Are you always racing against time, driving fast and seem to be late for most or all of your appointments? If you are, this article will help give you some tips on how to stop being late and get there on time.
The first thing you have to do is to change the way you think in terms of a perfect world where there is no traffic, all of the lights will be green, no accidents on the road, no construction, no obstacles, tank is full of gas, and you know how to get there. We also depend a lot on technology to help us plan to be at a certain place at a certain given time such as mapquest.com to see how long it "should" take us to get to our destination and our gps systems. In a perfect situation, everything will work well for you, but in life, things might come up in an instant and if you do not give yourself enough cushion time, you might run the risk of being late... again!
The best way to stop being late is to plan to be EARLY. If you have a 1:45pm meeting time, don't plan to get there right at 1:44pm or five minutes before. Give yourself a 20 minute window in case something comes up. Plan to be there at 1:25pm instead. A good rule of thumb I use is that I calculate an extra 10 minutes for every 30 miles. So if I had a 1:45pm and the destination is 60 miles away, this is the calculation I will plan to get there early without driving like a mad person. 60 miles (10 minutes x 2)= 20 minutes. Now when I checked with mapquest, it shows that it would take about 1 hour to travel this distance, so I would have to leave at 12:05pm to get there on my Early Time of 20 minutes early. Below is the calculation:
1:25pm: "New On Time Target" Official Meeting time - 20 minutes cushion = 1:25pm
1 hour travel time: According to "mapquest" for my destination that is 60 miles away.
20 Minute cushion: 60 miles = 10 minutes x 2 = 20 cushion minutes
1:45 Meeting time: Official meeting time
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12:25pm - got this number by the following: 1:25pm (new on time target) - 1 hour (got the hour for travel time)
-20 minutes: 20 minutes of cushion
= 12:05PM- Must leave time!
So no matter what, you must add on the initial 20 minute cushion and if the distance is 30 miles or more, tack on another 10 minutes per 30 miles for the just in cases. Not only will you get there on time, but you can be confident and relaxed when you get to your important meeting. You won't put yourself in increased danger from driving faster than needed to try to shave off some time, when in reality, you might only save a few minutes. Plan to be there on time and set your Must leave time! No matter how important the meeting, give the person waiting for you the respect of honoring their time.
