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On Earliness
“If you’re 15 minutes early, you’re on time. If you’re on time, you’re late. And if you’re late, don’t even bother showing up, because you’re not going to get the job.”
These are the words my high school co-op teacher said, which really made an impression on me and my punctuality. Still, my partner and I found ourselves late for brunch (why do we torture ourselves?!), with lines to the most mediocre restaurants looping around the corner and reservations booked up.
We decided not to get brunch. We’d get Italian instead. And as it turns out, Terroni just opened, and we were the first people seated in the place. I had a pizza I was very happy with, and we got to relax and eat instead of waiting in a ridiculous line for the privilege of overpaying to eat eggs.
I wonder if my co-op teacher’s advice rang true for that too. Being early for a meeting is good etiquette, being early to lunch is a good day, and being early to a trend or shift can change your life.
Timing is a key part of success, but I’m not convinced most of us have a good sense of it. We talk about long-term planning, but it’s also about timing. I’ll give you two examples which you can influence:
In a Fast Company excerpt from Invent and Wander, Jeff Bezos writes, “When I have a good quarterly conference call with Wall Street, people will stop me and say…
