This might sound like the impossible, especially if you have children and animals to get ready before you leave to go anywhere. But being on time, every time, is a skill. And it’s one that you can grow.
How To Always Be On Time
Attitude
We all know somebody who has a strange attitude to time. Rather than planning to be somewhere nice and early, they simply say they’ll get there – eventually. If this sounds like you, then one of the first things that you need to do is reassess your attitude to time.
See being on time as part of a principle, and something that you have to do.
Trouble
No matter where you are going, plan for 20-30% of your travel time to be added on top. You can round that % off, for example, if it usually takes you 40 minutes to get to work, add on an extra 10 minutes. If you know that a piece of work is going to take your 13 hours today, give yourself 15 instead.
The worst thing that will happen here is that you are always ahead of schedule, but the best thing that will happen here is that you are indeed always ahead of schedule.
Pay attention to the city in which you will be driving; for example, if you are driving in the city with the 9th highest rate of traffic delays, then you know for sure that you need to plan for trouble.
Set Reminders
Every person’s phone has a range of reminder options. This will help you be reminded of the things that you need to do. If you have an iPhone, then it can help you automatically work out how long it will take you to drive to an appointment.
Make use of all of those tools. You could even use a service like Sandy to help send text reminders at set intervals before any of your appointments. So you can set a reminder the day before a week before or even an hour before.
Pomodoro
If you work from home and you find pieces of work that simply seem to last all day, it could be a time management issue.
Employing the Pomodoro technique can help you trim down how long you are spending working and make sure that you have those bright schedules in.
There are a number of Pomodoro tools that can make this easy for you.
Timing Your Trips
If possible, try to plan all of your trips and off-peak times, so that you can drive nice and early to get there ahead of the usual traffic.
What can take you five hours in the morning might take you up to 9 and more in heavy traffic with the potential of long delays.
Schedule things as smartly as possible and try to avoid anything that might involve going in rush hour traffic.
Even with the best of intentions, everyone is light from time to time, but if you take steps every day to minimize the risk of forgetting shoes, losing jackets, forgetting to pack a lunch, or need to travel in rush hour traffic, you’ll find that you are late much less often.