The Dangers of “Magical Thinking, or When Nine O’clock Really Means Nine O’clock

SWITS takes pride in being a multicultural company, with employees from diverse backgrounds and experiences. Indeed, it is precisely because of this fact that we can provide the services our clients require of us.

Culturally and personally, we may have different perceptions about what it means to be on time and the importance of punctuality. However, as part of the business world, we must all hold ourselves to professional standards of timeliness and reliability. That means that, for 9:00 am appointments, we need to be arriving before 9:00, so that we can actually begin on time. Today I spoke with our friend and founder Saul Arteaga, who hopes that, with effort and some thought, we can work together to make these standards a reality for all SWITS interpreters.

Saul reasoned that sometimes life just happens, making it impossible to arrive to an appointment on time. There may be bad traffic, severe weather, unfamiliarity with a site or its procedures, or a family emergency. Despite the reason for lateness or cancellation, the consequences for a patient having to postpone a surgery or a defendant missing a visit with her attorney may be severe. If you must miss or be late to an appointment, please let the office know as early as possible so that such disasters can be avoided.

In her book “Never Be Late Again: 7 Cures for the Punctually Challenged,” time-management expert Diana DeLonzor tells readers “Looking back, you were probably late or early all of your life—it’s part physiological and part psychological […] Most chronically late people truly dislike being late, but it’s a surprisingly difficult habit to overcome.” She reports that chronically late people engage in what she calls “magical thinking,” or unrealistically optimistic predictions about how much time it will take them to get somewhere.

DeLonzor suggests relearning how to tell time, by estimating how long it will take to shower, get ready, and drive to work in the morning, and then tracking how long those things actually take for a week. The discrepancies may be surprising. During the winter, it’s important for us to budget more time than usual to shovel our vehicles out of the snow, and to transport ourselves safely to assignments.

Don’t just hope tomorrow will be better. We can all actively make changes in our routines to ensure we will succeed in being reliable and punctual.

When you accept an appointment, make sure that you know where you need to be before and after that appointment, and that you really have enough time to commit to being there. Be aware that interpreters may be expected to stay for the full time scheduled, even if an appointment ends early, or to stay late in the case of an emergency. Speak up if you have to leave, and ask the provider to pause while you call the office to make arrangements.

In addition to physically arriving on time, we must not allow our minds to be taken hostage by unimportant distractions, like texts or emails that can wait until after the completion of an assignment. All of us have likely experienced being preoccupied by something happening in our personal or work lives, or with what’s on the news, when we should be focused on interpreting. Prioritize your current task, and be present in the moment.

Works Cited

DeLonzor, Diana. Never Be Late Again: 7 Cures for the Punctually Challenged.
San Francisco, CA: Post Madison Pub., 2003.