People who arrive late often tap their creativity to save face, surveys show. Aside from the annoyance for people kept waiting, everything usually turns out OK. That's the perpetual hope of millions of Americans — at least 15 percent to 20 percent of the population, surveys show — who are chronically late.

If you're one of them, you probably know it doesn't help much to get up earlier or take a vow of punctuality. The lateness habit, which can make prompt people furious, is a tough one to break.

"Telling a chronically late person to be on time is like telling an overweight person not to eat so much," said Diana DeLonzor, a recovering late person and author of a book on the subject. To break the pattern, she said, chronically late people (who, by the way, include Bill Clinton and Naomi Campbell, according to DeLonzor) must identify the psychological forces that underlie their habit and reprogram the ways they think.

Then, they can focus on the goal: getting there on time.

"One of the tricks is to figure out what benefit you get from being late," said DeLonzor, who has launched a time-management consulting career in San Francisco. "Then, you put some exercise in place that can help you change your attitude until timeliness becomes automatic."

Mindy Asplund lost a job selling cosmetics in a department store because she routinely arrived late. That didn't cure her. She's still late.

"All the time. For everything," said Asplund, 28, who now works as a company customer-service representative. Friends and family members have lectured her.

"That makes me feel terrible, because I don't mean any disrespect," she said. "I hate being late. But I can't seem to get a handle on it."

She's late because she gets distracted. She's late because she spends a lot of time primping in front of the bathroom mirror. She's late because, while she knows the commute to work takes 30 minutes, she usually allows 10.

On the freeway — 20 minutes behind schedule — she lets her anxieties out. "I yell at the cars on the road, 'You're making me late!' I know it's not their fault, and they can't hear me. But sometimes, I wish I had a megaphone so they could."

Could she fit into DeLonzor's category of indulger, one who plays things by ear rather than sticking to a schedule? Is she a deadliner, who needs a crisis to get motivated? Or an evader, who denies her anxiety while trying three shades of eyeliner?

"Most people are unaware of the feelings and habits that surround their lateness," DeLonzor said. "Ask yourself why you're doing this. Then develop a mantra: 'You look fine. You don't have to be perfect.' That's mine. Or 'It's normal to be anxious. Everybody feels anxiety.' "

There is also evidence some late people perceive time differently than punctual people do.

Take Eric Ondler, a 35-year-old computer programmer who lives in St. Paul, Minn. Time fascinates him, but he instinctively responds to a more internal clock.

When he doesn't need to be at work for a 9 a.m. meeting, he gets in around 9:30, he said. He often gets to work meetings and social gatherings late. When he should leave home by 5 p.m. to get somewhere, he starts thinking about getting ready just before 5 rolls around. Punctuality is just a higher priority for others than it is for him.

"My subservience to time as a method to schedule my activities is minimal," he said. "I don't care much for dogma of any sort."

Hmmm. Could he qualify as a rebel, one who perceives society's rules as too ordinary? An absent-minded professor, who easily gets preoccupied? A rationalizer, who sees his view of the world as the true one, no matter what? Maybe all of the above?