Running Late, Again? The Psychology Behind Our Never-Ending 'Five More Minutes'

It is 7:55 pm. The dinner is at 8. You are lying on your bed in a towel, scrolling your phone, fully convinced that you can shower, dress, find both earrings, locate the car keys and reach a restaurant across town in five minutes flat. You will not. You know you will not. You have never once managed it. And yet, next Saturday, you will believe it all over again.

Welcome to the great Indian relationship with time, where 'I'm leaving now' is less a statement of fact and more a hopeful prayer.

Five-minute illusion

There is a name for this specific brand of optimism, and it is not your fault alone. Psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky called it the planning fallacy back in 1977: our stubborn habit of estimating how long something will take by imagining everything going perfectly. The same bug that made the Sydney Opera House, budgeted at $7 million, finished a decade late and cost $102 million is the one that makes you miss the 8 o'clock reservation. 

"We think about the twenty-minute drive but forget about getting ready, getting our keys, waiting for an elevator, or trying to find parking," says Kakul Faruqi, senior consultant psychologist at LH Hiranandani Hospital, Mumbai. We plan for what should happen, not what usually does.

'I'm almost there' lie

Then comes the national anthem of the perpetually late, texted from the bathroom, one leg still out of the trousers: 'Almost there, 5 mins!'

Why do we say it when it is so gloriously untrue? Partly to dodge the awkwardness of the truth. Admitting "I haven't left yet" invites disappointment and follow-up questions, while 'almost there' buys a reprieve and, as Faruqi puts it, "saving the image of a reliable person."

There may be some self-deception here too. “By saying I'm almost there, we can convince ourselves that we have already started doing something, while in reality, we are still preparing,” says Dr. Rithika Krishnan, clinical psychologist at Sir HN Reliance Foundation Hospital. The text feels like progress. The trousers disagree. 

In our defence

Of course, not all of it is in our heads. This is Mumbai, where the TomTom Traffic Index 2025 found commuters lose about 126 hours a year, nearly five full days, to traffic.  A late local, a flooded underpass, a twenty-minute hunt for parking: some lateness is done to us, not by us.

The trouble is that a real excuse is also the perfect hiding place. The planning fallacy whispers that this time the roads will be clear, and when they aren't, the traffic takes the blame while the forty minutes we spent choosing a shirt walk free.

Fashionably late, or just Indian?

Somewhere along the way, arriving 20 minutes late to a house party stopped being rude and started being normal. Turn up on time and you risk catching the host still in the shower. This is where culture quietly rewires the clock. "There is a tradition in most Indian families and communities to have a more flexible view on time. Sometimes, relationships, conversations, and situations have precedence over clocks. And when everybody around you has this attitude, you start to adopt it too. That's why we say 'Indian Standard Time' jokingly,” reveals Dr. Rithika Krishnan. 

So, which one are you?

By now you have probably recognised yourself: the serial snoozer, the last-minute dresser, the overconfident planner who swears the drive is 'just 15 minutes,' the loyal traffic victim, the eternal 'five more minutes' person. Dr. Rithika Krishnan offers a gentle tell, "The more rushed, competitive, and concerned about time you are, the more chances there are for you to arrive early." The relaxed, in-the-moment types pay for their peace in missed reservations.

The cure, happily, is not a personality transplant. It is small and a little boring. "Do not plan only the time of arrival, plan your leave-by time instead," says Dr. Rithika. Add a real buffer, treat delays as data rather than freak events, and retire the famous fib, "Do not say 'I'm almost there' anymore, try saying I'll leave in 20 minutes.”

Because this was never about the clock. Punctuality is not only about managing the clock. It is about realizing that our time is precious, but somebody else's time is valuable as well. Your friends, still waiting outside at 8:40, could not agree more.