Running Late, Again? The Psychology Behind Our Never-Ending 'Five More Minutes'
It is 7:55 pm. The dinner is at 8. You are lying on your bed in a towel, scrolling your phone, fully convinced that you can shower, dress, find both earrings, locate the car keys and reach a restaurant across town in five minutes flat. You will not. You know you will not. You have never once managed it. And yet, next Saturday, you will believe it all over again. Welcome to the great Indian…
It's 7:55 PM and you're in your bathroom, scrolling through your phone, convinced that you can shower, get dressed, find your earrings, locate your car keys, and reach a restaurant across town in just five minutes. You've never managed it before, and you know you won't this time either. Welcome to India's unique relationship with time, a culture where "I'm leaving now" is more a hopeful prayer than a statement of fact.
The psychology behind this never-ending five minutes is known as the planning fallacy, identified by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1977. This is our habit of estimating how long something will take by imagining everything going perfectly. Whether it's a 20-minute drive, forgetting about all the other tasks that need to be completed, or just convincing ourselves that we've already started, we tend to underestimate the time it takes to get things done.
Why do we say we're almost there when it's clearly untrue? Often, it's to avoid the awkwardness of admitting the truth. Saying "I'm almost there" buys us a reprieve and maintains the image of a reliable person. This self-deception can also make us feel like we're making progress, even when we're not. Sometimes, external factors like traffic or parking issues also contribute to our lateness, but claiming it's out of our control is a convenient excuse.
In India, arriving late is often seen as the norm rather than the exception. Family and community gatherings often prioritize relationships over strict adherence to time. This cultural norm has made Indian Standard Time a jokingly accepted reality. So, who are you in this race against time? The serial snoozer, the last-minute dresser, the overconfident planner, or the loyal traffic victim?
The key to managing our time better is to plan our leave-by time instead of just the arrival time, add a buffer for delays, and retire the famous fib of "I'm almost there." Remember, punctuality is about respecting both our own time and others' time.
Written by urgent.news from Free Press Journal's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
