We Know Why You’re Always Late
What Researchers Have Learned
About Tardiness and How You Can Arrive on Time More
By Sumathi Reddy in the Wall Street Journal
Chronically late people can be
frustrating and baffling to anyone stuck waiting for them.
One main explanation for their
behavior is deceptively simple, psychologists say: People simply underestimate
how long a task will take.
That’s a little-known concept called
the planning fallacy, which is a strong tendency to chronically underestimate
task completion. The planning fallacy is one of the most difficult behavioral
patterns to change, experts say.
“This is a judgment that you’d think
that people would be motivated to get right,” said Justin Kruger, a social
psychologist and professor in the marketing department at NYU’s Stern School of
Business. “There are all sorts of disincentives and punishments for being late,
and the paradox is we’re late even when those punishments and consequences
exist.”
This kind of behavior can slow down
workplace efficiency and drive longtime friends to distraction while they wait
for a late arrival. Researches have studied the problem from all angles to get
to why this happens. It can be anything from poor planning to a serious medical
problem.
Roger Buehler, a psychology
professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, estimates that
people on average underestimate task-completion time by as much as 40%. His
studies have found the same issues for matters as small as mailing a letter and
as critical as income taxes.
Researchers have tested several
strategies that have been found to help people slow to finish their work. One
involves predicting how long it will take to get something done based on past
experiences. Another is breaking down a task into very detailed steps.
In a 2004 study in the Journal of
Experimental Social Psychology, Dr. Kruger and a co-researcher found that when
“unpacking” a task—or breaking it down into detailed steps—individuals provided more accurate estimates of how long something would take to get done. The four
scenarios studied were getting ready for a date, holiday shopping, formatting a
computer document and preparing food.
A study published in 2012 in the
journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes found that prompting people to
mentally picture a task from the
perspective of an outside observer caused them to make more realistic
predictions about how long the tasks might take, said Dr. Buehler, the lead
author of the study.
The research of Jeff Conte, an
associate psychology professor at San Diego State University, has found that
there are some personality differences that can contribute to chronic lateness.
Get
There on Time
A clinical social worker offers tips
to be more punctual:
- Don’t double book. Accept that you can’t be in two places at the same time.
- If you have a morning meeting, have clothes ready the night before and use an alarm without a snooze function.
- Use a calendar to block out meeting times. Include travel and transition time.
- Set a warning alarm on phone for when you need to get ready to leave and another alarm for when you need to get out the door.
- Try to get to a meeting early and reward yourself with coffee or time to relax.
- Consider the cost of being late, remembering any past consequences.
- Visualize yourself being on time, which will increase focus and attention.
- Get enough sleep so that you are thinking clearly.
Source: Lisa Bernstein
A 2003 study he co-wrote in the
journal Human Performance examined 181 subway operators in New York City. The
study found that those who preferred multitasking—a concept called
polychronicity by psychologists—were more often late to their
job.
In Dr. Conte’s research, Type A
individuals—those who are fast-paced, achievement-oriented and hostile at
times—tend to be more punctual, he said. Type B individuals, who are more
laid-back, tend to arrive later. He documented that finding in a 2001 study he co-wrote in
the Journal of Applied Social Psychology that included 194 college students.
Across three previous studies, Type
A individuals estimated that a minute passed in 58 seconds, compared with 77
seconds for Type B individuals. “So if you have an 18-second gap…that
difference can add up over time,” Dr. Conte said.
In terms of workplace tardiness,
Lawrence T. White, a psychology professor at Beloit College in Beloit, Wis.,
said organizational psychologists have found that employee tardiness can be
predicted by the age of an employee’s child. The younger the child, the more
likely the employee will arrive late.
Employee tardiness is also predicted
by low job satisfaction and a lack of organizational commitment, he said.
Experts say more extreme cases of
chronic lateness may be symptoms of more serious health conditions such as
ADHD, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder or mild cognitive impairment, a
precursor to dementia.
Such individuals often require
treatments that can include therapy for time-management issues.
Lisa Bernstein is a Rockville,
Md.-based clinical social worker with several ADHD patients. One of the
strategies she uses with them is breaking a weekly calendar down into 30-minute
increments.
Another strategy is setting up a
rewards system. That could mean no Facebook or email until a certain amount of
work is done.
The strategies have worked for Mary
Talley. A client of Ms. Bernstein’s for about five years, Ms. Talley was
diagnosed with ADHD as an adult and says her tendency to be late was a source
of anxiety.
Creating an extremely detailed
master calendar has been a huge help, said Ms. Talley, a 60-year-old founder of
an information management consultancy in Washington, D.C. “She’s really helped
me figure out how long something will really take,” she said.
Now she says she’s better at not
booking appointments too close together and turning down things if she has to.
And she finds that she’s much better about meeting people on time.
Take her last appointment to see Ms.
Bernstein in January. “I was 10 minutes early,” she said.
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