Is being late a bad thing?
Yes.

It's culture-bound, of course, but I'm afraid that Gnomon and I share the same culture. I agree with him
However, I find I'm giving too much away the other end of the day. So I'm joining Dunx'POOT campaign (p* off on time) If you're not getting paid overtime, don't do it. Go and socialise or exercise or something.
You need to move a lot further south for people to appreciate you,TC. I mean we appreciate you anyway, but people who keep others waiting are less appreciated than those who don't.

If you are late, you leave someone else waiting. By definition you are saying that your interests, wellbeing, whatever, mean more to you than theirs. Sometimes this is OK, sometimes it is not. The trick is to be strictly punctual for even the smallest thing - it helps develop the habit, and that 'feeling for time' that you mention. Then if you are ever late, people know there will be a damn good reason, and tend to be more tolerant.

Do you tend to be on time for important things like job interviews?

Things to remember

"Never be late twice in one day."

To keep to this I always get my lateness in at the start of the day

Also

"The degree of lateness is inveresly proportional to the journey time to work."

Me
I live about ten minutes walk away so I'm normally the last one in.

Do you hate people coming late ?

Yes. Especially when I am on time, in a public place, or have rearranged my schedule in order to meet the person, or have to/want to be somewhere else (say, the cinema) and am being held up by having to wait. You would think that consideration of these points would stop people being late, but.....

Do you find it impolite?

Yes. And inconsiderate.

Do you have any tips for improving punctuality?

Don't start doing stuff when you know it takes 50 minutes to get from where you are to where you have to be, and it is nearly time to leave. If you can't leave a job, don't start it. Leave more time for journeying than less; travelling always takes longer then you think it will.

Can you cultivate a feeling for time?

Wear a watch.

Is it a good idea to interrupt something you are working on just because it's time to be somewhere else?

As I said, if you have to be somewhere else, why did you start doing something you can't leave?

Is punctuality a virtue?

Damm right it is.

Is being late a bad thing?

If it involves other people, yes.

Whew - I really do feel put in my place there. Only once has anyone ever been cross for me being late. And I've been doing it for 35 years.

Perhaps the others were just polite.

Personally I am glad if I'm ready and have to wait for someone - it gives me some time to myself. Or if visitors are late, but I have been slogging my guts out to get the house looking nice, it gives me a chance to pour myself a drink and put on a smile and even comb my hair so I am really ready for them when they do ring the bell.

Trains are rarely on time anyway, so why should I be? and one thing I hate is waiting for a train on a draughty, smelly platform. A railwayman once showed me how to jump off and on a moving train - a trick I have often needed. You just put the foot on first that is facing the direction the train is moving - so your legs don't get crossed over and you lose your balance. Getting off the train, it's the opposite way round.

If I have to leave a job in the middle or don't even get round to starting it (as you advise), I am so narky in the evenings, I may as well not bother going home at all. And it's not anything to do with conscientiousness or devotion to duty (although I am like that) but just the thought that there's something else still not finished and a niggling feeling of frustration at the back of my mind until I get back to the office the next morning. Ditto at home.

It is certainly never my intention to offend anyone in any other way, but I never realised that so many people had such strong feelings about late arrivals.

If you can cultivate a feeling for time, the use and passing thereof, how, please, do you do it? I thought it was like being tone-deaf or musical, or elegant or clumsy. You just are. What is wrong with being able to concentrate on a task until it is finished?

Don't take any notice of these people TC. The way to cultivate a feeling for time is to see life in a long-term perspective. Don't think of time in terms of minutes or half hour blocks, or whatever. Think in terms of years, generations, millenia. That's the way to get a real feeling for time. People who are irritated by poor timekeeping are seriously in danger of losing this wider persective on life, and developing stomach ulcers over things that don't really matter.

I am usually late for things that I don't particularly want to do, like going to work or catching a train home to meet the family at Christmas. The reason is not really laziness, but rather that I am trying to fill in as much of the time as possible before going to meet the deadline, so that I can feel I'm getting my money's worth out of life (so to speak).

For example, say I have fifteen minutes to spare and the journey is only ten minutes long, I won't think 'Oh, I'll go now and arrive five minutes early for a change'. I'll try to find something to fill up those five minutes with. Then, of course, the five minute activity ends up taking far longer than expected, and I find myself trudging in ten minutes late again, wondering what I keep doing wrong.

But who cares...

We're dividing into two camps - I can see.

Do you think this is a topic to write an entry on?

good way to cultivate a sense of time is to regularly wacth the sun rise or set. this might put you even more out of sync with some around you who dance to the speed of the machine

The sun rises and sets at a different time every day. So I would find that difficult. Especially as at this time of the year, the sun sometimes doesn't bother rising at all. It just lounges behind thick layers of cloud - probably getting drunk or stoned or something. The only thing to do when it's as cold and depressing as this. And additionally, I was under the impression that following the natural course of things was just what made me unpunctual.

I am serious about needing help to be more punctual, especially if it's going to make me an outcast.

And no - I can't remember being late for an interview, except once, but I got the job anyway.

Trying to be on time has cost me a lot of money (in speeding fines)

Might just be as simple as wearing a watch. It has helped me out alot since I started wearing one. But be careful, I use to be late all the time (I was actually proud of it!) then I got a watch and some responsability now I hate it when people are late. A little hipacritical of me, oh well, got to grow up sometime.

Punctuality is a culture thing, in some of the more primitive parts of the world making people punctual is impossible. Personally I´d say that being late for appointments and jobs and such is pretty bad. It´s like braking your word. But when it comes to friends it´s different. They shouldnt start to complain if you´re late for something, it´s supposed to be casual. About how to learn it, how about getting a digital watch with an alarm? And as for dropping everything that you have in your hands, that is a matter of priorities. I´d say your job is more important than the laundry.

I always wear a watch. I always know what time it is. I have the time at the bottom right hand corner of my screen - always in view.

But I can't alter what time it is can I? - it's like the weather. I might know it's raining, but that knowledge won't help me change the fact.

So knowing it's quarter of an hour to packing-up time isn't the problem. It's working out how long I'm going to need for the job in hand, or how many and what kind of phone calls are going to come in that period. It's the unforeseeables that do a lot of the damage. And there are always so many of them. One night for example, I was on time and my computer refused to close down. I must have spent 15 minutes trying all variations, then told the guy in the room next door to switch it off when it had run down and went off.

If I am always unpunctual, am I therefore uncultured? I have never been too late for a classical concert or the opera - but I have never had time to spare either. (The park and pay machine jams or you have to queue ages for a programme......)

Estimate how much time you need. Each time you are late, increase all subsequent estimates. I know it takes 35 minutes to drive to the music school, which I do four times a week, at different times each day. For each day I have noted the time I should leave the house to arrive in time. Since traffic varies from day to day, I keep an independent record for each day. If I am less than 5 minutes early any day, I change the time that I should leave to 5 minutes earlier. If I am more than 15 minutes early, I change the time in my notebook to 5 minutes later.

This practise can be extended to just about everything. If I know it takes 5 minutes to get my girls to put their coats on and 3 minutes to shut down their computer before we go, I add 8 minutes.

It all sounds very calculating, but it becomes second nature.

You must be a Virgo.


How much time do you calculate for writing all this down and looking it all up?

And if I worked out what I had to do, how much time I needed for it all, and added some for contingencies, I would probably never bother to start. There's never enough time anyway. This applies particularly to Germany. In England it doesn't seem quite so bad. So the progression would be that in Ireland it's even better. Can I come and visit you Gnomon? For observation purposes?

If there was ever enough time, I wouldn't have to do all that!

But you can't be all that bad if you have never missed a concert. I went to the cinema with friends of mine recently. We were at dinner together, then we went to the cinema, so we left the restaurant at a time determined by me. They told me that it was the first time they had ever arrived before the film started.

Look, I agree that there is a certain amount of flexibility built into personal arrangements (leaving asside business appointments). In my experience, it is about 10/15 minutes. It really annoys me when people are later than that meaning the other person is standing like a lemon somewhere ( in the same way thar you, Trillian, don't like waiting in drafty train platforms) or that it is inconvenient to the other person in terms of forcing them to miss something themselves, that's all. It isn't the concept of lateness itself that gets on my tits and I don't insist on 'on the dot' punctuality. If people want to turn up late to a party (and aren't you supposed to anyway?), or when a group of friends are meeting in a pub, or miss trains we aren't catching together or if we are just meeting for a coffee in a cafe and I'm ensconced with a book, I couldn't care less; that is their loss.

And about it being a cultural thing. Well, sure. I live in a country now where if you tell someone to meet you at 10am they'll invariably arrive between 10.15 and 10.30. And I don't spend my whole life in a tizzy because the point is that everyone knows this and makes allowances for it with looser meeting times. There is, in short, a different concept of what it means to be on time. But there is still lateness, and if you come at 10.45 then you are persona non grata if you have destroyed the plans of whoever you set out to meet.

For example, the reason why your friends don't get pissed off with you, Trillian, is that they know you will be late and so have altered their meeting times with you to allow for it. Or their meeting places. I had a friend at Uni who was frequently late by up to 50 minutes whenever we were going out. Very quickly his friends started arranging to meet him in pubs and at least 30 minutes earlier than we actually wanted him to arrive (if we were going on somewhere). Better yet, we used to just go round to his house and manouver him out the door ourselves. But that is very wearying, so eventually, we just started telling him the last time he could arrive at if he wanted to find us, and then just left without him. It was amazing how his punctuality improved, which says to me that whilst he didn't mind inconveniencing others, he didn't like it when it happened to him.

As for a sense of time. I dunno, aren't we talking time management here, really? It is just a matter of dividing up the day into managable chuncks and realistically deciding how much you can get done. I suspect that although people think they are not wasting a minute by cutting it so fine, in fact those who plan their 'jobs' more effectively (and i'm not one of them, I just leave stuff undone) get a lot more achieved. A broader perspective on the flow of history is nice, but since we are only put on this earth for a short amount of time ourselves I'd appreciate it if my lifespan wasn't wasted waiting around for the latecomer, thanks.

I've been to evening classes on time management and on the practical side I didn't learn anything. I even had more suggestions than the teacher. But I can't put them into practice myself.

just dont call me late for supper.