82. Why we’re always late

I have a problem. I used to be late to appointments almost 90% of the time (I’m still at about 60%). The main reason is that I’m a hopeless optimist. I heavily discount the time I need to reach my destination and overestimate my ability to get ready in time.

The academic term for this is the segmentation effect. It describes how we make shorter time estimation for the entire trip/ task than the sum of the total steps required. For example, I only consider the commute time from Google maps to estimate when I need to leave. But I didn’t take into account the time for all the things I need to get done prior to commuting. The time I need to get out of the bed, get ready, wait for my transport and a lot of other small subtasks that amount to a lot of time when added up.

I also didn’t budget time for risks. There’s a high likelihood that I might misplace things and spend additional 10 minutes to find them. The bus could break down. I could get lost finding the new place I’ve never been to. There is a ton of unforeseen circumstances that could pop up during the journey.

I also get stuck often in a task. Whenever I’m too deeply engaged in an addictive activity, the part of my brain that gets the dopamine hit screams repetitively “just one more minute”.

So my strategy is to budget 1.5 times the amount of travel time that I estimate. If I think that I need 30 minutes to get to a destination, I actually need to leave 30 minutes*1.5x = 45 minutes earlier. It’s also important to set a reminder to break away from whatever activities prior to my appointment. I will create a separate event on my calendar right to account for travel time.

I will also rigorously remind myself that, every time the reminder pops up, I will close whatever things I’m working on and just leave. No matter how much time my brain tricks me to think I have left, no matter how close I think I am to finishing the activity, at that moment, I will only have one job: to leave the fucking place.