An overwhelming number of my friends and colleagues show up 5-15 minutes late to everything.

I think it’s somewhat endemic to a certain class of modern busy person, and for a long time, it felt to me like a very toxic problem. When colleagues showed up late to my meetings, that tardiness was an affront. A theft of my time. Maybe a competitive power move — he who shows up last has the most valuable time.

I don’t think these people are really that competitive. Rather, I’m of the impression that they just inherently don’t think this is a problem which a brusque, halfhearted “sorry I’m late” can’t solve.

There’s plenty of ways you might deal with the tardiness problem — rewards and punishments, carrots and sticks. I’ve tried the stick and found very, very limited success. Even the most respectful confrontation imaginable ultimately boils down to my counterparts saying “Wait, you’re really confronting me about 5 minutes?” which creates an even worse working relationship than you had to begin with. Again — you’re reprimanding people who don’t appreciate the problem in the first place.

You might try to replicate the problem and out-tardy the other party, but I can’t see how that’s possibly productive. If anything, it either falls under extreme passive-aggression, or otherwise, simply reinforces among group members that tardiness is an acceptable behavior.

So I take the opposite approach: I show up early.

I think there’s two real core problems.

First: The psychological concept of Present-Biased Preferences. Most humans would trade a little pain later for a little pleasure now. Accordingly, there’s a weird part of your brain which says it’s a good deal for you to read one more Buzzfeed article (okay, twelve more) even though you’re thus overwhelmingly likely to be late and have to apologize to your peers.

Second: People are fundamentally bad at appraising their own commute times. It might not even be their fault. In my experience, Google Maps systemically underestimates how long it takes for me to get places. And it might not even totally be Google’s fault, either — Google says it takes 15 minutes to get from the front door of my apartment building to the front door of the office, but it doesn’t account for elevators or for me packing my bag and putting my shoes on and setting up my headphones and finding my keys. (And again, I want to finish these last twelve Buzzfeed things.) If I’m trying to time my arrival for 9:00am on the button, of course I’m going to be slightly late.[ref]I might argue here that even though it’s not totally Google’s fault, it’s nonetheless a failure on their part if they’re consistently misguiding me.[/ref]

So again, I show up early. And I bring my Kindle.

Showing up early to meetings, lunches, whatever, is actually insanely liberating. It’s where I get most of my reading done. It eliminates a tremendous amount of stress in my day-to-day life. My counterparts arrive apologetic, harried, and nervous, but I appear calm and ready.

My hope is that in consistently highlighting the benefits of promptness I’ll shed new light on the issue. Instead of trading a little pain later for a little pleasure now, I’m saying “Why not have both pleasure before the meeting and at start time?” I can’t totally fix my faulty commute appraising, but instead of it adversely affecting the entire group, a bad estimate now only dips into an individual’s reading time which is much less costly and much less noticeable. And ultimately, instead of “are you’re really scolding me over five minutes,” I’ll elicit “wow, I didn’t realize how valuable your five minutes are.”

On a related note: I all of a sudden need a few more new books to read.