Hi everyone, its Erica here. Today we're going to talk about how to be friends with punctual people, when you yourself are not so punctual. I have a lot of experience in my life, annoying and angering people who are very punctual.I remember one of the first times it really came up, I moved from Northern California to the east coast to go to college and I immediately met some very cool people from New York City. And one of the times we were getting together, it was the middle of winter, and we decided we were going to meet on this particular street corner at 4:30. And I rolled up at 4:45 and the look on their face was not so cool. They just said to me, "we've been standing here for 15 minutes waiting for you". And so that was a double whammy, because it was the ADHD sense of time and the California sense of time. So I definitely shifted the types of places that I was going to meet up with those friends later on, so they weren't standing in a really cold place. But I think it's worth thinking about both the cultural stuff, and also the ADHD stuff. For fun, I just looked up what researchers say are the countries with the most flexible sense of time. And according to this research, it is Cuba, Nepal, Greece, Ecuador, in Nigeria, so one super life hack would be to move to one of those countries. But it's that is not an option for you, it's worth thinking through how to turn those punctual people in your life from being critics to being your allies.I'll tell you some of the things that have worked for my clients. And for me, the first one is to just own it. And to explain to the people around you that you don't have a sense of time. If it makes sense, just explain it's like a brain thing and ask them to help you stay on time. Another thought is, you really got to think about what are the misunderstandings that are going to come up from a perspective of somebody who's really punctual and sometimes even just get ahead of them. You know, I mean, for a lot of people I know who are very punctual, somebody showing up late to their event is a disrespect. You know, it's, it's like, they don't really care, they're not care enough to make the effort. So I find that it's really important to, in those instances where it happens and then even when it's not in the moment, just explain that you absolutely respect them deeply. And also that you love them - if it's the kind of person you want to tell them that you love them - but, you know, essentially just get to the heart of the emotion and explain the emotion to them. So that it's much less likely that that being late if it happens is going to get misunderstood. And then another really helpful thing is to ask for help at work that can look like giving permission to the people who report to you who are more junior, to give you a signal if you're in a meeting, and you guys are running over time. And one word I really liked to use in those settings is exuberance. So for example, you might say hey, you know, sometimes in my exuberance, I find that I'm just talking too much, more than we need to with clients, so, please help us to stay on time and give me a signal. And the reason I like the word exuberance is it kind of frames it in the positive, which can be a nice thing to do in workplace settings.It can also look like telling your roommate or your spouse to tell you what time you need to leave the house. Clarifying the departure time between the two of you can be really helpful because, often, punctual people will expect that everyone thinks they're going to leave the house at five o'clock for something that's at six o'clock and half an hour away. Whereas the people with a more flexible sense of time might have in their minds that you're leaving at 5:30. And then there begins the whole chaotic engagement that suddenly leads to the party not being so fun, because you start off with all this tension. And usually your roommate or spouse really wants to help you be on time, so I know what works for a lot of people is to ask what time you're going to be leaving the house, and then ask for their help and keeping you on track to be able to leave the house on time. So for them to come interrupt you if they don't think that you're starting to get ready at a time that's going to allow you guys to leave on time. And if you've gotten to the point where you really have a good understanding of how much time it takes you to get ready, and leave the house or wrap up what you're doing, you can set a countdown alarm and just work backwards from that time that you need to be ready. Just imagine how cool it would be to be completely ready a few minutes in advance.Some other things I've learned that can be tips for communicating with punctual people. First of all, if it doesn't have to be a precise time, like for example, "we're going to be picking you up to go to the beach", or "I'll be arriving at the party". You can give a range of time so you might say like "I'll be arriving at the party between six and 6:30", or, "we'll be swinging by to pick you up sometime between 10 and 11", which can be nice because often from the perspective of a punctual person, if you say you're going to be picking them up at 1030 they might be working towards being ready at precisely that time. And then wondering what is going on when you're not there and then frustrated as soon as you get there, which isn't a good kickoff for a fun trip to the beach. And sometimes, the arrival time that you're going to meet your punctual friend is a bit of a moving target, right. But a couple of tips that I found helpful for people in those instances. The first one is, in order to protect yourself from your own, overly optimistic sense of time, how long gets places, you can shift from doing the estimate yourself on the arrival time. So for example, saying, you know, you're leaving the house right now, thinking, "okay, you know what my eta is six o'clock", when, yeah that's actually really like a very best case scenario, to just giving precision about exactly where you are, so that your punctual friend does the math. So what I mean by that is something like "unlocking the door to my apartment right now and I'm headed over there", so that they can think about how long it might take you to get there on the train or walking or whatever.And then, of course, there's the tough stuff, where we all want to wait until the very last minute to let a punctual person know that we're going to be a little late. And, you know, it's just a good thing to start practising doing that earlier. And even having some more precision around your language, right. So instead of the, "I'll be there in a couple minutes", actually thinking about how long that will be, and saying something like, "I should be there between 15 and 20 minutes", or "I should be ready in five minutes", rather than "I'll be ready in just a minute". And I think this is especially true in those instances where you actually know far in advance that there's no way you're going to make it on time, but it's very tempting to just avoid giving that awkward communication and just indulge in the sort of magical thinking that maybe there will be absolutely no traffic today. But you know, just rip the band aid off sooner rather than later. And also avoid that tendency to even underestimate, you know, like, you're, you're headed somewhere and you don't really want to admit you're going to be late. So you say I'll be there in 10 minutes, even though realistically, that's not what it's going to be. I mean, practice the idea of tripling your time estimate. I know that sounds crazy, but saying, I'll be there within 30 minutes, so that you've actually given yourself some breathing room, you've given your punctual friend, a little annoyance rather than a lot of annoyance and you've given yourself the gift of being able to arrive somewhere not stressed, not feeling sheepish and not having to immediately apologise. So I've just thrown a lot of different strategies and ideas out there and I hope that some of them might be useful. All of us have some kind of punctual friend in our lives and it's really nice to start turning them into your allies rather than your critics.