Bonus Post: A Worm-Getter's Guide To Being The Early Bird

    I know! Two Bonus Posts in five days! I must have a lot to say this week or something.

    Well, sort of. I'm around... seven weeks ahead on blog posts right now, and I didn't want this coming out in February. There's too much interesting stuff happening in my life January-March this year that I know I'll want to talk about, so no point getting any farther ahead.

    So, this is my Christmas gift to all of you folk out there who are always late, no matter how hard you try to be on time, and to all you folk out there who like to honk at me on the road because you're in a hurry to Get There On Time and I'm not.

    I'll start with a story, of how I think I got the way that I am. Then I'm going to go through and analyze as many of my behaviors as I can, to hopefully give you a bit of insight on how to be early to all those wonderful Christmas things you have going on this weekend. Ready?

    Here we go.

The Journey

    It all began one time when I was eight, I think. I don't remember where we were going--it might have been the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival, or Thanksgiving or Christmas festivities. I don't actually know. I just know it was something we could be late to, and where being late had consequences. I was distracted doing my own thing. Mom came to tell me it was time to leave several times, but by the time I actually got up to go get my shoes on, either everyone else had already left, or I had made us thoroughly late.

    After that day, I vowed I would never make us late again. And, somehow, that flipped my mentality so thoroughly that from that day forward I was always the first person in the car, fifteen or twenty minutes before everyone else got out. When Mom and I were going to my aunt's house for homeschool education, I made it out to the car while she was still busy getting her vitamins and breakfast in. If it was Winter, I warmed the car up for her--frequently a little too much, because I was so early. If it was warm enough that I didn't need to warm the car up, I'd roll the windows down and just sit out there quietly, enjoying the morning birdsong. (My dad has since made the point that I went to the opposite extreme with that; if I were inside helping everybody else get ready, we'd be earlier than if I just get my stuff ready and go sit outside for a quarter hour. I didn't get it when he made it, but I understand it better now.)

    I got my drivers license last June. It's almost been six months; can you believe it? I'll be able to drive any friends I might have around to fun stuff in... fifteen days, on January 6th.

    But what's even crazier is I've only been late to one thing in the entire time I've had my license, and that because I forgot I was going to it; fortunately, it was a work training and the instructor didn't mind, because she had all the information I needed printed on a handout, and I still got the second half. Every other time I've been somewhere in the last six months, I have been somewhere between ten and twenty minutes early. In fact, my consistent earliness has led to some jokes between me and my managers that if I ever don't show up and it's less than five minutes to the start of my shift (rather than fifteen minutes or half an hour late), they know something's wrong.

    If that sounds impossible to you right now, that's okay. There's a reason I'm writing this blog post. The good news for you, my friend, is that I've been analyzing what I do since I noticed this pattern of mine in October, and I have some data about my habits. What I do, what I don't do. I also have data about my parents' habits, which, as much as I love them, drive me crazy.

The Analysis

    So, what is it that I do that makes me early all the time?

    1. I changed my mindset. I believe in living a life without stress. My primary hypothesis about lateness is that it's caused by stress. I'll provide more evidence for this as we go along, but keep that in mind for the rest of this blog post. As far as I can tell from my observations, your perpetual lateness is probably caused by stress.

    When I know I need to go somewhere today, I don't speed up and stress about getting there on time--I slow down. A lot. When I have to go to work later in the afternoon, or to dance this evening, or to school early in the morning, I don't rush to get ready to go ten minutes before it's time. Rather, I find myself preparing hours ahead of time.

    For example, let's say that I have to be at seminary today by 11:45 AM. Well, dang, I think. That's nice and late; I can sleep in this morning! Since I know that I'll never sleep in later than 10:00 unless I've somehow messed my sleep schedule up horrifically, I can trust that I'll be out of bed by 9:30, and frequently an hour or so before that. When I've gotten up and dressed, I'll grab my jackets, bag, and anything else I need to bring and dump them by the door for easy access when it's time to go. Then I go and eat breakfast, assuming I feel like it. If I don't, I'll chill out in my room and work on one of my stories, or watch the latest video from one of my favorite YouTubers, or hang out on Brandon Sanderson's fan website for a while, or work on a bit of homework. When it's about 11:15, I get up and go make sure I've got everything I need, including breakfast, and then I leave at 11:30 (as in, driving the car out onto the road at 11:30, or a bit earlier; not getting out the door) and arrive about five minutes early.

    Another thing to note about my mindset is that I don't speed on the road. The reason? I believe it's better to be late and alive than it is to be injured or dead on the road because you were speeding. You're not going to be late; you already are late. Accept it, change your mindset, and stay calm; we don't need any more poorly-thinking drivers on Utah roads--or any other roads, for that matter.

    2. I learned to use timers. When I was a kid, I hated these things. They were always either lengthening my torture by making me practice piano or violin for a full 30 minutes, or they were limiting my fun by making me stop playing computer games after 30 minutes. If I could get away with it, I ditched the timer.

    Nowadays, I know what timers are actually for: a convenient, easy-to-set method of reminding me that it's 11:15 and I need to go check what I have for seminary today. Some people use alarms; I say this is a mistake. Alarms go off every day, and my schedule experiences routine change. What I'm doing this week is never the same as what I'm doing next week, because my work schedule is super variable. Plus, alarms aren't as easy to set fun ringtones on. The timer-end noise I use is the theme music from the Winnie-The-Pooh audiobooks (if you've never heard it, it's beautiful, and you need to go look up those books because they were my life as a kid). This doesn't startle me, rush me, or cause me stress in any way. It just tells me I need to get up now.

    When it comes to setting the timer, I've found that having one of my more-often-looked-at clocks set to military time is really helpful. This is because I've had to get good at time-translation math, which is really handy for calculating the number of hours/minutes I need on my timer. At this point, it's become second nature for me, all because the clock on my desk is set that way. None of the other clocks I look at are on military time, but that one is enough to make me practice my time-math so I can set my timer according to the time.

    3. I plan ahead. Every night, I mentally run through what I have going on the next day. I think I need to tell you that I actually hate planning, or planners--y'know, those evil little calendar notebooks where you're supposed to write in all the stuff you have going on? Yeah, no. I find those stressful. I do use the calendar app on my phone to remind me of stuff the day before, because that aids my nightly plan, but I studiously avoid lists of all kinds because I find them overwhelming.

    What my nightly plans look like is something like this thought process: Okay, so I have work tomorrow--a morning pony shift. That means it starts at 8:00; I need to leave at 7:15. That means I need to get up at least by 6:30 tomorrow. (Sets alarm clock) Okay, so I'm leaving at 7:15. I'll be home by 1:45. I have dance at 6:30 tomorrow evening; I need to leave at 6:00, so I need to be doing chores and eating dinner between 5 and 6. All right; up at 6:30, leave at 7:15, dinner and chores at 5 in the evening, leave for dance at 6. Easy! When I make plans like this, I rarely have more than four or five things to remember as I'm going about my day, and that's purely leaving times and the things I absolutely must make sure I do. Everything else I might want to do--including homework (I just place it at higher priority than writing)--gets fitted in around those leaving times.

    My mom, on the other hand, has a tendency to try and stuff things in before her leaving times, and even with the fifteen-minute time-cushion she leaves herself, she's still always late. She sees half a dozen things that need to be done "now" and tries to do them, not realizing that some of those things can be delegated to me (now that I know what Dad was talking about, all those years ago) or left for later, when she has more time and can do them without being stressed.

    Don't do this. This mindset my mom has isn't what I would call a good one. She's frequently stressed (though she's improved a lot in that regard; she used to be always stressed), often forgets things she needs, is almost always running late, and is always weary and tired at the end of the day. That's okay; she's on her journey, she knows this is a problem, and she's working to solve it. My advice to anyone else reading this is to avoid this habit, because it's not helpful.

    4. I learned to account for delays. When I'm planning to leave for something, I always leave time for the unexpected. I've been held up in traffic by bad car accidents, school zones and crosswalks, traffic lights that forgot I existed, and rush-hour traffic so bad that I was surprised an accident didn't happen, and I've never needed to stress about it. I can "leave late" and still arrive early because of how early I leave for stuff.

    Example 1: My drive to work is 25 minutes long because I take the back roads. I leave for work 45 minutes before the shift starts, and usually arrive 20 minutes early--but on the days when I suffer school-zone delays, I arrive between 7 and 12 minutes early instead.

    Example 2: My drive to dance is a little under 15 minutes long. I leave 30 minutes before dance starts, and usually arrive 15 minutes early--but yesterday, there was a bad car accident in one of the intersections I go through, and I had to change my route. I was still 15 minutes early (I attribute this one to knowing the roads more than leaving early, but if it had slowed me down I still would have been fine).

    Example 3: My drive to school (currently) is about 10 minutes long. I leave 30 minutes early for my live interactive college classes, and arrive with plenty of time to walk from behind the tennis courts to the classroom and still have 10 minutes to wait. That's 10 minutes of buffer in case I'm ever running late.

    Where others stress about the traffic jam because they're Going To Be Late, I have the freedom to sit back, turn up the music, and chill in my car until traffic starts to move, and I actually enjoy traffic jams because it's time for me to just relax and be. Since getting my license, I haven't had to sit in the car and wait to leave the same way I used to, and I've actually found that I miss that time of sitting in the car with the windows down, listening to the birds outside. Traffic jams are a welcome treat every now and then, where I can simulate that feeling of peace to some degree--while also praying my heart out for whatever accident caused the jam in the first place.

    5. I learned to pray. When I was learning to drive, my mom told me to always pray before I leave.

    I don't do that.

    Instead, I pray the entire time I'm out there. The road is a dangerous place; I am continually praying for good gaps to turn in, that the drivers around me will keep their heads and drive sensibly, that the nice person who just let me merge in will get the gaps they need and have a safe drive, that the person behind me will get a chance to chill and de-stress, that the people who own all these cars along the side of the road will have a good day today, that we'll all be safe out here in this dangerous land we call the transit system.

    And, as a result of praying like this, I have seen miracles. Times when I should have been in an accident, I see the threat in time to brake or accelerate, or narrowly squeak by danger, or see the car accident in the distance and have time to mentally prepare myself to change my route. Times when I should have been run over when I'm walking out by the road, the Lord stays my feet and keeps me on the sidewalk that one split second longer and I stay okay.

    It's not just miracles on the road, either. Another miracle I've seen is that my relationship with God has strengthened considerably--all from the time I spend praying on the road. I'm continually conversing with Him, and He brings me peace and helps me stay relaxed, shows me that I can be in a hurry and still drive the speed limit and be just fine, gives me further tips and hints on how I can keep up this habit I have of being early, inspires me to write a blog post about earliness for somebody out there who needs to read it. He has loosed my tongue and given me profound words to speak, a testimony to bear in times of need, eloquence I could never claim on my own.

    All because I pray on the road.

    6. I learned to be patient. When you're the one person on the road who isn't stressed about Getting There On Time, because you know you're going to be early, the people behind you are going to honk at you. For me it's worse, because I am an impeccably safe driver (better to be late then dead, remember) and I don't turn into gaps that other people might because I'm not comfortable with how quickly I can speed up, especially since I refuse to drive over the speed limit by more than one or two miles an hour.

    I have learned to be patient, especially with the people behind me. People are always honking at me, tailgating me, passing me illegally (on the right instead of on the left), or committing other traffic violations because they can't stand to be behind me--but there have been several times where it was a good thing I was in front of them, because there was some threat in the intersection or cross-walk that they likely would have rushed right into. I've written about one of these times already in my Personal Revelation Bonus Post, but there have been several more since.

    What these people don't understand is that I'm not going slow (usually; to be completely fair, I do sometimes get distracted by something and slow down). I'm going the speed limit, or as fast as I feel safe (eg., 35 mph instead of 40 on a curvy road); there's a big difference. Sure, it's not what most people do, but if more people knew how to be early, it might be a more common driving behavior.

    7. Understand that our society encourages stress, and do all you can to resist that trend. I believe that God never intended for us to feel stressed, harried, hurried, or worried. 'If you are prepared,' He says, 'You shall not fear.' But our society makes that hard. Everything is so fast-paced, so competitive, so centered on the self, so focused on clocks and punch times and not being late and so... well, stressed, that it's hard for us to not stress. We see these behaviors in society as a whole, and we imitate them because we don't know a better way. There never feels like there's enough time in the day, enough time for us, enough time to spend with our families.

    Things like Instacart, Uber, drive-through's, and the delivery services grocery stores offer only make this worse. Have more time to spend with your family and doing the things you love, the ads say. But, really, are you actually going to spend that hour you would have spent at the grocery store taking a chill pill and doing yoga? The ads say you will; what psychology I know and the things I've observed say you most likely won't.

    If my mom didn't have to go shopping, she'd spend that time on something else that, to her, feels just as necessary and stressful. She already cuts yoga and exercise out of her morning 90% of the time because she feels like there are more important things to do, even though she knows just as well as I do that her time to do yoga and exercise in the morning is more important for her health than a lot of the things she fills her time with instead. In a lot of ways, signing up for something like Instacart would just exacerbate the problem.

    Our society encourages us to be stressed. With so many things to be on time for, and so much to worry about, so much sensory input from the Internet and our phones and computers and televisions, so many things to do, so little time to relax, and so much we desperately want to do but have no time for--well, no wonder we're always late! Just reading that sentence may have caused you a spike in your stress levels and an itch to get up and move and go get stuff done before it's time to go to whatever you've got going on today.

    This is where the evidence for my earlier hypothesis comes in.

    I am always early. But I am very rarely stressed. (I'm well aware that I'm unusual that way; most people don't automatically adjust their lives in small ways to decrease stress and increase early-bird syndrome. It must be one of my spiritual gifts from God, because I don't know anyone else who operates like I do.)

    My mom is consistently late, and she is frequently stressed.

    My room-mate is almost always late, and she is almost always stressed.

    My sister is sometimes late, and she is sometimes stressed.

    My dad is impeccably on time, and he is far less stressed than he used to be.

    It's a small test sample, I know, and that's why this is still a hypothesis, but I think that if we had a bigger test group, we would probably find a correlation between lateness and stress levels. Running behind is a super common problem in our modern world, and our stress levels as a society have been rising, and rising, and rising, and rising, throughout my lifetime. I feel like there's got to be a correlation here, because this trend is both too big to be missed, and so big that a ton of people miss it.

    Have you taken time to breathe recently? To just... sit quietly and be with the Lord? To sit in the car with the windows down and listen to the birds outside? To put away your phone, your iPad, your tablet, your computer, turn off the TV, shut off the noise, turn on some good music, and just be for a few minutes?

    Do it right now. Connect some wireless headphones or earbuds to whatever music streaming service you use, step away from your device, go sit down somewhere cozy with a blanket (cup of tea or hot chocolate optional), and close your eyes and listen to some calming music of your choice. If you don't know what to start with, there's a video below you can listen to that I love; just remember to walk away so you don't get distracted by the visuals. You can watch those later.

    Don't turn it up too loud; it's there as something to calm you so you can hear the Lord. If you hear Him better in silence, listen for a few minutes and then turn it off and be silent. For me, some of my best moments of revelation come when I'm lost in a song, and I love this one. Do this right now. I'll do it with you.

    There. How are you feeling? Was it good to just... have a minute? Do you feel calmer? Do you feel like it might be possible to be more measured and less stressed in how you go about life?

    The benefits I've seen from eradicating stress from my life, so far as I've been able to, are many. I'm calm. I'm relaxed. I always have the time I need, and I know when I've overscheduled myself and can pull back a tad in response. I can adjust what I'm doing and how I'm living to function with how I want to be. I don't have to hurry to be early. And, best of all, I can hear the Lord.

    As we're coming into this Christmas season, let yourself slow down. Stop operating from a place of lack when it comes to your time, because you have enough. There is time enough for the things you want to do. Perhaps not in one day, sure, but there's a reason Christmas break is multiple weeks long. Take time to sleep in at least one day this week. Get up a little earlier than usual at least one day this week and give yourself fifteen minutes of quiet time to read your Scriptures or pray or meditate or whatever you do to center yourself and receive divine guidance. Treat yourself to something tasty. Go outside and enjoy the fresh air; the chill where I live is actually quite pleasant for a few minutes, if I wear one less layer outside than I normally would.

    Practice making large-scale plans for your day, determining when you need to leave and setting a timer to make sure you do. Start getting ready long before you leave, so you don't have to be stressed in your preparation and can make sure you have everything you need. Be patient with yourself, with others, and with the conditions on the road as you're driving, follow the speed limit, leave a little early.

    Try out the things I've talked about here. They may not all work for you; this is just what I've noticed I do. If something works and makes you earlier than normal, keep doing it!

    But most of all, let go of stress. It's Christmas, sure, and there's all the Christmas shopping and mall-hopping and parking problems and who knows what else. But you don't have to fall into the trap of being stressed. Enjoy the process of the pre-Christmas rush today and tomorrow. Have fun in the traffic jams, listening to music and letting yourself just exist for a while, without having to worry or hurry or think too hard about any one thing. Learn to flow with life, and be flexible. Spend some time praying as you go about your day today. It doesn't have to be fancy or formal--just a quick comment to God, or a short, kindly thought in the direction of another, a quick thank-you for a parking space or a gap you can turn into safely.

    This Sunday, go to church--and if you're not really a church-goer, just give it a try. It's only an hour or two of your life, and if you can change your mindset, you'll see that you have enough time now. You can spare an hour for something new. If you don't like it, that's okay. It's an hour, maybe two.

    On Christmas morning, go do something for someone else. Take half an hour and go visit a neighbor who lives alone, or enjoy the process of baking a small batch of cookies and taking them to someone to share. Take the opportunity, this Christmas season, to practice slowing down and seeing what it's all about--both Christmas and life. You have enough time. All you have to do is slow down and see it.

    Merry Christmas, my friend. Remember that you have the strength you need, that Jesus is with you, and that you don't have to stress anymore. It's okay to let all that go and let yourself live.

    All right, now that I've spent two hours of my morning writing out a blog post about time, I suppose I'd better give my brain a break and go do something with mine. I'll see you on Monday!