Why running late seems sensible

I don't want to begin by telling you that lateness is disrespectful. You've heard that, and it makes you defensive, and it also misses the point. There are good reasons why you run late, and they deserve stating before anything is said against them.

You don't like wasting time. Arriving early means sitting in a corridor or a car park doing nothing, and you have plenty to do. Leaving with a big margin feels like throwing away twenty minutes to save five.

You like finishing things. The email that came in overnight is now answered rather than hanging over the meeting. The last thing is usually a real thing, and doing it feels like efficiency.

Your estimates feel honest. You aren't lying to yourself when you say the walk takes fifteen minutes. You've timed it, more or less, and on a good day it does.

Being early feels slightly foolish. You're the person standing outside the restaurant at twenty-five past, looking at your phone, wondering whether to go in. There's something in many of us that would rather be the one who arrives when things have started.

You've also noticed that nothing much happens. You arrive eight minutes late and the meeting is still going. Dinner is still served. Your friends are still your friends. The world seems to tolerate it, and so you conclude that the fuss punctual people make is a fuss about nothing.

And there may be a small pleasure in the dash. The fast walk, the stairs, the sense of just making it. Some people find their days a bit flat without it.

I think the habit is trying to meet four needs, and this list is mine. You want to use your time fully. You want things finished. You want to avoid the dead time of waiting. And you want to be someone who doesn't fuss.

All four are reasonable. My argument is that the habit serves them badly. You don't use your time fully, because the dash and the apology and the first ten flustered minutes of everything are a worse use of time than the wait would have been. You don't finish the last thing well, because you do it with one eye on the clock. You avoid ten minutes of waiting and pay for it with a day that runs behind from the start. And you come across, in the end, as someone who fusses a great deal, but on arrival rather than before it.