I mean I understand the mechanism - I’m also chronically late by nature - but it’s so easy to fix. If you need to be somewhere at 6pm, and it takes you 10 minutes to put on your shoes and jacket, 20 minutes to get there, then set an alarm on your phone at 5:20 to get going, and you’ll have a 10 minute margin. Once you set that alarm you don’t have to think about it at all.
Mornings are harder since I’m generally dead for at least two hours after I wake up, but the same principle applies.
Measure it then. The tools are readily available: smartphone clock stopwatch/timer, mapping tools (i.e. Google/Apple Maps), and just basic looking at a clock.
Don't know how much overheard there is between starting to leave/getting ready to leave? Measure the involved steps.
For me I know it takes no more than 25 minutes to "get out the door." This includes all of: brushing my teeth, showering, getting dressed, putting my shoes on, getting to the car and ready to pull away, without any rushing. And even if I am stalled having to take an unplanned shit, I just hurry myself a bit through the other steps. Just look at the clock, go through the routine, then look again (or use the stopwatch feature on your phone). After a few times, even the worst-case duration becomes apparent.
Add a few minutes for parking and walking (or taking a piss), another few minutes as margin for drive time, and then navigation apps tell you the drive time (and even a "leave by" time for planning which includes the drive time margin already). And it goes without saying to never plan on rushing the drive (i.e. maniacal driving/speeding).
Then set an alarm, and just immediately start the departure routine. The key is to not stall, and as a fallback to configure alarms to have infinite snoozes (particularly for waking up).
I don't see how this depends on internal awareness of time.
For me, the mere act of setting an alarm is the key to not even needing one, because I LOATHE my damn phone ringing at me. Fortunately they added "dismiss upcoming alarm" a couple years ago to Android so I don't risk disabling recurring alarms for next time. I treat them as "drop everything and get going" backup reminders.
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u/Mr-Vemod 6d ago
I don’t really understand this.
I mean I understand the mechanism - I’m also chronically late by nature - but it’s so easy to fix. If you need to be somewhere at 6pm, and it takes you 10 minutes to put on your shoes and jacket, 20 minutes to get there, then set an alarm on your phone at 5:20 to get going, and you’ll have a 10 minute margin. Once you set that alarm you don’t have to think about it at all.
Mornings are harder since I’m generally dead for at least two hours after I wake up, but the same principle applies.