Organizing First Step
Be Early

What is an easy first step to organizing? Be early.

There is very little wrong with being early. Being early always seems to help. Sure, there may be times when you are too early, but being a lot early is better than being a little late.

We were a little late to my son's first roller hockey game the other day. He is playing in an adult league and was a little nervous. He was the last guy out on the floor and did not have a chance to get to know the other players and even get his water bottle on the bench.

I really like to be early for these types of things to make sure everything goes smoothly. When you are late that's when things fall apart.

You will have a very hard time trying to be early when you are dealing with people who are not.

One morning I was leaving on a 3 day trip. I wanted to pick up my kids at my ex-wife's house at 7:00 a.m., drive 100 miles to my parents house to get there by 9:00 a.m. and then the five of were going to northern Wisconsin.

Leaving at 7:00 a.m. will make it possible to be up north by late afternoon so that we can see some of the sights.

Leaving later will make that idea not possible.

My ex called a little before 7 to say that the kids were still sleeping and were tired and could I wait until 8:00 a.m. to leave.

Do you see where I'm going?

My ex is not an early person and thinks nothing of making me wait.

She wakes up the kids early for school, for church, for her family, just not their father.

This is nothing new to me. She made me wait for our entire marriage.

That is what I am getting at. I have to make allowances for her behavior.

I have to wait whenever I interact with her.

You know what I'm talking about, don't you.

This is a very good lesson for me. It shows me that organizing something with my kids that involve picking them up at a certain time will be a disaster.

It shows me that organizing a trip that involves catching a plane, train or boat at a certain time will involve a huge amount of stress on my part.

This is stress that I don't need.

I probably will not be able to plan such a trip with them. Since I love to travel and would love to take them sometime, this makes me very sad.

I will have to just get over it. She will make life miserable if I push to get the kids up and get going.

This lesson is so important to you.

Just because you want to get going early will not mean others do.

Organizing your life and being early is a private matter and you will really have to be tough about it when dealing with others.

You have to pick your battles when dealing with people who are chronically late.

If you manage people, there will be people who cannot be early or even be on time getting to work.

Under the best of situations those people have to be fired.

What happens most of the time is that those people have to have allowances made to them. The organizing will have to be done in spite of them.

Don't be those people who are late.

One of the easiest ways to deal with people who are chronically late is to avoid them. People who make you late add to your stress.

If you are an early type of person you will really not enjoy dealing with people who are normally late in everything they do.

There is no way that it won't affect your relationship.

You will have to use judgment here.

Sometimes you will have friends and family who are not terribly late but more what I call just on time types.

Just on time types like to squeeze time so that they are not early.

They don't like to be early so they have to wait around.

This is different than late people who just are late to pretty much everything they do.

If the value the just on time people add to your life outweigh the annoyance of just on time slipping into a little late then you will have to be a little flexible.

I have a really good friend who is a just on time type. He likes to get the most out of his time and doesn't like to wait around being early.

He adds so much value to my life that I choose to enjoy his way of seeing time while I am with him.

Since we don't spend that much time together it doesn't bother me.

I choose to slow down my way of being early when I am with him. We just have so much fun.

There is nothing wrong with relaxing your standards on being early when it makes sense to do so.

That being said, if you need to relax your standards continually and are always frustrated with someone because of them being late then you will have to make the hard choices.

You could have a discussion with that person and honestly tell them how you feel.

If your spouse is a late person and you are an early person then it will really bother you. You need to tell your spouse how you feel about their behavior.

If your spouse adds a lot of value to your life then you will have to decide if you can live with the lateness.

I did not leave my wife because she was late and I was always organizing. I left for other much more serious reasons.

It's just that the lateness did not help. It was just one more thing that she did that was not compatible with the way I wanted to live my life. I liked to be organizing and planning things.

Of course, people will say that I am selfish. That I should just deal with her lateness and take it like a man. I should just make allowances to her. I should force her to be early. I should trick her into being early.

I tried all that. I worked with her. I encouraged her. I did my organizing around her. I tried to motivate her. I reasoned and explained. I yelled and screamed.

Nothing. She just could not be early.

Now that I have left she is on time or early for whatever she wants to do.

I guess it comes down to the fact that she really didn't want to do things that I liked.

She did not care to add value to my life. Being late was just one more way that she could add stress to my life and make me suffer.

Being chronically late is a way of controlling people.

Maybe I am being too sensitive and reading too much into being late, but it is possible, isn't it? After all, she knew that organizing things was important to me.

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