One thing that I noticed early on two decades ago when I moved to US was almost all the time everyone was punctual except a few, coming from India with outsourcing and usage of communications tools at its infancy I was a bit amused. There are of course stragglers always everywhere but nothing like what it is in few other countries where I worked more so India. We often joke about IST – Indian Staggered time instead of Indian standard time. Not trying to generalize or paint with a broader brush, I am trying to get the importance punctuality deserves and what it does to our stature.

I have myself been at the receiving end at times being late for reasons beyond my control and felt embarrassed.

The trouble with being punctual,” so goes the saying, “is that there’s no one there to appreciate it.” The beauty of it though I now realize is the benefit of gathering your thoughts, preparing for your meeting, taking advantage of the calm and be composed, attend to possible distractions before the meeting begins etc just to name a few.

Yet if you have a meeting with your boss, your team, a client, or a job interview, you know they’ll appreciate it. Still, it’s easy to fall afoul of the tyranny of the clock: between our endlessly distracted minds and distraction-rich devices, we can fall into a pit clicks and–and soon need to scurry out the door.

Here are a few ways to address them.

1) Do a dry run to check out

Don’t assume your meeting place just minutes away, but is it really? it helps to do “walkthrough” to find out just how long it’ll take to get from your office to your meeting point if it is outside of your comfort zone be it restaurant, adjacent building or couple of blocks away. punctuality is a form of graciousness.

2) Always allow for buffer time

It’ll take a moment (or eight) to unplug from your task at hand–you’ll have chat windows to close, auto responders to set, bathrooms to use. So allow for some buffer time.

3) Preparation is the key

Okay, so you might be able to get your physical body to the place on time, but will you have the preparation? Similar to doing your due diligence before hopping on a phone call, any professional meeting requires homework: what does this person do? Why are you meeting? What are the outcomes you’re looking for? And if you haven’t met them before, what does this person even look like?

If we don’t get that prep done before the meeting, we could be walking down the sidewalk (or, worse, driving) while looking up their vital stats on our phones–an extremely unproductive form of procrastination. So let’s avoid that.

Once you get to venue wherever that is , follow the rules for excellent meetings.

4) Beware of things that kill you at the last minute

If you have 15 minutes before a meeting, don’t dissolve yourself into a super absorbing task, those are much better suited to your work in the cave. Instead, do “shallow” work, like answering a few email or catching up your news.

5) Don’t expect smooth going always – expect the unexpected

I dread the last minute emergency calls, bad Traffic, dependencies on others, Trains get late, buses fail. So if you’re planning around everything going right, you’re getting yourself late.

6) Avoid ” just one More thing to do”

We’re all obsessed with productivity–sometimes it gets a little weird. And sometimes it makes us late.

7) Being early is good

If being early feels like a waste of time, you may have jerk-like time tendencies. Instead, come prepared for the pause: bring a book or something to work on. Or just closely observe the world around you–since that’s the foundation of creativity