busyMost people are late occasionally. Some people are late chronically. It is usually due to carelessness and/or lack of organizational skills. So the first things you want to check are:
* Does the person realize that being late causes difficulties for self and others?
* Does the person CARE about those difficulties?
* Have they taken basic steps to avoid lateness, such as having accurate timepieces (if feasible), making schedules, and studying organizational techniques?
The article raises an interesting issue: ability to estimate time required to complete a task. Some people are really good at this. Others are really not. To some extent, this can be compensated by timing oneself and memorizing or recording how long it takes to do things, rather than trying to imagine how long it will take. (Frex, I have timed myself writing, so I know that it takes me -- very roughly -- an hour to produce a thousand words. Sometimes considerably more or less, but that's a good ballpark estimate.) This ability is something that can be measured objectively by giving someone tasks and asking them to estimate the completion time. It should be measured with both familiar and unfamiliar tasks, because skill at estimation may differ for those categories.
Closely related to this, not explictly mentioned in the article, but implied in the fellow's description of his experiences, is the ability to get tasks done -- or lack thereof. Some people are excellent at staying on track and dealing with unforseen complications. Others are not. To some extent, this can be compensated by padding the deadline. It doesn't always work, but for most people, it reduces the frequency and duration of lateness. Like estimation, task progress is a thing that can be measured.
We'll set aside the social issues of demanding more from people than they can possibly accomplish, or expecting them to get places faster than is safe or possible, which can cause lateness. We'll also skip folks whose presence bends the spacetime continuum and/or causes timepieces to malfunction, thus making them often late (or early). Those are separate challenges outside this discussion of mental processing of time management.
It's one thing to blame people for being careless. It's quite another to demand that they perform well in an area where they have little innate talent or ability to acquire skill. The latter is a disability -- a pretty bad one, in our culture. So while most people who are frequently late probably do that out of indifference or ignorance, some probably do it out of disability. And the appropriate responses are different: indifferent people need to learn empathy (or how to emulate it), ignorant people need to learn time-management skills, and disabled people may need an assistant or some other accommodation for a potentially life-wrecking problem that can't simply be trained away.
Chance of people actually bothering to test for this? Or trying to ameliorate the various reasons for lateness? Probably almost zero, despite the fact that lateness is something people complain about frequently both in personal and work contexts. Because then they might have to do something other than cast blame or make exuses, and that would be work and likely cost money. I bet they'd rather just keep being late or bitching at late people.
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Re: Yes...
August 28 2013, 04:59:52 UTC 7 years ago
It's okay. I'm glad I could clarify.
>>I know from the experiences of people I'm close to that what you're told can disastrously affect how you handle things in life.<<
Sadly so.
>> I know someone who suffers from depression/seasonal affected disorder/social anxiety who says he was told once by a psychiatrist that he'd never be able to function in society, and so he's not going to try. I know someone else who suffers from the same things, and worked his hardest to overcome the issues and find employment in a field he was passionate about, and is overcoming his problems really well. <<
Most people are contextual, and tend to become what the people around them want or expect them to be. Me, I'm social teflon but that's rare. When people told me things that were obviously bullshit, I said, "No, that doesn't match my observations. I don't care what you think, I'm not going to believe bullshit just because you think it's true and you're not paying attention to the data in front of you."
It makes sense to quit wasting your time on something that you are neither good at nor enjoy, but you should at least give it a solid try before deciding those things about it. Sadly most people don't get that premise either.