Are you the kind of person who leaves the house at the same time every day, who knows exactly how long their commute to work is, who always arrives to things five minutes early?
Or, are you the kind who needs to set five separate alarms, whose friends tell them events are starting 20 minutes early than they actually are and still manages to be late?
For many people, lateness is the ultimate sign of rudeness, while others have relatively more patience with the friends or family who are seemingly always running a few minutes behind. For some people, being on time can be very difficult and something they actively struggle with.
Trudy Meehan, a lecturer in Positive Psychology at RCSI, joined Drivetime to discuss why some people are constantly late.
Meehan herself is a "slightly late kind of person", by her own admission, so she's well-positioned to examine why timeliness can be such an obstacle.
"Because I struggle, I have a lot of empathy for those that are late and there are two ways of looking at it from a psychological point of view", she said. "There's the social psychology and the cognitive, or brain, psychology way of looking at it."
She added: "Being on time, in the way that we use that now, is quite recent, it's quite Western, it could be seen as classist, perhaps sexist and perhaps ableist, as well, because it sets a particular kind of standard about what counts as mannerly and as good and proper behaviour, and success."
This association between being on time and being "good" is something we should be critical of, Meehan said.
She explained that "the ability to be on time requires a certain amount of structural things to be in place for you as a person". This includes being in control of your time, able to ascertain when your work starts and ends, to not be at the beck and call of your boss and more.
It also relies on what your "burden of care" is, be it caring for children or elderly relatives, as well as "how your brain works".
"For some people who have invisible disabilities like maybe an ADHD-type brain, being on time can genuinely be very exhausting and energy heavy. It can be hard for them."
Meehan acknowledged that being on time does seem like a simple thing, which is partly why others can take offence. However, she added that there are a number of factors around being on time that relate to our emotional approach to it.
"There's a lot of shame in there. There's also on the other side of it an optimism bias."
An optimism bias makes people believe they have enough time for everything, when in reality they may not. "We underestimate how long things will take, and we overpack."
Over-connecting is also a factor, where we say "yes" to too many people, leaving us pushed for time and accidentally offending the last person in the line. Very often it's jobs we do for other people - washing up, making school lunches, cleaning up stray messes - that delays people.
Planning and organising to be on time can be easier for some people, while others struggle, but Meehan noted that these people can try and learn better habits to help with that.
"What people tend to do is you put those habits and the energy into being on time for work and professional engagements, where if you're not on time it's just not okay", Meehan said.
On the topic of whether or not being late is disrespectful, Meehan made her own "controversial" statement: "I think it is disrespectful to attack someone for being late without knowing their circumstances and understanding their life and their brain structure.
"We just need to be more kind and compassionate I think, in general."
To listen to the full interview, click above.
