Thank You For Being Late Book Summary

BookSummaryClub Blog Thank You For Being Late Book Summary

The Lowdown: This Thank you for Being Late Summary is based on the popular book from Thomas L. Friedman, showing how technology is outpacing our ability to adapt and causing us to lose the ability to interact with each other in person.

Back in the year 2007, Friedman had a breakfast get together with some friends, and although he made it there on time, the rest of his friends were all late.  His life had become so structured and high paced, that he had forgotten an important element to growth, which is self-reflection.

Often times, if we have free time, we are going on-line to look at various social media platforms or to go into a variety of apps to play some games.  We tell ourselves that this mindless activity allows us to relax, but what it actually does is fill time so we can’t take time to actually think.

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Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations
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Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations
  • Audible Audiobook
  • Thomas L. Friedman (Author) – Oliver Wyman (Narrator)
  • English (Publication Language)
  • 11/22/2016 (Publication Date) – Macmillan Audio (Publisher)

The Three Main Lessons you’ll learn from Thank You for Being Late include:

  1. Technology is changing faster than we can change
  2. Technology allows information to flow rapidly and helps influence your decisions
  3. Is technology compromising our Moral behavior

Lesson One: Technology is changing faster than we can Change

There is no denying the fact that the advancements in technology have made an overwhelming number of positive impacts within society.  Between the advances in vehicles, medicine, learning and business, we have more information today than at any other time in history.

With this being the case, businesses and organizations continue to push technological advances as fast as possible.  What happens in this scenario, though, is the changes go unchecked, because they are happening so rapidly.  Some of these changes turn out to be more detrimental than anticipated (for example, the use of drones by the military).  With there not being time to analyze and think, we live with the ramifications of the consequences and being reactive, rather than pro-active.

Lesson Two: Technology allows information to flow rapidly and helps influence your decisions

With the ability to have information whenever and wherever you want, technology has allowed us to have access to more information than ever.  And with this information, we are also giving information back to the companies which help monitor what we look at and help determine what we then see.  If we enjoy what we are seeing, then we will spend more time engaged with what we see thru our phone and the internet, which leaves less time to spend with others.

How we spend our time is our choice, and technology is making it to where we don’t have to interact with anyone thru interpersonal relationships.  The more technology draws us into its sphere, the less and less we tether ourselves to other humans.  The rapidness at which this is occurring truly shows the correlation of how technology is completely influencing our lives.

Lesson Three: Is Technology compromising our Moral Behavior?

Because technology is changing so quickly, as discussed earlier within this summary, we generally just accept the new changes without taking time to determine if we should accept it or not.  Technology is allowing us to accomplish more each and every day, and with our time being filled by activities, we don’t take any time to ponder and think if what we are doing is the right thing to do.

When this occurs, our Morals become compromised; when we willing accept something without critical thinking, we have given up the right to have the Moral high ground.  We have to ground ourselves with others and think thru both the positive AND the negative effects of any technological change.  If we lose the human element of technology, then we lose the ability to apply the intelligence in a well-meaning manner, but rather feed into the world enterprise.

My Personal Takeaway

I am very thankful for the advances in technology, as technology tends to lead to a more enriched and prosperous life.

With this being the case, taking time to think and ponder what these changes mean to each of us is a vital step in knowing how far we should push the advances in technology.

The ability to interact with other humans in a civilized and meaningful way is not something which should be taken for granted, and we should be intentional in making this happen.  Losing our own Moral Compass is what has brought devastation to the world before, and we should learn from those mistakes.

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Put into Action

Be Intentional in spending time with others, away from technology.

Pro-Actively think thru the consequence of each advancement and ensure you want to partake in it, rather than just flowing with the masses.

You should consider buying this book if…

You need a book which will help reset your own day to day interactions with technology.  Thank You for Being Late will open your eyes and challenge you to think about your own life, and how you are letting technology influence your daily decisions.

Hey, I’m Erik… a Swedish university student, marketing professional, and life-long learner. Here at BookSummaryClub I summarize my favorite non-fiction books into easily digested posts. Hope you like what you’re reading!

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