(This article originally appeared in The Weekly Simplifier #15.)

by Shawn Tuttle

Are you chronically late for appointments? Do you find yourself rushing to be on time? Regarding appointments, simplifying means eliminating unnecessary stress.

Following is a real life scenario about getting to Toastmasters officer training on time this past Saturday morning. I was a co-chair and responsible for doing the “Welcome” and introducing the presenters. The night before the presentation, I itemized all the factors leading up to the training and guesstimated time limits for each one. This let me know how to keep on track, calm, and arriving with a smile. Tips for simplifying prep time are sprinkled throughout.

Appointment: July 29th, 9:30am Toastmasters Officer Training. Continental style breakfast served.Goal: Arrive prepared and on time. Arrive calmly and with a smile lighting the way.

Plan: I knew I wanted to arrive at least 15 minutes early to check-in, troubleshoot, and ask my last minute questions. It’s a 10 minute drive from the carpooling pick-up point. It’s about a 15 minute drive from my house to the pick-up point. Add an extra 10 minutes for unexpected situations. Added up, 50 minutes.

8:40 am Leave house (meaning, in the car pulling out of the driveway)

Actuality: This is exactly how it happened! One of the great things about this group of Toastmasters is that they are On Time. So even though I had 3 carpoolers, they were all at their pick-up points on time. I was on the ball the night before—I noticed the car was low on gas, so I filled up the tank. Then on the way home I stopped at a DIY carwash to wash my embarrassingly dirty metal chariot in 5 minutes for 6 quarters (great deal!).

Plan: Pack up car, clean stuff out of backseat for passengers. Make sure there is room in trunk for people’s stuff since backseat isn’t very big. 10 minutes.

8:30 am Tidy-up and load car

Actuality: Good thing I left a little extra time here because I also used this time to download directions to the training onto my PDA which I had forgotten to do last night!

Plan: I bought fruit at Farmers Market the night before. The plan was to cut it up into serving bowl in the morning (serving bananas, which brown quickly, so I didn’t want to cut the night before). Made carrot bread the night before, it needed to be cut up and placed, somewhat attractively, on serving plate, and figure out how to transport safely. Allow 20 minutes to be safe.

8:10 Prepare fruit and carrot cake for serving and transporting.

Actuality: I thought I was being overly cautious on the time necessary for this one, but it turns out I was right on. I had even thought about which serving dishes to use the night before. Good thing I did because one of them really needed to be washed before being used. Saturday morning it was clean and dry in the drying rack..

Plan: Get myself ready. I usually don’t leave enough time for this, continuing to insist that I’m “low-maintenance”, which is, of course, still true. :-) Even so, it takes more than 15 minutes to get all this done. I gave myself 30 minutes.

7:40 Shower, dress, get pretty.

Actuality: As it turns out, I did get ready in 16 minutes, though not as calmly as I would have liked because I actually didn’t start until 7:52. Yikes! This was because of my completely unrealistic prep plan (next).

Plan: Allow 10 minutes to review the introductions of each of the 8 presenters and the Welcome presentation.

7:30 Review Intros and Welcome

Actuality: What was I thinking? This may have been adequate if I was fully prepared, which I wasn’t. Up until last night, I thought the Training co-chair was going to do the Welcome. Between going to Farmer’s Market, the gas station, the car wash, and the late night carrot cake baking adventure, I chose to leave reviewing my notes (same notes as last year’s training, with slight modifications) until the morning when I’d be fresh in mind and thought.

Plan: I thought I’d give myself half an hour to wake up, sit quietly, read, and write. Waking up and hitting the floor with a bang is not all that conducive to any morning, let alone a big morning in which I’ll be speaking.

7:00 Wake up!

Actuality: I did read (Kahil Gibran’s The Prophet) and I did do a little writing. Lovely way to start the morning.

Summary
Big kudos: I printed out what needed to be printed, gathered papers, timer, clipboard, nametags and pen the night before. I also made sure the PDA had full battery charge. Filled up gas tank the night before. Also, car washed the night before. (Bad form showing up in dirty car. This is something I need to keep up on because I don’t have a garage to help keep the chariot clean.)

Room for improvement: Load the directions and hostess contact information on to PDA the night before! What a super disorganized faux-pas to have been the carpool driver who said, “Does anyone know how to get there?” Also, breakfast! Yes, we provided a continental breakfast for everyone, but why did I think I, as co-chair and introducer, would have time to eat? By the time I got home at 12:30, I was starving! Fortunately, the adrenaline rush of speaking had overshadowed the blood-sugar dip.

The big question: Is all this detailed breakdown necessary? I mean, couldn’t I just have said, leave at 8:45am and get up an hour before that? Sure. But even though I feel it is extremely important to be on time, truth is, sometimes I’m late. I know that:

preparation time is, perhaps, the most commonly misjudged factor for getting somewhere on time.

Therefore, this detailed breakdown is necessary until I’m consistently and calmly (key word here!) on time for my appointments. By then, I’ll have presumably internalized the times I need for preparation and won’t need to spell it out, step by step. If, however, I find that I need this tool in order to be on time, I will continue to use it.

The final word: Doing a detailed breakdown of the time leading up to an important appointment can work wonders in eliminating unnecessary stress!

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Shawn Tuttle is founder of Project Simplify.