Why am I always late

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

That morning I woke up to the sound of an SMS sent by a friend. There was only one link in the message, following which I read: "".

“Nice business,” I think. - Wow headline! It turns out that there is some strange pattern between the habit of not keeping up with the positive perception of the world?"

I immersed myself in reading, from which it became clear that people who are prone to being late are almost the best people in the world. They are full of optimism and confidence in the future.

Those who are regularly late have a healthy optimism. They are convinced that in a short time they are able to do more than the people around them, and multitasking is the surest way to prosperity. In other words, late people are absolutely happy people. They think big.

Those who are in the habit of being late do not burn nerve cells in vain, going broke over trifles. They try to create a holistic picture of what is happening, where the future seems to them cloudless and full of limitless possibilities. Latecomers just come and take what they owe.

People with a tendency to be late all over the place may, for example, stop to sniff flowers. This is because you cannot plan every step and sigh. The dependence on schedules and schedules indicates that we have almost forgotten how to enjoy simple things.

By the end of the reading, I was already bursting with pride. I am one of the Great Losers!

Yes, this is, of course, great, but what's the catch? What could be worse than being late? Perhaps the habit of being late is my worst quality. And this is not at all because I smell roses on every corner. And the ability to see endless new possibilities in everything is also not about me, no.

I am late because I am unreasonable.

I thought about it for a minute or so, and I seem to get the point. The fact is that there are two types of delays:

1. Acceptable late … This is when the fact of the delay of a certain person is not capable of causing any negative consequences. For example, if you are late for a party or a friendly get-together at a bar on Friday night, it is unlikely that this will prevent you and everyone else from having fun.
2. Unacceptable late … Everything is very simple here: the fact of your or someone else's lateness clearly disrupts the plans of other participants. A business dinner or a meeting of two partners simply cannot begin in the absence of one of them.

The article I read talked mainly about the first, acceptable, type of lateness. In this case, the exceptional positivity of individual individuals does not cause me any doubts in principle.

However, if you are not too lazy to read the article to the very end, as I did, you will find a lot of negative comments from users who, alas, did not have such a cheerful description of a vicious habit. You can imagine what they think about the second, unauthorized, type of relationship with time.

This was the reason to postpone the work on my other article for the next nine hours. I simply could not leave this topic.

If we talk about individuals, whose regular and unacceptable delays now and then frustrate the plans of others, then I propose to divide them into two subgroups:

1. Those who don't give a damn. Let's conditionally call them "freaks".
2. Those who are prone to frustration and reproach themselves for their own irresponsibility.

So, the first subgroup is "freaks". Its typical representatives, for some reason unknown to others, consider themselves to be very, very exceptional personalities. Narcissistic and unpleasant types, there is nothing more to say about them.

Those for whom punctuality is not an empty phrase will not hesitate to assign time-breakers to subgroup number one. Why? The answer is simple: they are used to thinking that everyone should be responsible for their actions, and even children know this.

A sane person always behaves in accordance with his idea of normal behavior. What goes beyond understanding is unacceptable, that's the whole conversation. A punctual person is convinced that arriving on time is completely normal, but being late is not. Since everyone knows this, then the one who is late all the time is clearly a "freak".

However, this concept leads to a misunderstanding of the essence of the second subgroup. People who relate to it, as we remember, live in constant fear of making someone wait for themselves. At the same time, they are late, late and late. Let's call them latecomers.

If a "freak", a malicious violator of the production regime, usually infuriates everyone around him, then the "latecomer" is distinguished by the ability to attract all sorts of failures.

He will certainly miss the premiere of the film, be late for the train and will not live up to the hopes placed on him. As a rule, he does more harm to himself than to those who are nearby.

My whole family is famous "latecomers". A good part of my young years passed in anticipation of my mother. After class, classmates happily ran towards their parents, and I stood aside and patiently waited for my mother to come for me. She was always late. And when I finally arrived, we were tensely silent all the way to the house, each in his own thoughts. She must have been terribly ashamed. Yes, she has a problem with that.

And one other time, my sister was late for the airport, so she had to change her ticket for a flight leaving the next morning. Late for him too, she decided to fly at all costs and bought another ticket. The flight was only five hours later. To pass the time, my sister called her friend. There was a lot of news, the conversation turned out to be thorough. And the plane took off again without her. As you can see, it was not only my mother who had problems.

I've been a latecomer for most of my life. My friends were angry with me, I got into awkward situations at work over and over again and became a real pacemaker, regularly rushing around the terminal in search of a gate. Most of these sad stories about being late are fairly typical and follow a pattern like this:

I'll make an appointment, maybe for work. Let's say at three o'clock in some cozy coffee shop. I think the day will be perfect. I will leave early, I will arrive at the meeting in advance, 15 minutes before the meeting. Calmly collect my thoughts, because this is just what you need for a perfect meeting. I will take my time to get to the metro, take a walk, stare at the smart shop windows, listen to the incessant noise of the huge city, sipping lemonade - beauty, in short!

The main thing is to get off the metro 15 minutes before the start of the meeting, that is, at 14:45. This means that at 14:25 I should already be on my way, being in the subway car at about 14:15. For this to happen, I need to leave the house no later than 14:07.

Miracle, not a plan, right? However, in reality, everything is usually different.

"Latecomers" are a strange people. I think each of them is insane in a particular way. But the reason for their mysterious mental disorder lies somewhere very far away; only black magic and ancient rituals can help to get to the bottom of the matter. As for me, all "latecomers" fit one of the following descriptions …

1. I am late, because I live outside the course of time, which I simply do not see the point of chasing … "Latecomers" tend to overestimate their strengths in solving certain problems, making unreasonably positive predictions. And that's why it happens: of everything that the "latecomer" had to do on duty, he most of all remembered one-day affairs that did not require special planning and time tracking skills from him. For this reason, a feeling of imaginary serenity arises in the head of such a person. For example, I don't think it can take 20 minutes to collect things on a weekly business trip. In my opinion, this process lasts about five minutes maximum, during which you take a travel bag, put the necessary clothes, linen, and a toothbrush in it. Everything, you can go. Of course, you can count as a crow, thinking about the imperfection of the world, and really get together for about 20 minutes. But the fees themselves will take you a few minutes, there is even nothing to argue about.

2. I am late because I have an inexplicable sense of fear about the coming changes. To be honest, I'm not sure if the point is precisely the changes or their approach. But, I confess, deep down, I'm really against the idea that at some point I'll have to postpone things that have been planned for a long time and do something fundamentally different. And the problem is not at all that I like some tasks and not very much others. It's just that its essence is contrary to common sense. The plus is that when I finally get down to business, I give myself up to him completely, leaving the office among the last - a worthy act of a real hero of labor.

And finally …

3. I am late because I am not happy with myself.… It's hard to believe, but this has its own logic: the lower a person evaluates his productivity on a particular day, the more likely he will be late. Suppose I am extremely pleased with my current job success and my day in general. At such moments, you feel like a fulfilled person, the master of your life. But, alas, the days when the most “interesting” remains “for later” happen much more often. And at that moment, when it already seems that everything is gone, the brain refuses to put up with its own incompetence. In a fit of self-flagellation, I am capable of much, the least of which is to deal with the plans for the day. Even at night.

So that's why I'm always late - my life lacks common sense. Do not look for excuses for "latecomers" who darken their own lives - they know that they are wrong and must change something. They, not you. After all, they have a problem with it.