Every so often I can make it happen, but most times I'm struggling regardless of how much prep time I give myself. Feel like it might be related to ADHD? Either way, I'm so bad at it 
It's the old ADHD joke: What kind of ADHD are you? Are you always five minutes late or 30 minutes early?
Lol I'm the 30 minutes early, big time.
I did for a while. I have got it down to a tolerable rate by accounting for transitions. Like it doesn't take me zero minutes to go from being inside my apartment to sitting in my car or bike, that takes time. Getting out of the parking garage and onto the road takes time. Parking or finding a place to lock up my bike at the destination then walking in takes time, more time if I have to find an office in a large building or campus. All these little transitions easily add up to 10-15 minutes that you have to append onto whatever google maps is telling you. There's this weird psychological barrier where I didn't want to believe that it took me that long to get somewhere end-to-end, that it would take 45 minutes all told to get to class on time instead of 30 minutes. But that was the reality.
that's a good tactic. I time things sometimes, like transit time (walking, driving, etc) or how long various "processes" associated with getting ready take. I kinda make a game of it socially and I'll text someone I'm meeting with like "knocking on the door in 12 minutes" instead of saying "10" or "15", then I'll check the timestamp when I actually see them to see how close I got.
it's all in service of not having to rush or even feeling rushed under higher stakes circumstances, so I can be more present where I am and mindful in my interactions even surrounding big events. I miss out on a lot when I'm feeling rushed, personally and professionally.
I used to work for a guy who was late to everything. always. as a rule. it was a power play. he was amused that others would be kind of stuck waiting on him to arrive somewhere and he could always spin it as being a casual guy with "a lot" going on. the evidence for this was always, "I have people waiting on me". like he had no agency in creating any of it by telling people when to be somewhere and then not being there.
he had a lot of institutional power, so there was no course correction for him. but those of us in his orbit all had a shorthand for it and would express solidarity. until his throne went away. he was very hurt that no one wanted to invest much in maintaining a social relationship with him after that, though all of us once caught in his bullshit have stayed close with each other even after over a decade with thousands of miles between us.
he grew up rich around other rich people, so he never learned what it was like to be stuck waiting for someone else.
i am neurotically on time and will actively apologize multiple times whenever i'm late but i seem to only be friends with late people
I was born with the ASD time management(look the place's hours up ahead of time, check map drive time, have gas in car day before, etc) and my wife was born with the ADHD time management(pure fucking chaos). It's probably what most of our disagreements stem from.
My big problem is that everything takes longer than I expect it to. This sucks when I work in a field where you have to make time estimates all the time.
I'm actually on of those never-late, super dependable types. Growing up, Dad was always dragging his feet and showing up to stuff late, and the stress of that whole process made me very good at always arriving on time.
Maybe your dad has ADHD.
I'm usually late for everything and have been that way for as long as I can remember. Has caused some problems for me in the past too
I'm either 30 minutes early or 20 minutes late for everything with no inbetween
Every day of my dang life. It's been a problem for employment
I am never on time. I’ll be either 10-30 minutes late and I will provide no excuse or explanation.
If I’m early, that is my time, and I will utilize my time until I am again 10-30 minutes late.
I'm the exact opposite, even thought of being one minute late or something will stress me out.
Yeah, I spent most of my career on "improvement plans" for being late to work. Luckily it's an industry where that's not uncommon so I was able to do better for a little while and shed the "late guy" persona and got into a salaried (no clock in) role where I come in ahead of my management anyways so I feel pretty comfortable. I do often end up staying late for similar reasons (very poor time management).
I'll somehow manage to be 10 minutes late to my own funeral
All the damn time.
Been this way since childhood. Used to get detention/paddled for being late (I'm a child what am I supposed to do drive the car myself at 8 years old?)
Always late to jobs despite leaving what I perceive to be enough time to get there. A lot of places let me slide since I was a good worker.
I don't know, at this point in my life I don't think I can change it.
Punctuality is white supremacy and I will not elaborate.
I have a lot of anxiety when I'm running late for something so for me going out usually goes like this: Well it should take 40 minutes to get there. So I'll leave an hour before to be on the safe side. No actually, id better leave 15 minutes before that, just to be double safe.
Oh, I arrived like forty minutes early? 
. And the person I'm meeting is running thirty minutes late? 
Born five minutes late
Oh, my unmedicated ADHD is rough. I literally have no excuse to be late with a rather walk/bike friendly part of town. Thankfully my job kinda lets it slide since I normally work late anyway.
i have a weird thing where even if i have enough time, i just keep finding things that i need to do before leaving. they are usually simple to do but brain defines them as urgent so i cannot just push them for later and they keep me from actually leaving the house until it's late. this becomes worse for things i don't really want to do but have to, so i think it's like a subconcious way i have to cope with the anxiety of leaving or something
this is me 100%. I don't know how to stop doing this :<
The shitty public transit in my area has much more effect on my timeliness than I do
No, but here are my tips, I feel my time management skills came from being forced to navigate bad city transit as a young child alone.
If I want to be punctual I usually need to plan at least 20-30min extra buffer time into it. Like if I have a travel time of 15min (via public transports which can be funky) I should set 45min aside for it tbh assuming its important.
Thats just me though. Im aware different people work differently.
The only time I haven't struggled with this is when I was compelled by carpool and bus schedules. Wasn't desirable.
I'm getting very bad about it. Even when I wake up early and have plenty of time in theory, in those last 10 minutes before I have to leave the time just burns away and then I'm five minutes late or rushing into the door at the last second.
What I've learned from punctual people is that they're always on time because they purposefully shoot to arrive early. But the thing is that that isn't good time management either. I would rather be consistently 5 minutes late than consistently 30 minutes early. It's not good time management to be consistently 30 minutes early because your time management and sense of time is off by half an hour while being off by 5 minutes is no biggie. Being 5 minutes late is basically getting stuck in traffic on your commute or the bus arrived late because of traffic or you had to go back to get your wallet after starting the car. Like, you'll never ever be late to anything if you set your clock to be several time zones ahead of the time zone you currently live in (so setting your clocks to EST when you live in PST), but who the fuck is going to show up 3 hours early to their dentist appointment or to their job interview?
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