In a past blog, I confessed to not being as organized as I was before having a child. Well, I need to confess that I’m not as punctual as I used to be. To be honest, I was actually too punctual. I would get so anxious when I thought I would be even two seconds late. Now, I’m probably where I should be and not worry myself to death over a minute or two.
In my reading via articles from a tweet on Twitter, I landed on a page about strategies for being punctual. Since I still set my clocks and watch ahead, I’m really already using most of these strategies. However, I do have to try to get people to attend meetings and training sessions on time. I’ve found that motivating others to be on time is harder than motivating myself…especially when those “others” are my husband and son.
Thinking about trying to get people to training or a meeting on time led me to the idea for this post. What are some tips to get your employees or colleagues to a meeting to training class on time? Here are a few that I learned from life and from the article:
- Start developing a habit of looking at the clock every once in a while to get a consciousness of time passing. You might need to invest a few dollars in a clock or a watch although you can usually look at your computer’s or cell phone’s clock.
- Set your clock a few minutes (up to 10 minutes fast). I actually had my husband set my alarm clock fast but not tell me how fast. That way, I won’t do the continual calculations in my head to figure out what the true time really is.
- Don’t pack your schedule too full. Think about your time before over scheduling, or as I refer to it, “hyper-scheduling”. I seriously think sometimes that I can get WAY more done than I realistically can accomplish in a certain time period. I do myself and others a disservice with that mindset.
- Get the directions or materials assembled beforehand. Do not wait until the last minute. I’m sometimes printing directions or grabbing materials from email or different places in my office right before I need to go somewhere.
- Double the time you think it will take you to get somewhere if you are driving during a traffic time. In some cities, this would be all the time! I even double the time when I’m walking from one place to another in the same building or the next building. I end up running into someone I know and talk for a couple of minutes and then am late.
- As I’ve said in a previous post, I carry reading materials with me all the time. I need to read some industry articles every week to stay up on the current topics/events anyway. So, if I get somewhere early, I just read those materials.
- Lastly, (and this one is the most likely to motivate), come up with a consequence for yourself and/or others. Impose a fine for every minute you are late. I used this money to donate to a charity. Right now, I’m doing pretty well on budgeting time and so my charity is suffering from my low donations. They will get better donations from me as I get closer to the end of the craziness of the end of the year and the holidays. You could also have whoever is last to the meeting wear a crazy hat or some non-monetary punishment. That has worked before in getting everyone back from lunch during a full day of training.
Best of luck with these strategies! I really hope you don’t need them!
The other day I was talking with a former student. She had been promoted recently into a training director position at her organization. She had kept my information from the class she had with me many years ago. I was so glad to hear from her again and was excited to hear about her promotion.
I recently passed the one year mark on writing this weekly training blog! Woohoo! Because I think it is important to celebrate the small victories as well as the big ones, I wanted to do something to commemorate my milestone. Even in my training classes, I think it is important to encourage the students (sometimes making a fool of myself in the process) as they do things correctly. I know that the positive reinforcement is important in training and in life. 
Now that I follow some training folks on Twitter, I have found some pretty witty and relevant quotes, sayings, etc. One of the most recent ones was by @Quinnovator: “learned that I have no problem living up to my mission: “no situation so bad that a bad joke can’t make it worse”. 
