New York author Helene Rosenthal talks about the psychological benefits of being on time in a Guardian piece. She was someone who was perpetually late, but appearing early at an event prompted an epiphany:

What I never would have guessed was how my overall wellbeing went hand-in-hand with breaking this cycle. And it makes sense. How could I ever feel good about myself if I was constantly disappointing myself? Turns out I didn’t need my weekly therapy (which I was always late to, anyway) where I projected all these issues on to my mother (classic scapegoat). The fix was right in front of me the whole time: the clock.

There’s also this point that connects to what I talk about in REST, about the way famous authors and creatives organize their days around 4-5 hour stretches of deep work (emphasis added):

Twenty-four hours seems like plenty of time to be given every single day to do life. But that number gets whittled down to about 17 when you factor in sleep. Few of us have the bandwidth to be high functioning for that entire time. For me, I have four very productive hours, usually early in the morning, which is when I write. I used to give those hours away to social media, the news, and to seemingly urgent tasks like cleaning out my sock drawer. But now I use my mornings to get work done so the afternoons don’t get backed up like Gatwick airport on a Friday afternoon. That leaves the hours after lunch to focus on things that don’t require much brain power, like paying bills and getting depressed about said bills.