This is Stevea Robbins. Welcome to the Get It Done Guys quick and dirty tips to work less and do more.

You and I both know you're perfect, and of course I'm perfect too, but so many of the people we have to deal with on a daily basis simply, well, they aren't perfect.

And who gets left to deal with the fallout of their shortcomings? You and me.

This is so not fair. Listener Michelle is, of course, also perfect, but she has to deal with people

who aren't. Michelle writes in, what do I say when people are late to meetings? I'm twiddling my

thumbs waiting for a phone call that was scheduled days ago. The best I could come up with is a polite email asking them if, we, quote, unquote, missed the call.

First, be nice. Your first instinct is best. Be nice. According to science, your brain contains

about a hundred billion cells. I would hate to be the grad student who I'd to count them.

And so does everyone else's. And of that hundred billion cells. I would hate to be the grad student who had to count them. And so does everyone else's. And of that hundred billion cells, MIT researcher Rebecca

Sacks has identified a teeny tiny part of your brain, so small that a zombie wouldn't even

consider it an appetizer, which is what figures out what's going on in other people's

full-sized brains.

It does do a surprisingly good job, but it's just not as complicated as a full-sized brain,

so it comes up with overly simplistic explanations.

Usually it comes up with explanations like,

That person is a jerk who doesn't care about other people and deserves to be tickled while drinking a soda until it runs out of their nose.

An emotionally satisfying explanation?

Certainly.

But accurate?

Not likely.

When someone is late, we naturally rush to explanations that, quote, unquote, prove that they're late because they're a defective person with defective motivations and uncertain parentage.

Most likely, however, is that they were just kept in a prior meeting

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