The spiritual value of not running late
This is one I still struggle with. A lot. I’m in no way an expert in getting places on time. But I’m much better than I used to be. And the reason I’ve improved is that I’ve come to understand more and more how it’s not just about time management. If you’re a chronically late person, it can carry behind it a lot of other issues — disrespect, dishonesty, creating chaos, self-centeredness, to name a few — and it bothers other people more than you realize.
There are so many reasons to be on time. The most obvious is that running late is stressful. It adds to the anxiety in your life with no change in outcome. Whether you’re early, just in time, or late, once you’re there, you’re there. But running late or cutting it close means that the whole period of time leading up to it is stressful. Usually some of that anxiety spills over into the time after you get there too. And the childish thrill of getting there in the nick of time does not erase any of that stress.
Being late is an expression of disrespect to those who are expecting you. You are saying, either consciously or unconsciously, that you don’t value their time as much as your own. This has been a bad pattern of mine at jobs throughout my life – a part of the attitude that they are lucky to have me. It’s worse than that, though. There’s a qualitative difference between your time and theirs. Because you know you’re late, whereas they don’t know what’s going on. So, in many cases, they’re putting everything else on hold because they are expecting you to show up at any moment, when you still might be 15 or 30 minutes away. You can help alleviate this a bit by calling ahead and letting them know you’ll be late. It won’t get you there on time, but at least it gives them the possibility of putting that time to good use.
The most important reason to be on time goes back to the column I did about honesty. “Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’” (Matthew 5:37) If you tell people you’ll be somewhere at a certain time, to be late is to break your word. This isn’t true if your travel plan was reasonable and something unusual made you late. Things happen. But if you don’t make a reasonable effort to get somewhere when you said you would, then you are not being true to your word. This is often part of a bigger pattern of cutting corners, of finessing the system, of self-seeking behavior. We gain self-esteem and the esteem of others by taking estimable actions, like honoring our word.
(My friend James observed the other day that the ability to call or text from a cell to tell people plans have changed has made people less responsible about sticking to our original plans — we don’t take plans as seriously as we did when there was no chance to adjust them en route. The fact that you can call and say you’ll be late doesn’t make you on time; it just makes you a little more considerate.)
And often, even if we think we’re not inconveniencing others, we are. If you arrive late at a movie theater or group dinner, everyone else has to absorb your frenetic energy as you come barging in — even the strangers at other seats or tables. You are making everyone else deal with your lateness, your distraction.
Even if you’re not meeting someone, even if the date is with yourself, you are still disrespecting that person — yourself. You had made a plan because it mattered; now you are placing the urgency of trivialities or the lure of sloth above it. And the additional stress we add to our lives by running late is toxic. The self-recrimination covered with justifications is corrosive to our self-esteem.
[Read the rest of What Works: Being On Time at bustedhalo.com.]
