Why Bailing Is Actually Bad For You

When your diary is so full it makes you nauseous, cancelling last minute feels like sweet relief. But what impact is your increasingly unreliable lifestyle actually having on your happiness?

Out on bail

If this scenario sounds completely foreign and your own plan-keeping etiquette is more in line with the social rigour of a 1950s royal, you’re the exception – or you’re deluding yourself. Data out of the UK shows that the average Brit follows through on just 50 percent of their plans. And while there’s no similar data available for SA, you can bet we’re in the same league.

Perhaps more surprising is that, while flaking may deliver a delicious short-term pay-off (couch + PJs + ShowMax = bliss, after all), the constant, seemingly innocuous making and breaking of social plans isn’t doing your health any favours. “It’s becoming an epidemic,” says Dr Andrea Bonior, psychology professor and author of The Friendship Fix: The Complete Guide to Choosing, Losing and Keeping Up With Your Friends. “And the more socially acceptable this cancelling of plans becomes, the more people will do it, regardless of whether they like how it’s making them feel.”

For all the expert corroboration that the struggle is real, it hasn’t always been this way. Tell anyone over the age of 50 you cancelled on your bestie with three hours’ notice because you realised a new episode of Ray Donovan was ready on Catch Up and they’d be horrified. That’s not to say we’ve all degenerated into a bunch of hateful sh*ts, but what’s considered good manners has shifted, especially now that we can arrange plans by tapping a screen – and therefore cancel them just as easily.