Anyone can be late a handful of times, sure, but being the person who’s always five minutes late (at the earliest) is an art. For some, frustrating and quite inconvenient. Now, scientists have discovered that it is a side effect of a personality type.
What is it that causes some people to constantly miss trains or buses, arrive at the wedding right after the bride shows up, and regularly despair of their friends? And why is it so difficult for us – or for the one with that problem – to fix it?
Researchers have been trying to analyze this extreme for decades, and have found some telling traits:
“There are all kinds of discouragements and punishments for being late, and the paradox is that we are late, even when those punishments and consequences exist,” according to Justin Kruger, a social psychologist at the New York University School of Business. USA).
One of the most obvious and common reasons people are frequently late is that they simply do not accurately assess how long a task will take, something known as the planning fallacy – the tendency to underestimate time to completion. A homework.
Studies have shown that, on average, we underestimate how long it will take to complete a task by a significant 40%.
Another trait, which could very well be related to the first, is that those who are always late are more likely to be multitaskers. In a 2003 study led by Jeff Conte of San Diego State University (USA), he found that of the 181 subway operators in New York City, those who preferred to multitask, came to work later. . This is because multitasking makes it more difficult to have metacognition or knowledge of what you are doing (knowledge about knowledge itself).
Jeff Conte also discovered that there is a personality type that is more likely to be late. While highly achievement-oriented Type A individuals are more likely to be punctual, Type B individuals, who are more relaxed and calm, do so later.
In fact, type A and type B people really feel that time passes differently. In more than three previous studies, Conte found that, for Type A people, 1 minute passed in 58 seconds, while for Type B people 1 minute passed in 77 seconds.
How to improve punctuality
Scientists are also beginning to focus on strategies that can slowly improve our punctuality.
For people who consistently underestimate tasks, breaking an activity into very detailed steps can help you more accurately assess how long it will take to do something specific.
A 2012 study also found that asking people to mentally imagine a task before doing it can help them be more realistic about its duration.
Those who are late must also realize that they cannot be in two places at once, and try to plan less and more separately.
When it comes to your personality type, there is unfortunately not much you can do to change that, but accepting that you need to make up for it can help. Acceptance, first and foremost, is the first step to change.
