Tuesday, twenty to nine

It's twenty to nine on a Tuesday morning. There's a team meeting at nine, in the building across the park. You've walked there many times and it takes fifteen minutes, so you have five minutes in hand. You use them to answer an email that came in overnight. It's a short reply, but the person has asked two questions, and the second one needs a figure from a spreadsheet.

At ten to nine you press send and stand up. Your keys aren't in your coat. They're in yesterday's coat, which is upstairs. You get them, come down, and remember the notebook. At four minutes to nine you're on the pavement, walking faster than is comfortable. The park path is wet and you take the longer way round. You go up the stairs two at a time and arrive at eight minutes past, warm in the face, and say, "Sorry, sorry," as you find the last chair, which is the one by the door. Someone is halfway through the first item. You nod as if you've followed it.

You're not a chaotic person. You do good work. But this is the third Tuesday in a row, and last Thursday you arrived at Dan and Ellie's at five to eight for half past seven, and the lasagne had been in the oven for a while.

I'll use a few terms throughout. The estimate is how long you believe something will take, such as the walk, the shower, or the email. The last thing is whatever you decide to do in the minutes before you leave. The dash is the fast, flustered final stretch, from the moment you realise you're late until you arrive. The door is the point at which you're outside with your keys, your coat, and whatever you need, and it's the target this book will ask you to aim at instead of the place you're going. The cushion is time added to an estimate to cover the things that go wrong. And the apology is the sentence you say on arrival, which by now you can say without thinking.

The habit has some regular features. This list is my own observation and not a research finding.

You're late by small amounts. Five, ten, twenty minutes. Rarely an hour. This is what lets you feel it doesn't matter.

You're late in one direction only. You almost never arrive early by the same amount. If your estimates were merely inaccurate, you'd be early as often as you're late. You aren't, and chapter 3 says why.

You're late to nearly everything, but not to the things that can't be repeated. You've never missed a flight, or an exam, or the start of an interview. Keep that in mind, because it shows the ability exists.

You always have a reason. The keys, the email, the wet path. The reason is true, and it's different each time, and there's always one.

And you apologise, often and sincerely, and nobody believes you'll be on time next week, including you.

Try one thing before reading on, and don't change anything yet. For the next week, whenever you're about to leave for something with a fixed start, write down the time you think you'll arrive. Then write down the time you actually arrive. Keep the list. It's the raw material for chapter 16, and you may find it more surprising than anything I say.