The Powell Doctrine

I am not a paragon of punctuality but I have improved dramatically from where I started out. I used to be habitually late for just about everything – even very important things like job interviews.

Several years ago I finally got tired of this. I wanted to figure out how to be someone who could be on time. The answer I found isn’t glamorous or fun, and it may seem obvious to some people. It wasn’t obvious to me though, which is why I’m bothering to write about it.

Have you heard of the Powell Doctrine? If you look it up you’ll find a bunch of boring statesman-speak with bullet points, but the best and most concise summary of the Powell Doctrine that I have heard is this:

You go to war with overwhelming force.

This turns out to be the approach I took. I decided that I would be ridiculously early for appointments. If the doctor expected me at 10 o’clock I would be in his lobby at 8:30 or 9. I’d bring a book and wait it out. My overwhelming force was time.

This has worked remarkably well for job interviews. I don’t necessarily show up for the actual interview an hour early (which might seem desperate or at least odd), but I am not averse to sitting in the company’s parking lot for 45 minutes beforehand. If the meeting or interview is important enough the time is totally worth it.

A lot of common advice about punctuality talks about being 15 minutes early for your appointments. That shit just doesn’t work. Most people are smart enough to do the math and say “oh, I have 15 extra minutes so I can stop at Starbucks”. Then they stress out when it takes 12 minutes to get their coffee instead of the 5 minutes that they’d convinced themselves it would take. Since they were already running 10 minutes behind, big surprise, they’re late.

To make this work you need to stick with the term “overwhelming force”. If an hour isn’t early enough, try three. Seriously. If the appointment is that important, why not? Bring a book or your iPod or your laptop. Or convince a friend to come along and keep you company. Do whatever it takes to create that overwhelming force. Absolutely nothing short of death, serious injury, or a kidnapping will prevent you from being on time for an appointment if you leave for the appointment hours before any sane person would.

This isn’t just idle talk. I did this recently when meeting a prospective client. I was meeting someone in a new part of town that I wasn’t too familiar with and I was taking public transit. I planned my trip so that I would be in the area an hour early. All sorts of things went wrong that morning: I got out of the house late, I missed my bus and had to walk a mile down to the light rail station. Then I missed the first train and had to wait for another. Finally I was on the right train, heading in the right direction but incredibly late! The train was taking far longer than I expected. I finally got off the train and walked the rest of the way to the meeting, where I was about two minutes early. I felt like a total failure, but I was on time. If I had planned on being 15 minutes early I would have blown the meeting and probably missed out on a new client.

I should say that I don’t do this all the time. Just like a nation shouldn’t always be at war. But when force is required, you want to go all the way. I’m not always on time for every appointment in my life. But I know how to be on time when it counts.