We all have that one or two colleagues who somehow always manage to be there well before time, maybe 10- 20 minutes earlier?We often ask ourselves: How do they manage to do it nearly all the time?Are they more dedicated and really care about the job? Are those assumptions nobody really questions that we imagine around them, mostly because it feels quite true? Of course, being present well ahead of time gives a good impression and makes colleagues feel that they are dedicated to their work. What else would it mean?But psychology has surprising explanations based on the fact that being hardworking is not always associated to being early. Some of it also comes down to personality, sure. But a chunk of it has nothing to do with ambition at all, and everything relates to how the brain handles unfinished tasks, unplanned events, and the quiet discomfort of simply waiting.Let us dig in to find out what psychology actually says about this.
Being early can also be a sign of ‘precastination’
In 2014, psychologist David A. Rosenbaum and his colleagues published a study in Psychological Science that accidentally found something researchers hadn’t formally named before. According to the research, participants were asked to walk down an alley and pick up one of two buckets, and were told plainly to choose whichever bucket seemed easier to carry. Instead, people kept grabbing the bucket that was closer to them and hauling it the full distance, taking on more physical effort for no actual benefit. According to Rosenbaum and his co-authors, “this seemingly irrational choice reflected a tendency to precrastinate… the hastening of subgoal completion, even at the expense of extra physical efforts.”
This research surprisingly opened up more than what was expected
The study says that some people are simply wired to get a task off their plate as fast as possible, not because they’re especially diligent, but because carrying an unfinished task in their brains, which mentally feels worse than doing the extra work upfront. Arriving early to work fits this pattern surprisingly well. It’s not always devotion to the job, sometimes it’s just the brain wanting one less open loop to track.
Arriving early gives a ‘protected’ pocket of time
There’s a second explanation that pulls even further away from the “hardworking” story, and it has to do with anxiety, though not in the way people usually assume. Another analysis published in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology argues that being present there minutes before a scheduled commitment gives “a legally protected pocket of time,” a stretch where nobody can pull you into another task or ask a favour of you. According to this reading, early arrival isn’t about nerves at all; it’s one of the only socially acceptable windows in adult life where doing absolutely nothing is fully expected of you.It is not actually about being there early; it’s what they do with that spare time. If it’s spent calmly, with a coffee or a few quiet minutes to themselves, that’s simply a person who values order.But if that time gets spent rehearsing conversations, checking messages repeatedly, or anticipating irritation that hasn’t actually happened yet, it’s quite closer to managing anxiety than practicing discipline.