Never be late again with one simple life hack!

Reading this article will change your life!... Or just make you roll your eyes and go "duh."

What I feel like when I give advice.

Sometimes, the best advice will sound completely obvious after you hear it, even though you didn’t think of something that way before. As your brain interprets the advice, it will firmly attach to your brain so strongly that it instantly feels like it was your idea all along. That is a sign of great, life-changing advice.

Other times, it’s just that the advice is, in fact, actually stupidly obvious.

Due to being stupid myself, I’m not sure which category my advice about solving perpetually late falls into. It was just a pattern I found myself falling into awhile back, and the steps I took to fix the bad habit. Because that’s what things like this are - if you’re perpetually late, it’s not because you’re a horrible, inconsiderate buffoon (or so I told myself). It’s because you have developed some bad habits.

Fortunately, bad habits are “easy” to get rid of - they just need to be replaced by good habits!

So what is the problem?

For me, for awhile I was perpetually late to everything. I would leave my apartment at what I thought was a reasonable time, but arrive at my destination 10 minutes later than expected, frustrating my friends (and myself).

But the reason for the lateness is simple: I am a dumb.

Here’s the dumb algorithm I used:

“Ah, 21 minutes. Cool. Okay. I gotta be there by 11:00, so I’ll leave at, say… 10:35. That’ll leave enough time.”

Smash cut to meeting my friends at 11:25 with the ol’ “sorry I’m late, unexpected traffic, y’know?” excuse.

“Mmhmm.”

So what was the problem really? Well, I simply was not being realistic about the actual end-to-end time it takes to get from point A to point B. In my pea brain, google says it takes 21 minutes to get somewhere, which means it takes 21 minutes to get there.

In reality, there’s a lot that happens between “leaving” and leaving, “getting to the destination” and getting to the destination.

So one day, I just decided to actually time it. And here’s what I found:

• Putting on my jacket, shoes, getting my keys - 1 minute

• Wait, shit, where are my keys - 2 minutes

• Okay walking to the elevator, taking it down, and walking to my car - 1 minute

• Ugh I forgot my wallet - 2 minute

• …Okay walking again to the elevator and to my car - 1 minute

• Driving - 21 minutes

• Finding parking - 2 minutes

• Wait that has a fire hydrant WHERE THE FUCK IS A FUCKING PARKING SPOT - 3 minutes

• UGH I HATE PARKING IN THE CITY - 5 minutes

• Texting friends that I’ll be late sry just looking for parking - 10 seconds

• FUCK IT I’ll just use this overpriced shitty parking garage - 3 minutes

• Holy shit these spaces are tiny - 1 minute

• Shit what’s my license plate again - 2 minutes

• Oh it’s 5 bucks every 15 MINUTES? Piece of shit - 1 minute

• Okay ugh gonna walk there now - 4 minutes

Expected elapsed time: 21 minutes give or take 4 minutes
Actual elapsed time: 48 minutes and 10 seconds

The dumb algorithm was sorely lacking.

So what’s the “simple life hack” to solve this?

It’s not magic ~ Photo by Julius Drost on Unsplash

Leave earlier!

…No but really, the trick is just to be realistic. It’s very easy to shortcut your brain and make best case scenario estimates. But if you look more closely at actual data, you’ll see that your estimation algorithm is broken.

Then after you look at your data, you can start to make small changes to actually improve things. Does it seems like finding your keys and wallet are a common problem? Make it a habit to put them in the same place all the time, as soon as you get home. Have a difficult time finding street parking? Get a preassigned spot in a garage with one of the many apps available to do so, or just buffer that specific activity with a realistic amount of time. Or take the train, or an uber, so you don’t have to park.

This doesn’t just apply to being late to things, this applies to all sorts of estimates. Our very flawed human brains are very good at coming up with ballpark, best case scenario estimates (or worst case scenario, depending on if we’re wired for more pessimism or optimism).

But it’s always best to just break things down from one nebulous blob into smaller individual steps, and examine each one of them. With this technique, you can start estimating things better and improve the specific things that slow you down that you may not have recognized before.

Be realistic. Break things down. Turn bad habits into good habits. And your friends will stop thinking you’re a horrible, inconsiderate buffoon. Right guys? …Right?