You can know exactly what time it is and still feel that your life is happening too late.

Knowing the time tells you nothing about whether you are on time for your own life. The sense of lateness is not measured against a clock but against a private schedule you absorbed somewhere: by this age, by this stage, by now. That schedule usually came from comparison rather than from anything you chose, which is why it keeps convicting you regardless of what you achieve.

Try to name where the deadline came from. Whose life were you using as the standard, and did their circumstances resemble yours at all? The feeling rarely disappears on command, but seeing it as an inherited measure rather than a fact makes it easier to carry and easier to set down.