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.
August 28 2013, 08:34:51 UTC 7 years ago
As for people I know who are chronically late, I have to admit I still don't quite understand the phenomenon even after this article, because in this particular case, it's hard to know rule out, say, a lack of self-discipline (to judge from that example of him planning to catch a movie 11 hours early). If one had a disability calculating time (trip from A to B takes 20 minutes, therefore to be on time, leave AT LEAST 20 minutes before), it should be easy to catch these cases by asking questions like "what time did you leave A, or plan to leave A?" ... which may make me an annoying person, but I DO that to chronic latecomers sometimes. If it seems to be a serious issue I learn to plan around that person's lateness--giving them a meeting time 30 minutes earlier than when I actually plan to get there, and that they will to. I don't know if this makes me terrible but it works. ;)
Yes...
August 28 2013, 08:57:18 UTC 7 years ago
That's something I hate about modern employment: the shift to random work schedules is ruinous to society. You need a job to survive, but your job can destroy your reliability and self-respect.
>> it's hard to know rule out, say, a lack of self-discipline <<
I'd look for self-discipline in other areas, and check to see what methods of time management the person has tried. If their whole life is a mess, and if they haven't really tried anything to fix the lateness, it's probably a personal flaw. But if they've tried things -- if they can say, yes, I have a calendar and a phone alarm and I always leave early -- and none of that has helped, then I'd suspect a deeper problem.
>> If it seems to be a serious issue I learn to plan around that person's lateness--giving them a meeting time 30 minutes earlier than when I actually plan to get there, and that they will to. <<
As an editor, I always pad the deadlines I give to writers.