Punctuality in the modern world is extremely important. You must have been annoyed more than once when you had to wait a long time for a friend at a meeting or a colleague at work. Perhaps you yourself often got into trouble, because you could not properly plan your time. In this article you will learn about why it is important to value one’s and others ’time and how to stop being late everywhere.
What it is?
The meaning of this word is familiar to almost everyone since childhood. Punctuality is the ability to do work on time or arrive on time. This concept is associated with time management, the ability to manage your time in the modern world is extremely useful. Punctuality implies that a person does not violate the deadlines in any business.
The definition implies that a punctual person knows how to handle time. To stop tearing down the deadlines and not make loved ones wait forever for yourself, you need to be able to calculate the time, to know how much it will take to solve a particular problem. To become a punctual person you often need to play it safe a bit and leave yourself a few minutes in reserve: this way you will not be late even in unforeseen circumstances.
Of course, occasionally even the most punctual person may be late for a meeting or fail to cope with the work by the promised time. But if you comprehend the secrets of time management, such situations in your life will become much less, they will be an exception to the rule.
Sometimes it’s really difficult to calculate the time, but the more often you set yourself such tasks, the better you will learn how to plan your affairs.
Why is she important?
Punctuality is said to be the politeness of kings.There are also stereotypes about German punctuality: it is believed that the Germans can agree on the exact time and date of the next meeting in a year and arrive exactly on time. Why is punctuality so important? It's simple: accurate time planning is convenient.
If a person is late, you can spend an hour aimlessly waiting for him, when you could spend this time working, hobbies or talking with family. If the work is not done on time, it can frustrate all further plans and result in real losses. Moreover, the victims of delays and delays are not only waiting people, but the non-punctual man himself.
Inability to allocate your time adversely affects the schedule: even if a person has a lot of free time, with inability to plan it will seem as if he does not exist. Very often, in this way, people’s whole life turns into a continuous work: such people stretch out insignificant things, get distracted, and then they can not do anything and are too busy. If you learn to correctly allocate your time, it will be enough for work and leisure.
Thus, punctuality is important not only to appear to be a responsible person around. It always helps to know your schedule precisely, to do more, work more efficiently and leave time for a hobby or family.
In fact, punctuality is respect for one’s and others ’time.
It is undeniable that in the modern world, it is time that is becoming the most significant resource. We are loaded with a variety of things, we want to lead an active social life, actively relax, work, engage with children, have hobbies and a circle of friends. At the same time, a lot of time is spent on household small things, on the road from one place to another, on forced lines. It’s simply impossible to lead an active life without planning your time, because you need to spend every free minute wisely. If you learn punctuality, it will affect all areas of your life.
Doing things on time is important literally everywhere.
- Friends will stop waiting for you for a long time You will be able to plan a richer leisure and will have time to chat with a large number of people. It is known that with strong employment at work, it is very difficult to find time for friends. But if you learn proper planning, you do not have to deprive yourself of the joy of communication. And the friends themselves will surely appreciate it if you respect their time and do not keep you waiting.
- At work, you can quickly complete all current tasks. - if you become more punctual, this positive quality will certainly inspire approval among your colleagues and superiors. In addition, if you begin to clearly assess how long it takes to solve a given problem, you will find that you are starting to cope with the work faster. Thanks to punctuality, you can potentially take a higher position or get additional free time.
- Punctuality is also very important with children.. If you can’t bring them to school on time or check their homework, this may result in discomfort for them. In addition, it is always important to instill good and healthy habits in children, and it is most effective to do this by our own example. If you yourself will always try to be punctual, your children will most likely learn this as well.
- In everyday life, time management is also useful. Do you know the feeling when household chores take away all your free time? If you do not know how to plan, you will have to cook, wash and clean all day long - so there may not be any time left for taking care of yourself, reading, hobbies, talking with friends. If you become more punctual, you will be able to cope with boring household duties as quickly as possible.
Indeed, punctuality has a ton of advantages. But to learn how to plan your time, it can take a lot of work and patience.Do not expect that tomorrow you can wake up as a punctual person: the art of managing your time will require daily work on yourself.
How to become punctual?
It is believed that the most difficult punctuality is given to girls. Indeed, it cannot be denied that logic, rationality, and planning are more characteristic of men, but sometimes women are more punctual, on the contrary, because they are more concerned with social connections and uncomfortable to wait. The cases are different - it is safe to say that to one degree or another, both men and women experience problems with punctuality. In addition, everyone is affected by this disaster, regardless of age or occupation.
The most important thing is to realize the problem and understand what the time is spent on. Perhaps you like to gather for a long time, spend hours aimlessly at the computer, or you can’t concentrate on what you are doing at the moment.
If a person realizes that he is wasting his time and finds a specific reason, it will be easier to learn punctuality. Most often, of course, there is more than one reason: there are several of them and they act together.
To get started, to understand your problems, try to write down what you do during the day. Keep the most detailed diary. For example, write down that from 7:00 to 7:30 you have breakfast, from 7:30 to 8:00 you read the news and correspond in social networks, from 8:00 to 8:15 you collect things. So over time, you will be able to see which things were important during the day and which were a waste of time. Also write down how much time it really takes you to get to work, a store or a gym - you need to soberly assess how long you will go somewhere if you want to stop being late.
There is one easy way to avoid being late from the start - just set your watch 10 minutes ahead. This will help you immediately see the results of punctuality, so that you get the motivation to train further. When you clearly learn to plan all your affairs and evaluate their duration, you won’t need the translated hours. There is no need to arrive 10 minutes earlier, it is not profitable for you, because you have to wait for others. The goal of punctuality is to make sure you arrive on time.
Record all your affairs during the day at least about a week. Then you will more or less figure out what time it takes, and you can adjust your schedule. First of all, if you do not have enough time to complete important tasks or on the road, think about what daily habits you can sacrifice. Perhaps you should watch less TV or sleep half an hour less.
Do not make yourself too strict a schedule, giving up all the joys of life. Try to gradually get rid of bad habits and leave time for really pleasant, interesting and rich forms of leisure - such positive reinforcements will help you easily motivate yourself to train further.
It is extremely important to calculate in time those factors that are not dependent on you. For example, this is the time spent in lines or in transport. If these time intervals cannot be optimized in any way, then think about what you can do in parallel: perhaps, for example, you can read or listen to audio books in transport, do something useful for work, or chat with friends. This approach will help to find more free time in the middle of the day.
When you analyze what the time is spent on, you need to make yourself a clear schedule for the coming week. Primarily, enter in this graph the real time that you spend on transport or queues: it is precisely the circumstances beyond our control that often become causes of delays - we underestimate external factors. It is for forced employment that you will have to adjust everything else.First, take up the main points: add work, communication with the family, household duties to the plan. Then, in your free spaces, add hobbies, meetings with friends, and other leisure activities.
For starters, don't make the plan too tight. Living on a schedule can be difficult at first, but later on you will appreciate the convenience of planning. Plans can be flexible and change depending on the circumstances.
In addition, in any situation it is very important to leave at least a little time for rest. With proper planning, you will realize that even more free time will begin to remain.
When you will make work in the plan, try a reasonable approach to time management. Perhaps, without breaking away from the monitor, you can complete the work in 3 hours, but in reality you will want to drink coffee, do a warm-up or ask your colleagues questions. Consider all this in your plan, it should not be tough. At first, you should not plan a lot of things for the day: just learn how to evaluate the time and comply with the deadlines for several simple tasks.
Make it a rule to prepare for the next day in the evening. Make sure that you always have washed and ironed clothes for tomorrow, cooked food. Take care of all the necessary information in advance: for example, if you intend to go on an unfamiliar route, look at the place on the map, select the most suitable transport and convenient travel. If you are preparing for tomorrow in the evening, you can avoid unnecessary stress and significantly save your time.
Reward yourself and motivate you so as not to lose interest. You will surely have extra time free - spend it on what you have long dreamed of. Take your favorite hobby, go to friends or just sleep. Real results and benefits will help you work on punctuality further. In addition, your friends, family and colleagues will certainly praise you - they will be grateful when, by their time, you will begin to be more respectful.
How not to go to extremes?
Of course, any extremes are bad. If you care too much about punctuality and scold yourself for a random five-minute delay, nothing good will come of it. Primarily, Allow yourself to be mistaken - we are all living people, it is impossible to always keep up with everything. Feeling unwell, a late bus or banal fatigue sometimes leads to plans being frustrated - this is absolutely normal. We must strive to do everything on time, but it is impossible to achieve the ideal.
A constant fear of being late can lead to stress, although the true goal of punctuality is to reduce stress. Planning things is not necessary for the very availability of the plan, but in order to be more in time and feel calm.
If your punctual lifestyle is uncomfortable, you may be overdoing it.
Besides, it is important not to be too strict on oneself, and also to forgive minor oversights to others. Surely you have friends who are sometimes late for a short time or fulfill requests later than promised. It is not necessary to point them out, because everyone has the right to force majeure circumstances.