Being on time shows respect for the person you are meeting. Since many others are not punctual, it also means that if you are punctual, you may need to wait – which needs patience. For online meetings, I typically will wait for 2 minutes before I message the other person and 5 minutes before I call. Thanks to online meetings, punctuality has dramatically improved. With the “stuck in traffic” excuse gone, the only two left now are “my previous meeting ran over” and “I had trouble starting Zoom.” And there are only so many times that these can be used. So, better to be on time than to keep apologising.
There is a small nuance to being on time. I tell my colleagues that if we have a Zoom call at 5 pm, then they need to be online at 4:59. If it is their link, then they need to start the meeting at 4:58. If they join at 5 pm, they are already late. I set alarms on my phone to ensure that I follow my own credo on punctuality. When I was coordinating a Zoom course for my colleagues on the works of Jim Collins, I would set a timer with the seconds counter to ensure we started exactly on time. (It is an idea I picked up from Collins himself in one of his interviews – 5 pm means 5:00:00.)
Once we make punctuality a habit, we are less hassled. When travelling for a meeting, we will start building small buffers to ensure we are early not late. When taking a flight, I make sure I reach the airport well before time so that there is no last-minute stress in case the check-in or security queues are long. It just requires a little planning rather than scrambling at the end. Punctuality is also infectious; once others start realising that you are always going to be on time, they too start showing up on time.
In my case, I don’t wear a watch – I haven’t worn one for 40+ years. I do have my mobile most of the time with me. And I am never down to a race for the last few seconds to be punctual. I am also one of those who likes the clock in the room to be set to the right time rather than a few minutes ahead – our brain auto-adjusts the time difference so it is kind-of pointless to set the clock ahead and then deduct those minutes each time you see it!
The same idea of punctuality should apply everywhere. When doing presentations at conferences, I ask the organisers the time I have. When I start speaking, I set the stopwatch on my mobile to ensure I complete on time. Of course, it does need practice. I recently did a presentation with 119 slides in 30 minutes – I had segmented the deck and knew exactly where I needed to be at each segment. I rehearsed it multiple times. Needless to say, I finished on time – with a few seconds to spare.
