My Experiences
A habit I very much wanted to track is my own tardiness. For the past couple of quarters—especially these past two where I’ve been living off campus—I’ve struggled with being late to things: classes, events, workshops (during the course of my observations, I was late to multiple of these). So I really wanted to observe not only when I was late, but the things going on before and after my tardiness. As such, I logged every 15 minutes or so in an attempt to see what behaviors and habits were surrounding my tardiness. Additionally, I didn’t want the logging itself to have to be every time I was tardy and potentially make me even more late.
Over the course of 4 days, I logged ~15 minutes from when I woke up (~9) to midnight. I highlighted every time I was late (and one time when I arrived in a timely fashion). Unfortunately, I was late a lot. I thought that logging things would make me more aware, but there was a lot of “unawareness” inside of me. Subsequently, I’d have to log things after I got to events and thought “Wow, look at me, I’m late again :(“. I would find myself in a rush and realize how I was subject to the G.I. Joe Fallacy– thinking that knowing a bias/habit would directly help overcome it. Alas!
Main Learnings
One of the biggest things I learned is that I can get into an interesting cycle that perpetuates my lateness. For example, when I wake up, it’s usually in good time. Thinking I’m in good time, I relax, wake up, do some work, get a little bit distracted. I tend to underestimate how long things will take me, maybe because I get into the habit of spending x amount of time on something, the same amount of time that previously made me late, but now has become normal. Then, I suddenly realize that I will be late. I rush, and in that rush, often forget things, have to spend extra time doing things, or encounter unanticipated obstacles (like on Tuesday all the parking spaces in a 6-level parking garage were full and I found that out the hard way which made me really late!). Then this frantic, last-minute behavior gets normalized in my brain and I’m likely to repeat it, especially if I perceive myself as having additional time.
What I’d do Differently
I have some ideas for things I could do differently. For the morning lateness: Instead of doing work/being on my phone, I could finish getting ready to leave/chores at home and then do work. This way, I could just pack my things and then leave on time without being in a rush to do other things I left unfinished. For classes and events more in the middle of the day, I could aim to arrive 10 minutes early. There is that one saying “Being early is on time and on time is late.” Ironically, I heard this saying as I was walking into one of my classes a few minutes late. Hopefully, after today, I can regroup, reflect a bit more, and work on my bad habit.
