just in time

Insufficiently Early

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The dialogue In Wes Anderson’s movies is crisp, clever and often contains imaginative insight. In The French Dispatch, Roebuck Wright arrived for a dinner party “insufficiently early.” He showed up at Police Headquarters early, but because the building was so large and confusing, he was late for his meal in The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner.

The word combination of insufficiently with early prompted two new thoughts with me. The first is it ever necessary to be more than sufficiently early - say extra early?

A case for being extra early was made in an illustration from the old Franklin Covey training. The facilitator would ask, “If I promised you a $1M tax free, and all you had to do was be at a specific location by 2 pm next Tuesday, would you be there on time? How early would you leave? How would you ensure you were there on time?”

It was a hypothetical exercise to construct the mindset to take ownership for being early. It drove home the point, you could be on time if it was important enough to you. The problem with this exercise is that implies you should be extra early for everything. To ensure you were there on time, you’d arrive hours ahead and patiently wait for $1M. I’m not sure that’s the best use of our time.

The second thought prompted by the two word phrase is the agency it implies. Roebuck Wright didn’t blame his tardiness on external circumstances. It wasn’t the building’s confusing layout that caused him to be late, it was because he didn’t plan for that and was insufficiently early enough to overcome that obstacle. He owned it.

Being exactly on time is a narrow needle to thread. The real choice in life is are you going to be early or late and by how much.

SPECTRUM OF ARRIVING ON TIME

  • Extra Early - Leave early enough to overcome MAJOR obstacles that appear on your journey.

  • Sufficiently Early - Leave early enough to overcome MINOR obstacles

  • Insufficiently Early - Leave to arrive on time, but with no room for obstacles. Everything must go right to arrive on time.

  • Late - No chance to arrive on time.

I prefer to be early. I find it stressful to be late, and I don’t like to make others wait on me. On the other side of the spectrum, I know people who appear to be proud of always being late. It seems that they like to broadcast that they are so important that every minute of their schedule is filled with extremely essential activities.