15 Everyday Habits of People Who Are Always on Time

Being on time starts with the very beginning of your day. So get a little less friendly with your snooze button, and get yourself out of bed when your alarm goes off. Some people who are particularly slothful may even have to set five alarms, five minutes apart, to make sure they make it to that important appointment. Not that I know anyone like that. Ahem.

Confucius said, "Wherever you go, there you are." But how will you get there if you don't know where you're going? The ancient Chinese philosopher would have used Waze or Google maps to find his way to inner peace, and you should do the same to find your way to that meeting downtown.

How can you get yourself anywhere on time if you're busy putting everyone's needs ahead of yours? Try not to let others sabotage your time and cause you to be late. That means politely declining your co-worker's request to take on their tasks or feigning night blindness when your neighbor routinely asks you to drive her to PTA meetings.

"Making punctuality a priority is the first step in conquering lateness."

Nobody famous said that, I just made it up. But it makes perfect sense. If you're not focused on being punctual, there are a million distractions that will cause you to lose track of time.

Remember, "The early bird gets the worm." (I didn't make that one up.)

Lateness is usually caused by poor planning. So think ahead about where you have to be and have a plan to help your schedule run smoothly.

If you have a morning meeting, prepare for breakfast before you go to bed, set out clothes you need to wear and, most importantly, determine the travel time to your destination and set your departure time. If you're like me, all this planning will have caused a lot of anxiety, which will prevent you from sleeping. So also plan on having a big cup of chamomile tea before bed.

The internet is awesome! You can use it to look up your destination ahead of time and find out all sorts of important things: Where to park, what the cross streets are and even what the building looks like. You can also use it to find out the closest coffee and doughnut shops. With all of your reconnaissance, you're certain to get there early and need somewhere to bide your time.

Habitual lateness says you don't value the time of others. At least that's what the psychologists say. (I'll bet that person who's been waiting for you for 30 minutes would say, too.)

Try to put yourself in the other person's shoes, and think about how you feel when other people make you wait and waste your valuable time. It probably makes you angry, which psychologists say is a valuable emotion and one that leads to self-growth. By the way, I just saved you $250.

I'm usually late because I can't find my keys. Actually, that's a lie. I'm usually late because I never leave on time. But not being able to find my keys—or my sweater, or my purse, or my shoes—doesn't help. All of us need to take a moment, look on Pinterest and find one of those caddies made out of an old milk crate that organizes all of our important things right by the door. I'm not kidding here's one. You're welcome.

This sounds like a no-brainer, but often we find ourselves underestimating the amount of time it takes to get somewhere. We see that Waze says we'll arrive in 40 minutes, but that doesn't take into account the amount of time it takes to find a parking space, fumble for change, gather our things and get in the building.

Or we know the length of the subway ride, but fail to add on the 15 minutes it takes to walk to our destination.

Traffic reports. Local news. They can all help keep you in the loop of things that are happening around you that might affect your commute or your plans for the day. When I was driving my daughter to the metro station to get to school, I'd always turn on the local news as soon as we got in the car. More than a few times it alerted us to station closures or train delays so we could change our route quickly. And you know how high schoolers hate the idea of even missing a few minutes of class. Not.

True story: A couple of weeks ago I was running late and realized my fuel gauge was near empty. So I stopped at the local station and, while paying, I also realized I'd forgotten to eat breakfast. So I picked up a can of Pringles at the register.

Not only did I get to my meeting late, but I felt near death from eating almost an entire can of Pringles washed down with coffee. So let this be a lesson to you: Avoid tardiness and death at the same time by fueling up your car the day before.

Cash is useful! We need it to pay for parking, subway tokens and sometimes a can of Pringles. But credit and debit cards rule our world now, and it's rare that we have cash on hand until it's too late and we're trying to mine the cup holders and floor mats for change. So do yourself a favor and hit up the ATM the day before you need to be somewhere.

Even the best laid plans…well, you know the rest. No matter how carefully we plan and map out and prepare for an event, something will come out of nowhere to screw up our timeline. There'll be traffic, late trains, an ex-boyfriend you need to walk five city blocks out of your way to avoid. So give yourself plenty of time as a buffer for these unexpected occurrences. (And make sure you have a snappy speech prepared in case you end up running into that ex.)

It's going to happen—you're going to be late. So you should call or text to let them know, but you can't find their number and while you were frantically scanning emails looking for it, you missed the connecting train and now you're going to be even later. It would be great if you had their contact info right there in your phone book, right?

Now you've aced this on-time thing, and you're actually showing up to places—gasp—early! (Studies show that one of the reasons people are habitually late is that they hate waiting around for other people.)

So learn to appreciate and utilize your downtime, and be OK with having a few extra minutes on your hands. Read. Listen to podcasts. Or think up other ways of helping yourself be on time.