Time Optimism

I always believe you can work one more task into the time at hand. Perish the thought of arriving early. I'll try to scribble one more paragraph, crochet one more row. The result: I'm five minutes late when I could just as easily have been on time. 

In the past, people like me would provoke exasperation, even anger. "I don't get it! She's always late." But recently I've heard a term that explains this behavior, a dignified description.

Time optimism is when you underestimate how long a task will take and overestimate how much time time you have to complete it. It's a term I first heard from my youngest daughter, herself a time optimist, a skill she no doubt picked up from me. 

I like looking at lateness in this half-full way. It's not laziness, quite the opposite. But it is habit I'd like to break. So even though I want to explore this concept more right now, I won't. I need to leave here in 20 minutes... and I will.