A chance encounter with a parking attendant in Bethesda, MD gave Thomas Friedman the idea to write Thank You For Being Late book. The discussions and email exchanges with Bojia made him look at his writing process and how he made sense of the world around him and how the world – a well oiled machine – works. In a busy world where we all operate in silos, no matter how much information we have at our fingertips, a few minutes of enforced time-off can do wonders. One such instance sparked the idea for Thank You for Being Late that chronicles one of the most turbulent and dynamic times in our history.
Thomas Friedman equates the current, concurrent changes in climate, World demographics, and technology to the times of Gutenberg and information liberation that resulted from it.
Thomas L. Friedman is a three-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for his work with The New York Times and the author of six bestselling books, including The World Is Flat.
Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations
Author: Thomas L. Friedman
Hardcover: 496 pages
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (November 22, 2016)
ISBN-10: 0374273537, 978-0374273538
Thank You for Being Late Summary
Thomas Friedman begins with a brief reminder to us about our hectic life and points out that the real answers lie in the pauses, which increasingly are becoming less as we refuse to jump off the merry go round. He tells us a story of Bojia and how their interactions forced him to look at his own view of the world around him. He tells the readers that it is impossible to make sense of anything unless they widen their horizons. Being an expert at one thing doesn’t mean anything anymore, he says to ABC News, as “the only way you will understand the changing nature of geopolitics today is if you meld what is happening in computing with what is happening in telecommunications with what is happening in the environment with what is happening in globalization with what is happening in demographics.”
The rest of the book is about his view of how the machine works, right now and how the most important trends will affect us and future generations. Part II of the book shows us that Technology, Globalization, and Climate Change are the three forces that changing this world at breakneck speed, according to him.
He then delves into evaluating how these changes or what he calls accelerations are affecting us all. From small towns to offices in the commercial and industrial capitals of the world. Our only choice is to adapt to these changes and be prepared to rapid change. As an example of accelerating changes, his comment early on in the book, “Oh my god, the parking attendant is now my competition”, referring to the attendant’s blog captures how technology has liberated many and equaled the playing field.
But there is a solution to cushion the blow of this rapid change, the last part of the book goes into how he thinks government, employers and others can prepare for these accelerations. For people, he suggests sticking to the every man for himself mantra and make lifelong learning as the new constant, compared to study for the first quarter, work for the next and retire in the last.
Thank You for Being Late Critics’ Reviews
Publishers Weekly says that the book presents good, well researched information. But the writing style and lengthy background information about circumstances of the interviews and stories, buries the good information too deep in the text.
David Henderson at Econolib agrees to the author’s views and sees merit in his observations about the changing world, but he objects to Friedman’s solutions that he thinks are not argues well enough.