on missing deadlines
Or: when the tide says it’s time
We say we missed the deadline. But maybe the deadline missed us.
Maybe it needs a walk before it was willing to talk. Because time wants to be our friend. And until we treat it like one, it’ll feel strained.
We aren’t late. Our relationship with time just needs work.
Time isn’t a taskmaster. It’s a tide.
It moves with or without our consent—but it moves truer when we stop pretending we’re in charge.
Old surfers understand this.
Some things don’t arrive “on time” because they’re not meant to. Because they’re still becoming. Because the work is ripening in ways the calendar can’t track.
Natural farmers understand this.
And sometimes, because something in us needed to pause. To wait for the subtle. shift.
We don’t fall behind. We fall within.
Deadlines have their place—but not in the marrow. Not in the kind of work that lives.
(It’s all alive. Even time.)
What we need isn’t more deadline. We need more lifeline.
More ways of working that honor cycles over clocks. Tides over timers. Becoming over producing.
Especially in business.
And if you think that sounds ridiculous—ask yourself: how much do you profit from profit? Profit wants to dominate time. Or thinks it can.
But when the tide returns—as it always does—we’ll know. We’ll see the invitation return:
Will we open our arms to time this time?