What makes a person flakey

But habitually tardy people are downgraded and thought of as selfish. Get control of your time so you are known for being a little early. A meeting can be either a productive and efficient sharing of ideas and information, or a dreadful disaster of confusion and boredom.

It's incredibly frustrating to stare around the table at blank faces or to get irrelevant and useless discussion. You can't be responsible for everyone's participation but you sure can improve it on your end. Be fully prepared and ready to engage so no one thinks you are the laggard.

Everyone is busy. Everyone gets lots of email. If you make people chase you, they will hate you. Twenty-four hours is the maximum you should take before you respond, even it is a simple acknowledgement. Then you can establish a reasonable time to respond and manage expectations. Nothing will make you seem flakier than not showing up when expected. Most people have a one-time tolerance for a missed event. The second time, you have already lost stature and priority in their mind.

You may think you can daydream and fake it, but anyone with whom it's worth engaging knows when you are not in the game. If you are so disinterested in work activities that you have to play like you are on-board, maybe it's time to move on.

We don't want to think that flaky friends are being malicious even on a subconscious level , but the truth is, the spontaneous, "free-spirit" behavior known as "flaking out" isn't really all that benign. It actually reveals a serious lack of conscientiousness -- and there are a few reasons why someone could be acting this way.

But you know [that] later on, they're just going to be too busy or too stressed, and get out of it with some lame excuse. In most cases, flakes have poor time-management skills and think they can do everything in an illogically short time period. It's self-handicapping behavior. But flaky behavior doesn't just hurt the flakes. It often indicates that they don't respect your time -- or even that they secretly feel their time is more important than yours. Ignoring constant flakiness can do a friendship more harm than good in the long run when someone's not dependable, it's hard to trust them.

But before you confront a flaky friend, it's important to figure out whether he or she is an unwitting flake, or whether something darker is going on. But when they're only sometimes late to make you wait for them, and only when the situation doesn't directly benefit them Yeah, those flaky people are "yes" people as well, but perhaps coming more from a place of optimism than from an ability to follow through on their plans.

Basically, it's easy to commit yourself to whatever sounds good in the moment if you have no idea what else you've committed yourself to for the rest of the week , much less the specific date this person is talking to you about in the first place. While this attitude certainly doesn't come from a place of malice, it can cause some serious problems down the road if people feel that they can't rely on you or feel that you're too disorganized to follow through on your word.

If you're dealing with someone who is flaky , it's OK to let them know how their behavior impacts you. While it's never a good idea to go into a discussion hoping for an argument even if you're upset or angry it's totally reasonable to calmly let someone know they've hurt your feelings, or that they've ruptured your plans for the day by being inconsiderate.

In the same way, if you're someone who is flaky , it's important to take responsibility and apologize. Flakiness can come from all different places, and it's up to you if you want to go more in-depth with someone about why you tend to flake out, but at the end of the day, it's important to remember that respect is a mutual thing in a relationship romantic or otherwise so even if you have the best intentions, flaking out on people can feel hurtful or dismissive to those around you.