To give yourself positive motivation for this, use a trick I learned from How to Put More Time in Your Life by Dru Scott. She recommends rewarding yourself for being early. If you are ready to leave the house ten minutes before the time you planned to leave, read a magazine story, listen to music or play with the cat. Don't use the time to take out the garbage or some other chore you don't actively like.
What you want is to reinforce and reward your new behavior. Just thinking or even telling yourself that you're doing a good job isn't enough (although it's a good thing to do). You are also replacing a negative behavior, running out of the house with no time to spare, with a positive one, getting ready on time.
I heard something once that made a great deal of sense: you can never be "on time," you can only be early or late so decide on being early.
In today's meeting environment, where things go right to the top of the hour and there is distance to travel to make the next meeting, our team decided that the official starting time was five minutes after the hour and our official ending time was five minutes before the hour (or half hour) end time.
We were to be forgiving in our own group and allow us the time to make the next meeting by starting late and stopping early.
Sometimes it is hard to be early and easy to be late - these rules help ourselves in being on time - or early.
Scot
Posted by: Scot Herrick | July 4, 2006 10:00 PM | Permalink to Comment