Songfacts®:

• Here, Hayley Williams pokes fun at her poor time management skills. In the first verse, she lists some occasions where she wanted to do some meaningful things.
  
  Take some flowers to my neighbor
  Not show up to the party empty-handed
  Walk the dog a little further than the driveway tonight
  Send a card with my condolences
  
  But in each instance, she ran out of time.
  
• Williams feels her sense of anxiety around time management has become worse since the pandemic. "Like, how does a person who is self-aware enough, but also politically and culturally aware, socially aware, how do you even pick what thing to focus on and maybe devote your life to in some respect, when everything is an emergency?" she questioned to Genius. "It does feel like there's not enough time in the day, in the month, in the year, to fix everything."
• In the second verse, Williams confesses some reasons for her lateness: oversleeping, traffic jam, spilt coffee, car accident.
  
  Then on the chorus, Williams questions if she's a "selfish prick" or just bad at time management. "Future thinking makes me anxious and past thinking makes me sad," Williams reflected to NME. "I don't know why, because we've had such a beautiful journey together, all three of us even the bad times. So much came out of it that was good."
• "Running Out of Time" was inspired by a certain Taylor Swift. Back in her late teens, Williams used to hang out with Swift, as they both lived in Nashville and were experiencing success for the first time. She recalled Swift had a little closet filled with birthday and holiday gifts she could send to people to show her appreciation and spread joy. "I was like, 'Oh my God, my life is so not together,'" Williams recalled to Apple Music's Zane Lowe. "I was like, 'I can barely remember to send someone a card or flowers.' There are still Christmas gifts at my house that I have not sent to my friends just sitting there in the back of my closet. Two of the people I was supposed to give a gift to, I was like, 'Sorry, I forgot to put [the gifts] in my suitcase so you still don't get a gift.'"
  
  Williams wishes she was the kind of person who had everything together and always found the time to just drop by with a bouquet of flowers. "That kind of a thing, that is my idealized self," she said.
• Paramore recorded "Running Out Of Time" for This Is Why. Williams explores a similar theme in the next track on the album, "C'est Comme Ça," where she states the need for chaos in her life.
• Paramore played "Running Out Of Time" live for the first time during an album release show at the Grand Ole Opry House on February 6, 2023. "This is a song about how I'm always late to everything," Williams told the audience to introduce the track. "It's not that deep... it's really not that deep. Unless you want to think about the planet dying, and then it can be that deep."
• In the Ivanna Borin-directed video, Hayley Williams is seen struggling to conjure up magic in a recording studio. As she tries to work her musical prowess, the drum kit and guitar suddenly loom over Williams, towering at 10 feet and causing her to scramble for cover. Seeking refuge in a guitar case, the singer is transported into an alternate dimension where she joins Yorke and Farro. The trio embark on a journey through a series of vividly colorful and surreal landscapes, each more fantastical than the last.