Breaking Bad Habit

I have a confession to make: I have a bad habit that absolutely infuriates me: being late by just a minute or two.

I can comprehend being late by a lot. As disrespectful as it is to the other person, it can at least be of some benefit to the one who's late. At least you can get something meaningful done. But being one or two minutes late does nothing good to anybody.

I've been trying to eradicate this habit for quite some time, but nothing was working. 

So on July 1, I made an announcement on my Facebook that for the entire month of July, if I'm late to a meeting or an event, I will write a cheque for
* CAD $100 if I'm up to 4:59 minutes late,
* CAD $200 if I'm 5:00 to 9:59 minutes late, and
* CAD $300 if I'm late for more than 10 minutes
to whoever I'm meeting with or to the event organizer.

It's July 22, and this approach has worked great so far. It really pushes me to think twice before I "make just one more quick call" or "quickly reply to this email" before I leave for the meeting. 

As of today, I've written one cheque for $100 for being 2 minutes late to a photoshoot. I got to the building on time, but I just couldn't find the room quickly enough. Should have left earlier. 

As I wrote in my Facebook post, "No excuses. I've had enough."

Being late is a choice. Changing bad habits into new ones is also a choice.

I have not yet developed the new good habit to replace the old one. It still takes an effort for me to stop doing whatever I was doing and just get out of the door 5 minutes early. 

So, I will continue the experiment in August as well.