Being Early and On Time Is a Sign of Maturity

For people who really know me, there are several creeds I follow each day of my life. Some are religious, some are philosophical, and some are even spiritual. Many, of course, are secular.

But there is one which is my overriding mantra, one which my children and siblings have heard forever. One which governed my approach to business, which I preached to my employees when it was offended or broken. One, actually, I included in several of my books, as the protagonist was required to recite when it was necessary to be be said to fit the circumstance to the story.

Early is on time; on time is late; and late is unacceptable.

Why is this a topic today? Well, in Saturday’s afternoon edition of, you guessed it, the New York Post, an article discussed why Gen-Z, or as I call them, I-Gens (because they were born as we saw the rise of Intel, the Internet, I-Pods, I-Pads, the I-Phone, etc), have a cavalier attitude to punctuality and lateness. Perhaps it is that our society has migrated to “flex-time” at work, due to changing societal norms or COVID, working from home or even being just “fashionably late”.

While the I-Gens seem notoriously earmarked as the reason, maybe due to immaturity, this attitude has filtered down through all the demographics. It seems only the "Boomers" and the decreasing aged "Greatest Generation" are impervious to this phenomenon.

A meager 14% of employees cite tardiness as an irritating office behavior, according to a survey of 1,000 workers conducted by the job recruitment company Monster.

Many white-collar workers are now glued to their smartphones around the clock, meaning they can communicate with colleagues via email or tools such as Teams and Slack, even while they’re commuting into the office for one of their mandated “in-person days.”

But in the end, this attitude seems to convey lack of maturity and disrespect. Disrespect for your employer, your colleagues, your family members and your friends. You don’t care about the value of THEIR time when you are late.

But most of all, it is a sign of disrespect to the value of YOUR time. Isn’t your time worth something to YOU?

I conveyed this in a book I wrote in 2021 called I Am A Paperback Writer, where the protagonist became annoyed with two people who walked in late to a seminar and blew it off when they said, “Sorry, traffic.” He replied, “How do you think I got here? Helicopter?”

That came from a real-life experience from my own life when I was teaching a mortgage class on Mondays. And I felt I, and my students, had been disrespected by these two other colleagues. I was definitely annoyed.

Perhaps, being early for an appointment or work, or whatever, may seem trifling and a bit invasive of a few minutes of YOUR time. But it shows you convey respect for THEIR time.

And ultimately, being early and on time is truly a sign of respect for YOURS, too.