Scientists have discovered why we tend to be late

There is no person who has not been late a few times in their life, but to be late for every meeting or event in your life, it is a true art.< /p>

This is frustrating and very inconvenient. But scientists have recently discovered that constant delays are actually a side effect of your personality traits.

What makes people constantlyin a hurry and yet miss trains, piss off their friends, even be late for their own wedding by arriving after the bride?

And why, in fact, is it so difficult for us to change and learn to be on time?

Researchers have been trying to figure out why for decades, and they’ve identified a few key common traits among people who are late. Sumathi Reddy tells The Wall Street Journal about some of them.

“On the list are all kinds of sanctions and punishments for being late, and the paradox is that we are late even when these penalties and consequences exist,” says Justin Krueger, a social psychologist at the New York University School of Business.

One of the most obvious and common reasons that people are often late is that they simply fail to estimate exactly how long it will take them to complete a task. This phenomenon is known as the “planning fallacy”.

Research shows that on average, people underestimate the time that a task will take them by 40 percent.

Another trait that can be attributed to all people who have problems with punctuality is that they tend to multitask at the same time. p>

In a 2003 study led by Jeff Conte of San Diego State University in the US, it was found that of 181 subway operators in New York City, those who preferred multitasking, also called polychronicity, more often they are late doing their work.

That’s because multitasking prevents us from being fully aware of what we’re doing, Drake Baer tells Business Insider.

In 2001, Conte discovered that there was a type of personality that was more late. If type A are people oriented towards achieving high goals, then type B are carefree and they prone to inaccuracy.

In fact, Type A and Type B people perceive the passage of time differently, reports Sumathi Reddy. In over three previous studies, Conte found that for Type A people, a minute passes in 58 seconds, while Type B people, although halting, perceive the minute as 77 seconds.

“That’s an 18-second gap,” says Reddy.

Of course, knowing all these facts doesn’t help solve the problem – it’s estimated that the US loses $90 billion every year as a result of people being late.

But scientists are also starting to hone in on strategies that could slowly improve our accuracy.

For people who constantly underestimate the time to complete tasks, scientists have prepared a program that will help them with detailed steps to allocate their activities better and estimate more accurately how much time will take them.

A 2012 study suggests that if people create a mental picture of a task before doing it, it can help them be more realistic about its duration, Reddy reports to The Wall Street Journal.

People who are often late should realize that they cannot be in two places at the same time and should try to schedule fewer tasks, with enough time space one on the other hand.

But the first step to change is realizing that we tend to be late. Acceptance, after all, is the first step to change.