Time anxiety is no joke! It takes many forms but often it’s the invasive panic that time is running out and you should be doing something differently with that in mind. It’s something I experience pretty often. I’ve often felt like for some reason, the days pass by more quickly for me than for most people, and that legitimately freaks me out.
I suspect I’m not the only one. In fact, I’m pretty confident about that because when I spoke about time anxiety at Truth in Comedy the other month, so many people came up to me afterwards to let me know how much they related to me sharing about my experience with time anxiety. It’s something that can be difficult to put into words, which is why I suspect we don’t talk about it more.
“One of the great ironies of a bucket list is that we make them because we know our lives are finite. But when our lists include all seven wonders of the world, all versions of that list, and all 197 countries… maybe we’re kidding ourselves. Making ourselves feel some sensation of immortality if the things we can do are endless.”
Sharing my whole storytelling performance from Truth in Comedy a couple months ago. This was a great night!
That said, here are some ideas, thoughts, and practices that have helped me cope with the experience.
“The secret of life is to enjoy the passing of time.”
This James Taylor quote helps me realize that the passage of time is what makes it enjoyable.
Life is a bit like music. Any individual note by itself is just a sound. It’s the movement from one note to the next, then the one after that creates a song.
Likewise, life becomes an unfolding story when you let one moment set up the next one and the next.
The beauty of seeing my kids grow up comes from seeing them leave behind younger stages. The beauty of my biggest accomplishments comes from the struggle at the start.
Yes, it’s sad that the passing of time has forced me to say goodbye to all of my grandparents, to older relatives, to role models, and to friends who’ve passed too soon. But it’s also introduced me to my children, my nephews, and new friends.
I’ve come to really love stories told at an epic time scale, like Boyhood, East of Eden, Pachinko, or Demon Copperhead because when viewed in full, even a very difficult life can start to look very beautiful when you take the big picture look at it.
Drinking in what’s in front of me.
Time seems to run faster when your head is down. Maybe Ferris Bueller’s advice shouldn’t be devalued for its simplicity. Look around once in a while. Or pretty often.
On those days where I simply try to blitz through as many activities as possible in as little time as possible, I always arrive at the end wondering where it all went. I don’t want this to be true of life as a whole, so I try to minimize the amount of days like this.
I actually start out a good number of mornings simply trying to meditate a little bit on the fleeting nature of the day, the things I’ll miss from this era of life when it’s all done, and the gift of the day.
There’s a fine line between contemplating impermanence and obsessing over it, but I’ve found that keeping enough of it in sight is most helpful. If nothing else, it helps redirect thought away from worrying over things that aren’t ultimately important and instead prioritize what matters.
Accepting it.
“The time will pass either way.”
I heard someone say this phrase helped them overcome a barrier to starting a project that seemed dauntingly long. It can also be a mantra to counter time anxiety.
I think the key to dealing with time anxiety isn’t so much curing it or making it go away as it is learning to accept it and integrate all of the helpful things it could bring while minimizing its disruptiveness.
It’s hard to mention this without shouting out one of the most helpful resources I’ve found related to this, which is Oliver Burkeman’s book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. That book very eloquently calls out all the ways we often fall for mental illusions that we can somehow beat the passing of time and thus our own mortality. It’s kind of an anti-productivity book disguised as a productivity book you often see at airport bookstores.
Refuse to live in a rush.
One of my favorite paradoxical experiences with travel is what happens when you visit many African, Mediterranean, Latin, or Island cultures (and many others!) People aren’t so beholden to the clock. Instead of acting like they’re always late or that they’ve always got to keep an eye on time, they move at a more relaxed pace. It’s like they’ve got an abundance of time.
The funny thing is, they end up being right! As they move slower, time seems to do the same. The days pass slower in Costa Rica, the Philippines, Portugal, Uganda, and so on.
The “one more time” mental exercise
There’s a thought experiment I’m fond of.
You imagine that you lived out your life, reached the very end, wound up in Heaven and get told that there’s some more paperwork to process. Before you get in, you can sit in some waiting room, where there’s just a bunch of old magazines, or you can relive a day in your life. You can’t change anything. Just relive it and enjoy the experience.
Then you pretend this is that day.
You’d look at everything different, huh? You can mix this experiment up several ways. Imagine what today will look like in your memory fifteen years from now, with the lens of nostalgia applied. Just remember that it all ends up something you can look back on one day.