"I'm just not a punctual person"

By now you may be thinking that this is all true and doesn't apply, because you're simply not made for punctuality. Some people are, and they're a bit dull about it. You're not, and you've stopped fighting it.

I'd examine that from two directions.

The first is the evidence on personality. Conte and Jacobs, in the study of train operators mentioned in chapter 5, measured the standard personality traits, including conscientiousness. They expected conscientiousness to go with less lateness. It went with less absence. It wasn't related to lateness at all in their sample. What was related to lateness was the preference for doing several things at once. One study of one workforce isn't the last word, but it points away from the idea that punctuality is a fixed trait of character, and towards the idea that it's about how you handle the minutes before you leave.

The second is the evidence of your own life. You catch flights. You've never missed an exam. You were on time for your interview, and probably for your wedding. When the start time can't be moved and the cost of missing it is serious, you're punctual, and you manage it without any special agony. The equipment is all there. What you've been doing is deciding, without quite noticing that you're deciding, which appointments count as fixed. The flight counts. The Tuesday meeting doesn't. Dan and Ellie don't.

I don't think that's a matter of temperament. I think it's a judgement about which things you can afford to be late for, made long ago and never reviewed. The habit isn't an inability to be on time. It's a policy of being on time only when the price of lateness is high enough. The rest of this book is an argument that the price is higher than you've reckoned, so that more things belong in the fixed category.

It's also worth knowing that ideas about what counts as late vary from place to place. Robert Levine and Ara Norenzayan measured the pace of life in cities in thirty-one countries, by timing walking speed, the speed of a simple transaction at a post office, and the accuracy of public clocks. The pace differed a great deal from country to country. Levine's earlier work had also used a questionnaire, mostly in the United States, asking people what they considered late and how they felt about being late. If punctuality were built into people, it wouldn't vary so much with where they happen to live. It's learned, which means it can be learned later.

None of this means you'll become someone who loves being early. It means that "not a punctual person" isn't a description of you. It's a description of a policy, and policies can be changed.