In the old days pre-mobile, if we fixed an appointment to meet someone somewhere sometime, we would just show up.

Today, we message while on the way. “See you in 5, sorry late.” And we lie through our teeth as to the reason why we are late. Bad traffic. Meeting over-ran. Truth is, we are now living life compressed into 5-minute chunks.

We change venues of meetings at the last minute because we can. We book everything at the last minute – did you read that article about a Priceline survey that shows that 82% of iPhone and iPad users are confirming their hotels within a day of arriving in a new city?

Some are even booking while on the way to a hotel – I did that in New Zealand couple of years ago with my Blackberry and later found my phone charges cost more than the bed-and-breakfast I found while on the road.

Living in this super-connected, hyper-instant world, it is easy to believe we can do everything last minute because we can. It is also easy to take things for granted and overlook the details.

Take author and innovator Guy Kawasaki, who says he travels 75% of the year. Yet he overlooked the fact that he needed a visa for Vietnam and nearly didn’t make it for the Abacus conference in Ho Chi Minh City last week.

Today, I received a call from someone who said she couldn’t get on a flight to attend Web In Travel because she overlooked the detail that her passport did not have a six-month validity. And so she’s trying to get a new passport and re-book her flight.

Yet another colleague from Yunnan, China, emailed me yesterday to say, she can make it to Web In Travel after all but now the flights are full, and could I get her a hotel room and she will try get a flight out?

I am as guilty as the next person, probably more. On Thursday, when I checked in for my Cathay Pacific flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Hong Kong, I told the check-in staff I was going to Hong Kong – no-brainer, right? She handed me my boarding pass and baggage ticket. I took them without bothering about the details.

When I arrived at Hong Kong airport, I waited for my baggage which never arrived. I checked with the Cathay ground staff and he asked me for my baggage ticket. Turned out the staff in Ho Chi Minh City had checked my bag right through to Singapore – I had a reservation for an evening flight home the next day.

If I had bothered to check the details, this would not have happened. But I didn’t count on the staff being so super-efficient that she would check my bag through to the final destination on my reservation without asking me.

So lesson learnt – pay attention to the details.

Details are, of course, super important when it comes to organizing events – and in the six years of running Web In Travel, you think I’d have gotten better at not procrastinating and looking into the details. Yet, the night before the first event kicks off, I am still procrastinating – and writing this when I should be doing something dreadfully important like looking after the details of the event.

Thank goodness for the last minute – or else nothing would get done.

Featured image credit (Urgent): Ockra/iStock