Time Management Tips For Different Personality Types

Time Management for Different Personality Types

There’s a lot of information on the internet about time management. We’ve done a few blog posts about time management on this blog. There’s something that’s missing from a lot of these guidelines.

When you read the various time management guidelines on the net, there’s a lot of “do these steps to ensure you’re on time” stuff. It is all stuff we’ve heard a thousand times. What’s missing is a consideration of your personality type.

All of these tips and tricks are type A personality type traits. Type A personality types are already doing those things and they’re only reading the articles and tips as part of their need to over-achieve even more as chronic over-achievers, so we’ll leave them out of this discussion completely.

Type B personality types can’t take on type A traits without years of dedicated effort. The type B personalities who aren’t chronically late aren’t reading the articles either. The end result is that type B personalities who are chronically late end up trying to follow the wrong tips for their personality and they fail. People need to learn their personality type and how to live with it.

A lot of people consider chronic tardiness as sign of selfishness and disrespect. This might be the case with some people, but most often the person who is chronically late isn’t trying to be disrespectful. In the event that someone has a learning disability like dyscalculia, they lack an accurate internal clock.

The dictionary defines dyscalculia this way:

Impairment of the ability to solve mathematical problems, usually resulting from brain dysfunction.

But in truth, this impairment applies not just to math: persons suffering from this problem also have big problems relating to the subjects of time, time management and simply being on time. They really can’t tell the difference between what five minutes and 30 minutes feels like. Type A or type B person with dyscalculia will most likely always struggle to be on time.

Time Management Tips for Type A People:

There’s nothing here for you, folks: you’re already doing so well with your lives as it is. We suggest you loosen up and enjoy your dominance! Go out and jog some laps.

Time Management Tips for People Suffering from Dyscalculia:

Always greatly overestimate travel time. A part of dyscalculia is a horrible sense of direction. Not just distinguishing between left and right, but also remembering travel routes. Until you are absolutely solid on how to get somewhere, double the travel time. You’ll end up with a lot of “hurry up and wait” scenarios, but that’s better than being late.
Set reminders in your PDA, desktop calendar, cell phone, and your watch. Anything device that can be used to set reminders, use it. The more reminders you have, the better off you’ll be. For rare or big events, set a reminder a week ahead of time, 24 hours before the event, two hours before you need to leave for the event, an hour before you need to leave for the event, fifteen minutes before you need to leave for the event, and finally five minutes before you need to leave. Start with all of those reminders and then weed out the ones you don’t need.
People with dyscalculia tend to underestimate the amount of time it takes them to shower, dress, and perform other basic tasks. Other people have internal clocks that help them keep track of how long they’ve spent on the one last quick thing they’re doing before they head out. People with dyscalculia cannot trust their internal clock. They must resist the urge to check their e-mail “real quick”. It never is “real quick” for them. This is a matter of self-discipline. E-mail, voice mail, and the like will be there when you’re not preparing to leave. It can wait.
People with dyscalculia will not read clocks the same way as other people. They tend to round to the nearest quarter if they’re dealing with an analog clock and often the numbers of a digital clock do not properly mentally register. Try to get into the habit of rounding forward instead of back and use your reminders to combat misreading a digital clock face.

Time Management Tips for Type B People:

Read up on dyscalculia. It was unknown for a very long time and many people never received a proper diagnosis. You might have it.
Type B people are often improperly accused of being lazy. They will work as hard as a type A person, but they don’t look as busy. While a type B person seems to be staring off into space or taking a coffee break, mentally they’re preparing for their next task. This mental preparation can make them late. Set reminders for events at least 15 minutes before you need to leave for an appointment. Set another alert five minutes before you need to leave to snap yourself out of any mental gymnastics.
Do not berate yourself for your procrastination. Many type B people aren’t procrastinators out of laziness. They simply work better with deadlines. They’ll spend weeks before a project banging their heads against a metaphorical wall and coming up empty handed. As time grows shorter, all of sudden ideas come to them and they can charge in and produce quality work. Work with this special ability. Give yourself a clock to race against. Using a countdown timer is useful for providing a visual representation of the remaining time to complete a task or project. You’ll also want to break up a project into several mini-projects (see: the Pomodoro technique for time management). Set self-imposed deadlines for these chunks of work. If self-imposed deadlines do not carry enough authority for you, ask a supervisor or friend to set deadlines for you. It’s also helpful to ask people to trick you. Ask them to tell you a project is due before it’s actually due. Do not let them tell you how much time they’ve shaved off the deadline.

Hopefully, these time management tips will help reduce any stress and anxiety in your life that’s rooted in chronic tardiness.

Of course, we hope that you’ll use our various online alarm clocks, timers, stopwatches and countdowns to help you better manage your time. They’re all free, so you truly have nothing to lose – other than your habit of being late!

Tags: chronic tardiness, dyscalculia, internal clock, on time, Time, time management, time management guidelines, time management tips, type a personality, type b personality