How to Improve Punctuality

Being consistently late can not only stress your relationships with family, friends and coworkers, but is usually based on a seemingly endless parade of things to do with very little time to do it. To improve your punctuality, you can start by organizing your life and starting with small steps that add up to big improvements.

Things You'll Need

• List of what you spend time on
• Plan for how you want to spend your time
• Tracking of how you actually spend your time

Instructions

1. Determine what is and is not working in your current schedule. Keep what works, and work through the next steps for the items that don't.

2. List the categories of what you are spending time on. This should include work, family, friend and you time. Make as many categories that makes sense to you without getting bogged down in individual tasks.

3. Break each category into a few subcategories, followed by the individual tasks. For example under the family category you can include travel time dropping off and picking up the kids, family meals and quality time. The family meals can be broken up into preparation, eating and clean-up.

4. Determine what percentage of available time you should be spending in each category. Base this on your desired outcomes and leave this at the category level instead of subcategory and tasks.

5. Track the time you are currently spending in each category/subcategory by tracking the time spent in each individual task. Do this daily for one week and add any tasks you forgot about as you complete them.

6. Add together the time you are spending in each task to get your category and subcategory totals. Compare your actual time expenditure to what your desired plan is.

7. Analyze the items that are taking more time than you had planned on and see where you can improve. Combine errands in similar parts of town, set aside designated time for work meetings instead of starting and stopping throughout the day, and anything else that may save you time.

8. Leave earlier. Use your actual time spent comparison to see how long it really takes you to get places and leave even earlier than that amount of time so you can be assured of punctuality.

Tips & Warnings

• Remember to factor in sleep! Subtract the number of hours of sleep you are aiming for each night of the week from your available time when calculating what percentage of time you do and should spend in each category.

• Plan ahead. Decide on clothing, kid lunches and anything else you would have been scurrying around for in the morning the night before to save hassles in the morning.

• Think about changing the times you do things. If you can leave for work earlier or later than you do now, it could save you commute time which will improve your punctuality and add more time to your day.

• Revisit your list and accurate time tracking periodically to make sure it is still working best for improving your punctuality.

• If you are not truly committed to improving your punctuality through schedule adjustments you will not see an improvement. Decide to make a commitment to yourself and those around you and follow through.

• Be realistic. Most often we think we spend less time on tasks that we do.

Resources

• For more information on organizing your life, look for Julie Morgenstern's book
• You can also look for her book and other information on Julie's website.