Root word “chron” from chronological: “sorted according to time”
Optimist from optimism: “a disposition or tendency to look on the more favorable side of events”
It was with these two meanings that I coined the phrase “chronoptimist”. It simply means that you are always late, not because of laziness or on purpose, but because you think things are going to take much less time than they realistically do. Literally, being optimistic about the amount of time something is going to take versus what it actually takes.
Even if you do the same things everyday and they take the same amount of time everyday, a "chronoptimist" thinks they will be able to spend less time than it actually takes doing them, in turn making them late to the final destination or just ever destination in between.
I’ve recently discovered that this describes me perfectly. I’m sure I can't be the only one in a world where everyone is always busy. Those Lilly planners aren't just for looks. These days, everyone has an ceaseless to-do list. Whether you’re in college or out in the real world there are always endless things that need to be done. You wake up in the morning and probably have some sort of routine or list you have to get done before you do something fun or have something responsible penciled in. This is where a chronoptimist starts their inner dialogue of the day.
“Well, I can sleep in a little bit if I shower in five minutes instead of ten” or, “I can definitely do my hair and make-up in ten minutes today” or, “having breakfast will take about two minutes, then I can be out the door.” Then as the morning starts we start to realize we are behind schedule as we go through our morning activities. Then we mentally shed minutes off the transportation time.
“My commute usually takes about 15 minutes… But if I drive fast and hit all green lights it will for sure only take about 8”
The commute, as always, takes 15 minutes and we’re late. It wasn’t because we stopped for coffee or accidentally woke up late, we just genuinely thought everything would take less time this morning. But here we are. Sneaking past our boss hoping to get our paperwork turned in on time despite our usual late start.
Or maybe it’s a weekend. So it’s our day off and we can do whatever we want all day until we have plans later tonight at 9. So we sit in bed on our phone looking at the time thinking about how we have all day. Soon it’s almost noon and we should probably go to the gym.
We make plans for lunch on the way there in an hour and a half. That’s exactly one hour at the gym and a half an hour to get ready. If I don’t get distracted in between the treadmill and the free weights I should be fine, right? Wrong. We leave the gym, skipping abs today because we’re late. We have 15 minutes to get ready now but think we can make it if we throw our hair in a sock bun instead of drying it. Foolproof right? Wrong again. Fifteen minutes later you’re just getting out of your rushed shower and texting our friend letting them know we’ll be a few minutes late. Fifteen minutes later we show up with mascara we did in the car and shoes that don’t match but were the only ones by the door.
After lunch we go home to watch Netflix for a bit because lunch socializing is enough for at least a few hours. After three episodes of "Orange Is the New Black," we remember we have an assignment due tonight. We figure it won’t take long so we let the fifteen seconds tick down until a new episode starts. We reluctantly start the assignment to see it’s actually quite lengthy – probably something we should’ve started a couple days ago.
Two hours later we look at the time to see that it’s almost 8 and we’re meeting with people soon. Since that’s a whole hour away and we want to wear that white dress tonight we decide to hit the tanning salon before we start getting ready. The relaxation really gets to us so we head home and start getting ready slowly. Halfway through curling our hair our phone starts blowing up with everyone asking where we are (yet again). We have to tell ourselves the half-curled, tossed look is what we’ll be rocking tonight and make ourselves even more late by trying on multiple different pairs of shoes before we leave.
We walk in halfway through the pregame, telling everyone we’re so sorry we’re late even though no one is surprised and tell them that we'll be ready to go out in 15 – or maybe 30.
