The number one trick used by partners and friends to get a Timebender to arrive on time is major mistake – as it achieves the totally opposite result!
Lying about start times is the worst thing you can do if you want to get a Timebender to improve their punctuality. It will work once or twice, but then it will just make them LATER. Once a Timebender realizes they are being given false start times, they will assume it happens every time, and will factor this in to every deadline they are given. They therefore get later. You will then add a bigger margin – and everything slides out of control.
The only way to get a Timebender to be on time is to give them a deadline with real consequences.
The original term “deadline” had extremely serious repercussions – if you ignored it, you would die. The term comes from the American Civil War, where the dead line was a rough board fence, erected 20 feet inside the walls of a stockade in which Federal prisoners were held captive. The guards on duty were instructed to “shoot any prisoner who touches the dead line”.
A real deadline is immovable and has serious ramifications. In other words, you can’t make it up. A deadline that is plucked out of the air has no effect on Timebenders whatsoever. They’re very hard to fool. They need that icy grip in the stomach which tells us that THIS TIME IT’S SERIOUS!!! Nothing will do, it seems, other than the threat of public humiliation, significant loss, serious injury – or death!