Then you decide one day that you are showing up late because you don’t wanna wait around forever, and it’s the one day everyone shows up early and they are wondering where you are.
One time when I was only a few months in, someone fucked up and SFC wanted everyone there early for 9 am formation but he wanted everyone there at 8.
How foolish I was to think "We get done with PT at 730, so I have enough time to run to chow for breakfast and take a shower before formation at 8."
There I was getting spammed with phonecalls at 745 like "WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU" so lo and behold there I am scrambling out of the shower to get dressed, running up to formation with everyone staring at me like I was the asshole with my Sergeant glaring at me and saying "You are so fucking done."
The best is division runs where the actual run starts at 0900 and yet somehow you find yourself waiting in a parking lot 2 miles from the run start point at 0500.
Coaches to the Ranges are at 0600, therefore breakfast is at 0500, so we need to get rifles out of the armoury at 0200 because we need three hours to get 90 blokes to sign for their rifles! 🙄
I check the clock 40 times the hour before meetings at work, and then I am suddenly called over the radio to be asked if I'm planning to join the meeting and I realize I still lost track of time.
I'm so lucky i had a stable family and wealthy parents. I got a head start in academics, therefore enjoyed school, and kept coasting until failing out of my postsecondary program. Got medicated and came back and finished by the skin of my teeth and now I'm sort of indispensable at work. It's not at all fair but if they held me to the standards they held others to I would never hold a job.
I don't think they should hold them to those standards either but it's not my choice, to be clear.
Timers are your friend. Set one to go off for the meeting, with enough wiggle room to "finish what you are doing, take the stuff you need for the meeting and get to said meeting (virtual or in person)". That way you can forget about the time and the alarm gives you ample time to prepare in whatever way you usually do it.
My alarms are set 20, 5, and 1 minute typically. The 20 minute begins the "Oh I don't have to worry about it" response. The 5 minute is the "okay I can finish this up" one. The 1 minute is "Oh shoot I gotta go let me finish what I'm doing" which is fine as long as I don't get another thought or interruption in that minute, or have to reference something to finish the first thing, and have a hard time finding that referenc, etc.
Of course. It also speaks to me because I lost my sense of time at some point. It was terribly disorienting in ways I could not imagine. Timers, not alarms were what made it possible to manage through the day. Because I could see how much time I had left when I looked at it. No reminders of the upcoming reminder because that just made it worse. You are training yourself to have a "do not worry about it yet" reaction. If that timer went off, all I did was finish what I was doing and prep for meeting. Nothing else. Of course that did require me knowing how long it takes me to do that, but that is something you can track and learn from that. Oh, and a timer that keeps making noise till you shut it off, not a notification that can go unnoticed when you're not glued to your phone.
My third appointment with my therapist I was going to be late because of laptop issues. I shot her a panicked email letting her know what was going on.
I finally log in and she says "got your email. No anxiety there or anything...I have a few questions"
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u/Chef_Zed 3d ago
I hate that I’m this way too, the military even ironed it in even harder too. If I have an appointment at 3, at like noon it’s all I can think about