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[Phil Bonelli] Our third employability skill of the day is attendance and punctuality, attendance and punctuality. So attendance being there and punctuality being there on time. Now this is something that we have heard from the employers that we work with is something so critical to them, so key to them, and the thing that gives me about this is this is not really a skill. This is your such a basic function that if you do it, that's great. You're on par. It's kind of an expectation, but if you don't do it if you don't show up if you are late consistently, there's some very negative consequences. How can they hurt or help your future success? So I was very fortunate and my mother helped me a lot by forcing me to be early to things. So just sort of created a habit where if I wasn't 5-10 minutes early to something I was late I would right off the bat I already assume I was late and it sort of creates that like you know, positive stress.

You know there's good and bad stress in your life. You know, being early is important and that stress that you get when you're running late is also important to help you not do it again, because if you're late, you know you haven't even said your name to somebody and they already can't trust you. They can't trust that they can expect you to be somewhere at a certain time. You know they’re going to assume that you're going to let them down, and you're going to be a disappointment ultimately. But punctuality is something that needs to be learned and remembered in high school.

You know we have phones now that we have almost all the time, so there's really no excuse for being late, you know? You have alarms, you have timers and stuff like that like use them because they will help you. Set 5 or 10 alarms if that's what you need every minute on the minute, because sometimes that's what I have to do. Like if I have to wake up at 3:00 AM, I know that 3:00 AM alarm is going off and I'm going to snooze right off the bat so I have a 3:02 and 3:04 'cause I know that I have to wake up and that's something that should be learned in high school. Yeah, the thought that we have here at the baseball program is if you're not 15 minutes early, you're late. So it's. And it's it's from maybe many people may see that as an extreme, or is it's it's a little bit excessive, but I hold that to be very true, because if you're not if you don't show that something is worth enough for you to be there 15 minutes beforehand, then they may get the impression that it's not something that you want, so that may play a bigger role into the interview or whatever it may be that you're going to. Because they don't, they see you already, they have this preset notion that, oh, this doesn't mean much for them, they don't, they didn't give the time and the effort to be here on time or a little bit beforehand to be prepared for whatever is going to happen. So I think that's that's very important as well. Punctuality is huge as well as a first impression.

So if if I'm I'm going to relate it again to the army if I'm meeting somebody for the first time, if if I'm meeting somebody at a situation or in a scenario, or they're walking into a new position, I'm going to be with them for typically minimum 90 days and your first impression, though it's built in seconds, will last at least that long, right? So I I'm initially meeting somebody. The punctuality there's an important part about being early to something. There's also an important you need to not be super early to something. It shows that you don't quite have good time management 'cause you can't manage your time and be there a couple minutes early versus 1/2 hour or 45 minutes too early. And the same thing goes with being late. If somebody shows up late then obviously it didn't quite mean that much to them, but the same goes as far as physical appearance as far as hygiene as far as in the military we related to haircuts and to shaving, and whether or not people keep their fingernails trimmed, it means the smallest detail. If you can't quite lead yourself and you can't hold yourself to a standard, then how are you going to ever be expected to hold someone else that standard or to lead someone else First off, if you're meeting a new person or you're going to an interview, this is your first impression. And if you were late, that leaves a very negative impression.

Also, if you were there on time and you are physically present in Attendance but you are mentally, emotionally not Present, that has very negative implications as well. For example, what if you were interviewing me, I was a great candidate. I look great on my resume, showed up on time, I look sharp in my suit, and yet while you're asking me questions that you care about to hire me for a job, where you're going to pay me money, I'm looking at my phone and checking out Tik Tok videos. Do you think you're going to want to hire me? Job interviews, as we mentioned, very key. Dates. I actually almost missed my first date with the beautiful woman who is now my wife and I can only imagine if my lack of punctuality in that moment had gotten in the way of that. Plus, as you can see in this picture, if you're late, your coffee might get cold, you don't want that.

In meetings when you were working together in a team, whether it be on a school project, a work project, other people are relying on you. And when you don't show up on time, or you're not present, not fully in attendance, they're missing out on that contribution that you have to make, and I'll tell you it doesn't matter how big of a contribution you have. It doesn't matter for you, the most talented person in the room. The most skilled person, charming person, anything if you're consistently late or not in attendance, people are going to look beyond those positives and only focus on those negatives. And there are some things you can see this empty podium where as you rise higher and higher, you're going to be the main event, and if you don't show up for your own main event, that’s the last event that you're going to be invited to. Consistently being on time is the product of proper planning. Personal discipline and a respect for other peoples time. Making a habit of being late demonstrates that you really don't care about these things and basically the assumption if you can't show up on time or show up when you need to be is that you don't care about other people's time. You only care about you and quite frankly you must not even care that much about you if you're not showing up to do the things which you signed up for. I absolutely can. So every every morning we do PT and as a freshman for whatever reason, 6:00 AM groggy, Derek decided to just stop his alarm right and I went and laid back down.

I'm sure just about any person reading this can can relate to the same thing, But the panic set in when my eyes snapped open 20 minutes later. I'm already 10 minutes late and then you show up and there's no good excuse. Forever sleeping through an alarm and whether it was just a long night doing assignments the night before or whether you were just, you know, playing video games or doing something stupid it doesn't matter. There's just that excuse never sounds good, and so I obviously I was late. I showed up late. Everybody looking at me as I come running in. It's just embarrassing and I ended up staying after and I talked with somebody and they were like Look hey, it’s one time, just don't make it a habit.

Obviously I have not done that since that's the level of embarrassment. And in the level of discomfort I felt by doing it. But it's one of the ones that sticks in my Mind when I think about repercussions I guess. So you know, going back to like when I was in high school, my mom would be very upset with me if I was late to anything because she knows that’s not what she taught me. She's like you need to be early to things. You do all stuff and bringing that in here. You know there's been very few times where I’ve actually been late to something like a formation or class or anything. But you know, when I am late, the punishment and the stress on myself is enough for me to be completely honest. Like the stress I experience walking into a full Classroom, all eyes on me, 5 minutes late, not gonna do it again. I'm going to be there 10 minutes early. One for me in high school was being late to like a college fair which it was a little different because I kind of knew where I was going for the baseball side of it. But I was late to the to the college fair and I've missed out on talking to different schools and kind of seeing what was going on. I think I was like 30 minutes late and people had already gone around through all different college schools and colleges and they had talked to different people and I was kind of kind of rushed trying to talk to different people and kind of see what schools were more appealing to me and all that stuff so I didn't get a genuine conversation with a lot of 'em. So I had to kind of the Hey, how you doing, what's this and that? And then I gotta go and instead of kind of being genuine and having a legitimate conversation where it's you kind of let it go and it's not rushed because whenever you rush the conversation it's it's hard to kind of be get something out of it.

Learn to be reliable And a person of integrity by adopting the discipline necessary to show up on time. I mentioned phones, we've all got smartphones. I know my smartphone has an alarm Clock on It and yours too. You got no excuse to be late, now I’ll give you 1 tip. Even with the best discipline and the best planning, there are circumstances outside of your control which could cause you to be late. That should be a major rarity, and if it is, you won't be looked at negatively for. But here's what you need to do. If you are going to be late, you better make sure you contact the person you're going to meet ahead of time to let them know, Hey, I'm running 10 or 15 minutes late. I'm so sorry. There was a wreck etc. On the rare occasions if you do have to be late, let the folks know.