I WAS at a close friend’s wedding over the weekend, and it got me thinking about timekeeping.
Everyone puts pressure on themselves to be on time and then we get frustrated or annoyed, both when we are running late and feel behind or if someone is late for us and we think of other things we could be doing.
Why? What is the point in getting annoyed about it? We set the times ourselves and try to squeeze in an extra few things before we leave or before we start something and it is completely self-inflicted.
I would consider my timekeeping quite good. It is something I am fussy about and always have been. I don’t know if it is because my life has always been about routine and everything has been scheduled for as long as I remember – training, gym sessions, work, study, everything had a time-slot and a structure, so it is all I have known.
Mind you, I don’t know what happened our Sean because he is a complete disaster when it comes to timekeeping. It has never done him any harm, though, so maybe that proves my point that it really doesn’t matter.
We have all heard the stories of Stephen Cluxton arriving at training hours before it was scheduled to start so that he could get the extra work in before the planned session.
I read that Cristiano Ronaldo is the same, always the first person at training, arriving long before everyone else and staying on afterwards to practice free-kicks, not because he had to, but because he wanted to – he was working while everyone else was relaxing.
It is a mindset and a perfectionist ethos more than anything else.
Being on time is something we have to consider in all areas of life.
I think it is only respectful to your managers and coaches to turn up for training on time. If training is at 7.30pm it has always been the way for me that 7.30pm means out on the pitch, warm-up started and ready to get into training – not coming running through the gate at 7.25pm so that we can say we were there at 7.30pm.
That’s just disrespectful to coaches and disruptive to the rest of the team who are ready to get started.
On any of the successful teams I have been lucky enough to be involved in, it was always noticeable that at the beginning of the season there were a few men turning up for 7.30pm training at 6.45pm.
As the season progressed, and the momentum started to build, the number of those arriving early would be getting noticeably bigger each week. It was as much about setting a culture and showing respect to your team-mates, as well as to those organising and setting up the session.
There is always a balance to be had, and most managers I have played under have always tried to keep this in check, not from the point of view of timekeeping itself, but for setting team standards and principles. Build a team culture and get lads to arrive early to work on specific skills to bring their personal game on to be better than it was before.
The same applies in the workplace, with staff turning up to get started slightly earlier with the sole aim of bettering themselves in terms of both knowledge and application. It is not necessarily the fact that the manager/business owner wants us to be early and work ridiculous hours, but rather to have the respect and commitment to be the best version of yourself.
I always took the stance that if you show up early in training or the workplace you are learning and making yourself better before anyone else is there.
There is the element of course – what are you doing when you are in early or staying late? I am a massive believer in quality more than quantity.
You can come to work or training early but if you are not productive then what is the point? This is for me what makes the average player/worker stand out from the elite. Pushing hard and knowing that you have gone that little bit extra makes all the difference on the big days.
I spoke with a young footballer recently and he took great pride in telling me he was the first to training every day. I asked him ‘what do you do in that extra half-an-hour?’
He said just ‘kick a few points’. I stopped him and explained that he needed to look at his game and see where he could improve – he was an excellent shooter already, so he was working on his strengths and not his weaknesses, which in my opinion wasn’t the best use of the time.
Being early or on time is great for personal improvement but also about buying into a team – if you can set high standards and breed a good culture everyone tends to be happier and works that bit harder.
If a straggler continues to be late, he becomes the talk of the group, an unwelcome distraction, and will only be detrimental.
The same principal applies in the workplace – everyone buys into being in early or on time, but if you have the constant latecomers, then it ultimately upsets everyone else.
As much of a stickler as I am for timekeeping, I will always, always, allow a bride a small window – but it wasn’t the bride this weekend who got me thinking, instead it was the priest!
