User blog:Taldin/Time and Appointments

There are three kinds of people in the world. People who are on time, people who are early, and people who are late.

But there's actually a tiny little window where you are exactly on time; one second or one minute past and you are late, and one second or one minute before, you are early.

If you live by a time clock at work, even one minute can cost you. If you have kids in daycare like some of my coworkers do, being late to pick up your kids really costs you.

We are a society that lives by appointments; we set a time in the future where we plan on being somewhere to do a certain thing, and other people set schedules that if we want to be present, we must be there on time, like movies or airplanes or doctors.

I live with someone who is habitually late to things. She waits until the very last minute to leave to be there on time, and rarely factors in extra delay possibilities, like traffic or getting fuel for the car. She expects people to be okay with her tardiness, citing an excuse for being late, and is unhappy when people get unhappy with her, because 'she couldn't help it.'

I, on the other hand, do my best to be on time. I like being early by a few minutes if I can swing it. I have my own moments where I wind up fidgeting around before leaving, making myself late, but they are few and far between, and even less so since I've been using Habits. But I've always been one of those people who likes to be early to movies to watch trailers and get a good seat. My housemate, on the other hand, prefers to get popcorn and soda and candy, and consequently winds up coming in during the trailers, or even the start of the movie itself, and has to find me in the dark. She hates being early.

To be fair, I've been caught flat footed when someone shows up to meet me somewhere early,earlier than I was prepared for, and then I feel awkward; but most of the time I don't mind starting early if two of us are there early.

It's not a need to be first to a place; rather, it's a need not to be the one person everyone is waiting for. Because I would rather waste my own time by being early, than be the person delaying everyone else.

A lot of our world requires good timing. Over the past year and change, I've struggled to make Wiki edits once every twenty four hours to keep a streak going; life and delays and distractions get in the way. And there's also inspiration sometimes -- 'what do I write' -- and when I missed the 5pm (PST) deadline, I had only myself to blame.

I used to think that being one hundred percent dilligent and efficient was impossible. That I was happy settling for 65 percent, and most of it concentrated in the things that meant the most to me or someone else.

But the secret -- my epiphany of the day -- is this; you can't stop time, you can't slow it down, but you can make time if you recognize where the holes are. You are not one hundred percent busy; you have to stop to breathe, to sleep, to eat (well, sometimes I'm guilty of neglecting the latter two), but in those spaces, we can sometimes fit in things that allow us to free up critical time blocks -- and increase our chances of being on time. Or even early.

I dislike waiting for other people when they're late. I'm sure that I've caused my own share of consternation by being late. (My very first meeting with my long distance girlfriend in realspace?  I was late for.  She forgave me.)    But oddly enough, I'm more okay with uncontrollable delays -- airplane flight delays, that sort of thing -- than I am with 'I overslept'  'I needed to stop for gas', 'I got distracted watching TV' -- because the former is something that is almost expected as a possibility and not in your associate's control, whereas the latter is something that arose because the person failed to make personal choices.

And really, that is the key. Personal choice lets you take control of your life more often when you exercise that personal choice. Learning more willpower to leave early enough to be early, and saying 'no' to things that will cause you to be late.

Not every appointment is set in stone; dailies like 'Write for the Wiki' can be done at any point in a 24 hour time span, with set goalposts; similarly, I can choose to come in to work at 8:45am if I want to. The rush hour traffic is a little more annoying compared to 10am, but nobody really grumbles at me for being there at work early.

It's all about planning and choice. I think I've known this all along, but it's probably the first time I really sat down and wrote it all out.

Hope it helps,

Taldin (talk) 19:09, September 2, 2015 (UTC)