Want to be viewed as a courteous (even professional) contributor to society? Someone that others can consistently depend upon?
If so, a key element is: being on time! Every time!
On time for work, school, a dinner appointment, business meeting, bike ride, etc.
Not being on time is, quite simply, totally irresponsible and discourteous to others.
Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
~ Jesus
Do you like waiting for others, wondering if they are going to show or no-show?
Observing a “chronically late” person, it seems that they typically “plan” on arriving “right on time.” Guess what? They are ALREADY LATE!
That is, we can safely assume there will ALWAYS be something that comes up between the “planned” departure and arrival time that will result in an arrival later than “on time.” This can include: traffic, looking for one’s car keys (covered in a prior post) or that piece of paper containing the information we were going to discuss, someone stopping us in the hall for an important question, etc.
While there will be exceptions (which should be few and far between) a strategy to address this is quite simple: add “buffer time” to our scheduled departure to allow for the “unforeseen” TIME-SUCKERS that WILL APPEAR. The more important the appointment the more thoughtful we must be about this buffer time. And, the longer the travel, or more variables that exist (i.e., traffic) the more time we must allot.
The goal: be there first! Never make others wait.
And, if, on that “rare” occurrence, we do fall behind then the right thing to do is contact the person we are meeting to let them know our revised ETA (estimated time of arrival).
Bottom-line: Highly competent, courteous and professional contributors to society quite frankly, seem to EARN MORE $! If you’d like to be among these individuals you must simply do a lot of seemingly “little things” – exceptionally well.
Hope you are enjoying this blog 🙂
Be Brave Not Safe 
Unfortunately, those that are habitually late, or don’t answer their smart phone, or frequently have a dead battery in their smart phone will never see this sound advice. Even if they should stumble across it, it will be like the sea washing over a stone.
When working, I used to leave meetings where the host was 10 minutes late. I even walked out of a doctor’s office after waiting over 10 minutes. I got a call from them after getting home. Their reason for being late with me is because they were seeing another patient that arrived late. They asked me if I had any suggestions and I promptly said “that patient should have been re-scheduled and sent home!”
Since about age 5 all 3 of my boys have been able to recite something I drilled into their heads, “Early is on time, on time is late, and late is unacceptable.”
Nice!!!