Sometimes You Should be Late
Being late can feel awful. Rushing can, too. It's the dilemma of urgency culture—and this book offers a way out.
Sometimes You Should Be Late isn’t about becoming a sloth, cute as they are. It’s about slowing down enough to choose how we move through time.
Don't expect 'five easy steps' to master the clock or 'time hacks' to optimize your morning routine. Instead it's a guide to help you decide who you want to be even, and especially, when time feels tight.
Coming July 7th–join the slow rebellion now by pre-ordering it here!
Let's choose how we show up, just not when
About the Book
We live in a culture that treats speed as virtue and lateness as failure. Many of us move through our days with a low-grade sense of being behind on emails, text threads, deadlines, relationships, even our own lives.
Sometimes You Should Be Late challenges the idea that urgency or speed brings us closer to the kind of person we want to be. Blending research, stories from government and everyday life, and practical reframes, the book explores how our relationship with time shapes stress, judgment, and relationships of all kinds...and how we can choose differently.
This isn’t a call to abandon responsibility or stop caring about punctuality or productivity. In fact, speed and timeliness can be genuine ways of caring. Instead, it’s an invitation to reclaim choice. To slow down before rushing costs us something, to show up with authenticity instead of performance, and to relate to others and ourselves with more patience and humanity.
As we move through our short lives, what if allowing ourselves to be late, not always, but sometimes, is how we find our way back to ourselves?
Origins
I lived a frantic, high-tempo life until a concussion in 2017 forced me to slow down. I never would have chosen it, but the years of recovery revealed something unexpected: greater clarity about what actually mattered.
In April 2025, I wrote a Psychology Today article with the same title, and it struck a nerve. Readers shared stories of recognition (“If I hadn’t let myself feel rushed, I would have been a far better parent”) alongside pushback (“Aren’t you just justifying flakiness?!”).
Together, these experiences convinced me that slowing down isn’t a failure of discipline, it’s how we remember what matters.
This book is for anyone who feels constantly behind and believes there is more to life than optimizing. But it's also for those who are often the first to arrive.
How can it be both? Well urgency culture diminishes both. It shames those who are late, even when they’re showing up with care or juggling a lot. And it also flattens the care of the punctual ones, branding them as rigid and time-bound. This book is about reclaiming the dignity of both.
My hope is that this book will:
- Help you better recognize your own patterns and values around time, productivity, and urgency.
- Offer practical reframes for busy lives that help you more consistently show up how you want to.
- Empower you to influence the cultures you’re part of, so we can find more care and kindness amid the ticking clocks. Goodness knows our world needs it.