Going Forward Be on Time

In business, time management is never about managing time. Time is a known and stable factor. It can't be managed; it can only be acknowledged or ignored, according to how much you appreciate its importance. If your're late for a meeting it's probably not because some unavoidable obstacle put itself in your way. It's because you didn't allow for the obstacle. You didn't spend time thinking about the obstacle. And if you didn't spend time thinking about the obstacle, your're not showing respect for the people your're doing business with. In other words, you are the obstacle. Because being on time is easy. Respecting time is the tricky part. There are many opportunities to be late or on time. There is no skill. There is nothing to learn. If you want to be on time, you'll be on time. People who are consistently late make lots of excuses: Traffic, children, illness, subway trouble. wheather. But those excuses are representative of one thing an ambivalence about what your're supposed to be on time for. Whatever the meeting is about, it's just not important enough "It cracks me up when people say it's a time-management issue when people don't show up on time" says Steve McClatchy time-management expert " If I told your that I have a million dollars for you if you can make an 8:00 o'clock meeting tomorrow morning but if your're a minute late you don't get the million dollars there's not a person in the world who would turn it down" So whe we decide not to be on time(and it is always a decision) the message isn't I'm too busy, the message is, I don't respect this meeting enough I don't repect the people waiting for me in the meetin enough to do the easiest thing in the world just show up on time. Is it a lifestyle thing? Being late is about little decisions you make on the way to being late. It's never about the moment in time when you're scheduled to meet. It's about days of preparation. Months, even, in some ways years. Because an inabillity to keep an appointment is about something much larger than the hour at hand. If your're struggling with being on time, imagine that your meeting is a lot more important than it actually is.