Is punctuality good or bad and should you develop punctuality in yourself?

Punctuality has always been valued in society and has become one of the important parameters by which a person’s personality is judged: when hiring, conducting important business meetings and negotiations, and can be regarded as a sign of a person’s reliability and a sign of respect for others.

What is human punctuality?

A punctual person strives to follow instructions and rules. Punctuality must be in everything and always. When studying punctuality as a human character trait, the following components of punctuality come to the fore:

• accuracy;
• discipline;
• self-respect and respect for others;
• the value of your own and other people's time.

Key Benefits of Punctuality

In order to become a punctual person, first of all you need to understand that punctuality has a positive effect not only on building a career and business development, but also helps a lot in everyday life. Let us consider in more detail the main advantages that punctuality gives a person.

Respect for others

Punctuality helps to gain the respect of others. If you stick to your schedule and strictly follow your schedule, this will be positively noted by other people, especially when establishing business relationships with them. For example, if you are late for a business meeting, your partner may feel that you do not respect him and do not take him seriously enough, which will negatively affect the outcome of the negotiations. If you come to a business meeting on time, then by such actions you will, first of all, show that you respect your partner and that his proposal is interesting to you. Thus, being punctual will help you earn the respect of other people.

Reducing conflict situations

Punctuality also helps to avoid various conflict situations. Very often, the cause of conflicts is ordinary tardiness. For example, simply being late for a business meeting will significantly affect the outcome of negotiations, which will provoke a conflict at the current job and may lead to dismissal. A punctual person understands perfectly well that time is money, therefore, he always arrives on time and does not give unnecessary reasons for conflict situations to arise.

Increased chances of building a career

Punctuality also increases your chances of building a successful career. It's no secret that management will not take seriously a person who is constantly late and does not know how to properly manage his time. Therefore, the chances of building a successful career increase for people who are punctual.

Punctuality - good or bad?

A punctual person is a person who is on first-name terms with time. Such people inspire the trust and sympathy of others. If you imagine a situation where a meeting is planned, even if not with a business partner, but with a best friend, his lateness causes mixed feelings of worrying that “what happened” and an equally strong feeling of irritation at being forced to wait. Punctuality is good within reasonable limits and is an indicator of caring for oneself and others, but there is another, opposite facet of punctuality:

1. An overly punctual person goes to different extremes and becomes boring. Relatives and colleagues of such a person suffer greatly from the manifestation of boredom, which over time worsens into a kind of despotism: “Everyone should go to bed at 22.00 and not a minute later!”
2. People who are obsessed with punctuality demand the same careful adherence to time and commitments from others. And if such a boss comes to work at 7.30, then his subordinates should be at work by this time. Minor tardiness is punishable by a fine or moral admonishment in the presence of other employees.
3. The hyper-responsibility of “overly” punctual people can lead to neuroses.

How to become more punctual: five practical tips

Are you annoyed by your friends and colleagues being late? Or maybe you yourself are often late for meetings? Lack of punctuality is common to many people. Often being late leads not only to problems at work, but also in life. Of course, who wants to date someone who is constantly late? By lingering for an indefinite amount of time, you show your ignorance. Punctuality is, first of all, a manifestation of human culture. Composure is especially important for business people: despite your professionalism, no employer will tolerate their employees being late.

Here are some practical tips that will help you develop the quality of punctuality:

Practical tip 1: Plan your day

In some cases, delays occur due to a huge volume of work, while working on which you do not keep track of time. The consequence is another lateness for an important meeting. To stop being late, get yourself a diary in which your daily routine will be written down. Analyze your entire to-do list for the day, distribute them over time, and perhaps you will find that some task can still be postponed until another day. This will give you a sense of time. You will become more focused.

Practical tip 2: Corporal gap

This is what the army calls the time remaining before any event. Make it a habit to arrive to meetings earlier than scheduled. Just don’t take this advice too seriously - you shouldn’t arrive to the meeting an hour and a half in advance, which will not develop punctuality in you at all. Calculate your time so that you arrive 3-5 minutes before your friend/colleague.

Read also: The price of time - what we spend our lives on

Practical tip 3: “No” to excuses!

Another useful rule for those who want to stop being late is this: stop blaming traffic jams and other people for your tardiness. By making excuses to those waiting, you are making excuses to yourself for your own lateness. By convincing yourself that nothing can affect being late, you will become more collected, and being late will become something incomprehensible and difficult for you.

Practical tip 4: Try not to do anything before going out

Probably, many people experience similar situations: 5-10 minutes before going out there is a desire to surf the Internet, read a book or something else. And now five, ten, and fifteen minutes have passed. You end up being late again. Learn to cope with your desires before leaving the house. This will save you from being late again and make you more punctual.

Practical Tip 4: Time Goes Back

If you are punctual in your lateness - arrive 5-10 minutes later than the scheduled time, then simply set the time back 5-10 minutes. Better yet, ask your friends about it so that they can change your hours without informing you. This way you will save time and stop being late.

Practical tip 5: Self-motivation

Just tell yourself, “I won’t be late.” Or come up with some reasons why you shouldn't be late. For example, so as not to upset your friends or put yourself in a stupid position, etc. Proper motivation will not only influence you to arrive on time at a certain time, but will also help you develop punctuality.

Read also: How to increase personal effectiveness - 7 important rules

Remember that being late is a consequence of irresponsibility.
And if you want your boss to value and respect such an employee, and your friends to consider you a reliable friend, then start working on your punctuality. Your efforts will not be in vain, rest assured. The main thing is the desire to stop being late. Share:

Rules of punctuality

Accuracy and punctuality are intersecting concepts. A punctual person is a person who carefully and accurately treats the categories of time: urgently, on time, at such and such a time, in exactly a month. The timer and organizer of such a person are covered with notes that he checks several times a day. Rules for a punctual personality:

1. Review the list of important meetings and to-dos in the evening, preparing to be everywhere at the appointed time.
2. Drawing up a clear time rule for the day: certain periods of time for doing something (for example, exercise at 7.05 to 7.20) and try to strictly adhere to this schedule.
3. Clothes for the next day are prepared in the evening, also with important documents needed for work.
4. When planning things, take time into account with a small “reserve”.
5. Always remember that other people’s time is no less valuable, and the other person, going to a meeting, could have been busy with other important things, but he chose this meeting - it is important not to forget about this.

Rules of communication

It's hard to pull yourself together when faced with such blatant bad manners. However, there is no point in completely spoiling your mood with quarrels and showdowns. Take a deep breath, be patient and do the following:

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1. Friendly greet the guest at the door, invite him to enter, and give him a short tour of the house.
2. Invite to the table. If you've already shared a meal with your household or ate dinner alone, offer the person a snack. Serve with what's left.
3. If the guest does not explain the reason for being late, say that you expected him to arrive earlier. This will give him the opportunity to apologize and explain his behavior. Perhaps force majeure circumstances have arisen, which he will tell you about.

Do not accuse or insult a person under any circumstances, otherwise a serious conflict is inevitable. The guest will begin to defend himself and reproach you for something. A verbal altercation will only make the situation worse. Just draw conclusions for yourself and decide for the future whether you need to invite such a person to visit you on the next weekend or holiday.

Punctuality at work

Punctuality and business, which unites these concepts, can be seen in the way very busy businessmen and managers constantly look at their watches. Time is money. In the shortest or limited time possible, it is important to meet, evaluate the partner, talk and conclude or not conclude a deal or contract. Punctuality is one of the most important components of a successful business or enterprise. Being late is bad manners among business people, and the reputation of an unnecessary person for always being late is guaranteed.

How to develop punctuality in yourself?

Punctuality is a useful social tool and a skill that can be developed if you set such a goal for yourself. General recommendations on how to become punctual:

1. Take control of time. Buy a beautiful, stylish watch. Just wearing a watch disciplines a person and forces him to look at the dial more often.
2. The first time is to move the clock hands 10-15 minutes forward, but focus on this time as real.
3. An unpunctual person is a lazy person without meaning and interest; the task here is to show interest in business and activities.
4. Daily practice to “feel” time. Take a certain period of 5 minutes - 1 hour and internally feel the end boundary. The time exercise helps you determine the exact time without relying on a watch.

How and why to cultivate punctuality?

Unpunctual people are not just annoying, they literally drive others crazy. If other shortcomings can be condemned with humor, then unpunctuality is an exception. No matter how the late person laughs it off, trust in him decreases. On the personal front, this causes stress, spoils relationships with loved ones, damages your reputation, and deprives you of many social and professional opportunities. And within the company, it affects its profitability.

Punctuality is a skill that can be trained. Time management teaches you how to plan your time, set priorities and solve the problem of being late. The rules that work in large corporations will help you organize yourself in everyday life.

Know your own and others' characteristics.

Why do some people always arrive early, while others never know how to organize themselves? It turns out that it depends on the personality type. Psychologists conditionally divide people into 5 types:

Rationals are people who are used to being responsible for their words. Sometimes they are too fixated on punctuality, which creates unnecessary tension in the team.

Irrationals or “ latecomers ” tend to overestimate their strengths and make unreasonably optimistic forecasts. Therefore, they often change plans, do not fulfill what they promised, miss deadlines, and cancel meetings just because they do not attach importance to time.

Eccentrics consider themselves exceptional individuals, are always late, and do not pay attention to the dissatisfaction of others. They are often deliberately late in order to appear impressively in front of everyone and further emphasize their greatness.

Losers always find themselves in incomprehensible situations, apologize, and reproach themselves for their lack of composure. As a rule, they cause more harm to themselves than to others.

Deadline seekers are thrill-seekers for whom planning is boring, useless work. To get the job done, they need to race against time. If the battle is lost, they confidently blame it on their colleagues, circumstances, or broken watches.

How to deal with this? Take these features into account when making an appointment.

Take a personality type test

Organize your circumstances.

Getting up, getting ready for work or school, walking the dog, going to work and back - there are enough routine things in life that have to be done every day. Those who are late always and everywhere do not think about how much time it really takes to do everything. Or they are overly optimistic, not considering everything that needs to be done.

How to deal with this? Learn to plan:

1. Write down how much time you usually spend on daily tasks. At the end, sum everything up.
2. Compare with the total time it usually takes to get ready. If the real time is noticeably longer, then you are missing something.
3. Review the list – is the time realistic? Small things may have been forgotten: brushing your teeth, looking for your wallet or car keys.
4. Add factors that are beyond your control: weather, bus delay.
5. Copy each item on the list onto colorful sticky notes and attach them to the board in a visible place. This makes it clear how much work really remains to be done.
6. Do some of your morning chores in the evening: prepare clothes, pack your bag, put documents, car keys, umbrella, watch in one “morning box” and put it in a visible place. It will take much less time to get ready in the morning.

This technique will save your head from memorizing unnecessary information and will help you not deviate from the schedule.

Punctuality in the Bible

A punctual person is pleasing to God, believers believe so. Many rituals and holidays take place at certain times. The reading of some prayers must be done strictly on time, as well as the observance of sacraments and fasts. God is punctual and keeps his word when he announces to Noah that in seven days he will rain devastating downpours on the earth for forty days. And Noah’s punctuality helps him complete the construction of the ark on time, in which he and his family were saved, animals and plants were preserved. This lesson from the Bible teaches an important thing - punctuality can save lives.

What, then, prevents people from being collected, punctual and responsible?

Knowing the reasons, it is easier to deal with any shortcoming that complicates our lives. And the main one is lack of composure . A person does not know how to control himself. He puts off all things for later, babbles, idle, is lazy, plays the fool - he procrastinates. “There’s a car of time ahead,” he says to himself and catches himself when it’s already running out. As a result, he has to sacrifice some business or some meeting, he lies, gets out and over time deservedly earns a reputation as a person with whom it is better not to mess.

Some people are late because they are unable to sense time : it seems to them that 15 minutes have passed, but in fact half an hour has passed. This happens especially often when they hang out on social networks “for a minute.”

We can say that chronic tardiness is a habit. This is how we characterize someone: “He has a habit of being late.” This is not an innate quality with which nothing can be done - you can’t go against genes. If parents are unpunctual and uncollected, then the child, looking at them, will grow up the same way. As the English proverb says: “Don’t raise children, they will still be like you. Educate yourself."

But if unpunctuality is a bad habit, then, like any habit, you can work with it to get rid of it.

Lack of punctuality has other reasons. For example, an unloved job, an unwanted meeting, a dreary event . Well, we don’t want to go so much that at the subconscious level we try in every possible way to postpone the unpleasant moment: we lie in bed until the last moment, are distracted by unnecessary things and, in fact, do everything to be late.

There is a category of people who are late quite deliberately . Some women like to be late in order to attract as much attention as possible They are not interested in coming among the first, because then they may remain almost unnoticed. But to appear impressively when everything is already assembled is their style. Now the views of those present will be directed only at them, and all they have to do is present themselves favorably and have time to accept compliments.

Manipulators often resort to being late . Their goal is to make themselves wait so that they can then bargain and get what they want faster. By being late, they emphasize their importance and show that their own interests are more important to them than the interests of those waiting. Moreover, the other side understands perfectly well that they are trying to manipulate it, but tries to observe the rules of decency and not express direct complaints, so as not to aggravate relations. However, a painful long wait exhausts anyone, and people often give up and make concessions that they would not have made before, which is what the manipulator sought.

But we realized that unpunctuality interferes with our lives: friends are offended, there are troubles at work - and we want to get rid of this bad habit.