Lahoris have a reputation of being tardy and laid back, particularly when compared with their more cosmopolitan counterparts from Karachi. Things start late, end even later and punctuality isn’t known to be our strong suit. But if recent studies and research is to be believed, people who are perpetually late are smarter and more creative than their punctual friends and colleagues.
InstepInsight
Perpetually late? You’re smarter and more creative.
Lahoris have a reputation of being tardy and laid back, particularly when compared with their more cosmopolitan counterparts from Karachi. Things start late, end even later and punctuality isn’t known to be our strong suit. But if recent studies and research is to be believed, people who are perpetually late are smarter and more creative than their punctual friends and colleagues.
Please don’t take this as a sign of completely eschewing any sense of punctuality, since being on time is considered to be infinitely more courteous but studies believe that people who are terrible at time management might just be a step ahead. And it isn’t just restricted to people who arrive late; those who sleep late and wake up well after the sun is the sky are also considered to be more creative. Inverts everything we’ve learnt in life on its head, doesn’t it?
Here’s how the justification works: people who stay up late utilize the time to incubate ideas. Alone, at night when the hubbub of the day is subdued, people have a greater chance to be with their thoughts in peace and either create or innovate on existing ideas. Furthermore, staying up late inverts the ‘early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise’ motto on its head and research shows that people who are willing to strike their own path as opposed to taking ancestrally determined approaches are progressive and more intelligent.
A study conducted by the Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Milan used a small focus group of 120 people to determine whether the time you go to bed has any effect on your cognitive abilities or not. People were asked whether they were most functional at night or in the morning and then given a test designed to measure creative thinking.
The study revealed that those who preferred evenings aced the tests while morning and intermediate type people struggled to score well.
And, it turns out that if you’re habitually late you’re bound to be more optimistic, better at multi-tasking and more hopefully (obviously, you’re going to have to hope your boss doesn’t fire you!). People who have trouble with punctuality tend to concentrate on the bigger picture and generally not sweat the small stuff… like being on time! Optimists believe that they have more time on their hands than they do in actuality and hence, they approach life with a laid back ease that drives corporates in human resource departments to lose their mind.
So the next time your boss yells at you for being tardy, tell them it’s cause you’re smarter than the rest!
