What the final minute is for

In Muscat, a family is expecting guests at eight.

At five to eight, one person is ironing a shirt, another is driving back from the shop with ice, and someone is on the floor looking for the extension cable. The doorbell rings into the middle of all of it.

Most of us have seen this evening, and plenty of us have hosted it. We call it running late. It is really something else. The plan treated the last few minutes as spare room, a place to put whatever did not fit earlier.

The last minute cannot do that job. It is too short to fix anything that takes longer than itself, and too late to check anything properly. Whatever lands there is done badly or not at all.

The same goes for a product page written the night before it opens, a parcel taped shut while the courier waits outside, a speech drafted in the car.

If the final minute holds a task that needs more than a minute, the mistake was made days ago, when the work was planned.

There is a better use for it, and almost nobody budgets for it. The shirt is on, the ice is in the freezer, the cable is where it should be. There is a whole minute with nothing left to do.

The host gets to stand in the quiet, notice that the planning worked, and open the door on time.