⌛ Time anxiety is real, and accepting it sets you free

​Read the essay on the web ↗​

Have you ever gone to sleep feeling like you didn’t do enough? And worst of all, you wake up terrified of the day ahead because you fear repeating the same failure.

It doesn’t matter if you’re just getting started in your career or if you’ve already been there for over a decade. The feeling of time slipping through your hands like sand will hit you in any season of life.

We don’t control what happens to us—we can only hope to react in the best possible way. But when too many things are happening at the same time, it can feel overwhelming and paralyzing.

How to stop time anxiety

I’m in a season of life where there are many new moving parts, and as always, I have high expectations of myself. So in the last couple of weeks, time anxiety silently settled in the back of my mind. After a few days of it not leaving, I had to remember how I’d gotten rid of it last time.

The answer suddenly hit me because just a month ago I was talking to a friend about this concept: the liberation of defeat.

Sometimes life can act as our Zen teacher. It will not lighten the burden of the student, but it will make it so heavy that they will put it down.

In other words, if something is not flowing regardless of your best efforts, then maybe you need to let go. Once you know what you don’t want, you can Start saying No.

But saying no isn’t enough. Accepting that you’ll never be on top of everything is the other half of it. Let go of the idea of “I’ll be ok when…” or “Things will flow when…”

Defeat is liberating because you no longer have to fight back. Now, instead, you can fight forward. This acceptance becomes your source of strength:

Making the most of our time isn’t about checking off more tasks, but about experiencing our lives so we can be more present, more alive, and more engaged with the ones we love.

Remember that on your deathbed you won’t regret not doing more. You’ll regret not being more.

And remember that time will test you.

🎯 The 1% Practice of the Week

If you are struggling with time anxiety, I’ve got one of my favorite mantras for you. I stole it from Victoria Moran:

Find a way to remember this at different moments of your day.

Some resources I want to leave you with:

• My random reminders app for mantras like the one above: Minder for iPhone.
• One of my favorite podcast episodes about the topic: Time Anxiety: The Illusion of Urgency That’s Stealing Your Joy with Chris Guillebeau​
• And the song that gave this issue its last line: Let You Fade by Linkin Park​