My Hurry Sickness and Time Anxiety

I received some wisdom from an old school friend this week. We hadn’t spoken for years, so it was fun to reminisce. I recalled sitting next to her in an English exam, where I noticed that she had written four sides of paper when I had not even written one. She laughed and said that her husband, who is a writer, always tells her that it’s quality over speed.

This was a reassuring statement. Not just for writing but for life and work. That we maybe need to slow down to make the improvements, not just go quicker. I struggle with what is known as Hurry Sickness or Time Urgency. I feel that time is always running out. That I have to get everything completed before I can relax. I put too much on my todo list for the day, anxiously concerned that I’m not going to complete the race.

The battle with time

I am not alone. Professor Richard Jolly of the London Business School discovered that 95% of managers suffered from Hurry Sickness. We work fast, and then we stress out when we hit a problem or things don’t go how we had planned. We think this inconvenience is going to slow us down. And we don’t want to slow down.

The white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland had some wise words for us Hurriers. “The faster I go, the more behinder I get”. Like him, we check our watches to continually tell ourselves that we are late. It’s too late to complete your tasks, it’s too late to be able to hit that project deadline, it’s too late to achieve that goal.

You create a host of problems

We get behind because we are looking ahead rather than doing our best work right now in the moment. Or we are multitasking, again not giving our full attention to each task or conversation. Our rushing can create mistakes so we have to do things again. Our bodies and minds struggle to keep up with the speed, get sick, then we fall behind further.

Our cortisol (stress hormone) can remain high when in hurry mode. It can lead to health problems of tiredness and irritability, right through to anxiety and depression.

 Manage activities, not time

So who is running the show here? Us or the clock? It’s as if this external mechanism is controlling our lives and that we are physically tied to it. We therefore think that better time management is the answer. But time can’t be controlled, it’s always moving in one direction. And we too are also moving forward.

 If we can’t control and manage time, what can we control? Our activities. We could thoughtfully choose what we do and how much we focus on each activity. Calmly working on each task. Being present and fully in the zone, giving our full self. Being aware of time passing, but not let it be the boss.

Through purposely slowing down, you may even find that you speed up.