What to do with the spare minutes

If you do what chapters 16 and 17 ask, you'll arrive early, often, by five or ten minutes. Chapter 6 argued that this isn't waste. This chapter is about what those minutes are, and it's all my own view.

They're the only unclaimed time in your day. Everything else you do is spoken for. The early minutes at the other end of a trip are a small piece of time in which nothing is expected of you, because you're not late and you're not yet in the thing. You can use them or not, and either is allowed.

If you want to use them, bring the thing. The book, the podcast, the letter you've been meaning to write, the email that used to be the last thing. It's now done in a corridor at ten to nine, with a full ten minutes, and it's done properly because you're not watching the clock. This is the same email you were sending at twenty to nine last Tuesday. The only difference is which side of the door you sent it from.

If you don't want to use them, don't. Sit on the bench outside the dentist. Look at the street. I'd guess that many people haven't had ten minutes of nothing in a long time, and that they'd find it stranger and better than they expect.

At a friend's house, the early minutes are for walking round the block. It's a rule of hospitality that you don't arrive before the time, and it's also a pleasant walk. You arrive at half past seven exactly, unhurried, with the wine, and Dan says, "Blimey, look who it is," and that's the whole of the joke, and it's a better joke than the one about the lasagne.

At work, the early minutes are when the useful things get said. The two minutes before a meeting, when the person you needed to catch is pouring a coffee, are worth more than the meeting to a good many people. You've been missing them for years, because you've been on the stairs.

There's a change in how you're seen, too. The person who's already there when you arrive looks in charge of their day. Nobody knows they had to leave at twenty to nine to do it. They only see someone calm, with a coffee, who's read the agenda. You can be that person for the price of one change in arithmetic.

And, once you've had a few weeks of it, notice how you feel walking in. Not out of breath. Not saying sorry. Not looking for the chair by the door. Just arriving, like everyone else. It's a small thing, and I think it's the thing the habit has been costing you most.