Only like the productivity shame we feel when we think we haven't accomplished enough, time anxiety is the feeling that you don't have enough time to achieve your goals or that you're not investing in all your time to the fullest.
"Time is what we want most, but what we use is the worst." - British writer William Penn.
In this productivity-obsessed world, it's common to feel like your schedule and tasks are endless, but time anxiety is not just a temporary spike in anxieties during the workday; it's an emotional burden that weighs down our days, drives us to procrastinate on necessary tasks, and can lead to burnout.
Unlike other burdens that weigh on our days, no one can control time, so you must find a way to deal with the anxiety about the uncontrollable nature of time and learn to feel positive about yourself and your work.
Why do you worry about lack of time?
Time anxiety is the annoying feeling that you do not have enough time and are not investing your time enough, but to understand this feeling, you must first understand your relationship with time.
When we are children, time is meaningless to us, and while we follow a schedule to some extent, our days are often spent playing and learning without a specific program. Still, when we reach adolescence, time becomes increasingly important, so we have classrooms, sports, hobbies, and friends we want to spend our time with.
Moreover, during this stage, we hear a lot from adults that wasting our time will destroy our lives. Suddenly, when we reach age, time becomes our most important and scarce resource, and we find ourselves trying to balance university, work, family, and other serious responsibilities that require our time and attention.
The older we get, the more time we have to take into account to become something we try to control, but because of irony, the more we focus on the lack of time, the narrower it will feel. It means the more you worry about time, the more you will feel that time is something you have to worry about, so time anxiety is a vicious cycle.
Psychologists call this phenomenon "ironic process theory," which is the process by which you think about the thoughts you are trying to avoid. Therefore, it does not help to tell someone not to worry about time. The more you try to stop feeling anxious about time, the more worried you will be.
What sorts of time anxiety affect your present, future, and happiness?
Instead of ignoring time anxiety, you should understand its impact on your thoughts, behavior, and habits. That is because the effect of time anxiety goes beyond feeling stressed during your day. Time anxiety manifests itself in several forms. Here are some examples:
1. Daily time anxiety
It is when you feel that there is not enough time during the day, and you feel that you are in a hurry, stressed, and have tasks beyond your capacity.
2. Future time anxiety
It includes all the doubts and the possibilities your thoughts draw, so you feel powerless in the face of things that may or may not happen in the future that depend on your actions today.
3. Existential time anxiety
It refers to anxiety because of the limited time you will live and the fact that no matter what you do or hurry, as the end is the same.
We want our lives to be more meaningful today than ever before, which makes us feel anxious about how we spend our days in the present and how our actions will now affect our future. The solution is to focus on the things we do in the present. For example, you can set a schedule that supports your goals, follow better habits, eliminate distractions that waste your time, and improve your ability to estimate the time that projects will require. Let the essential work be your priority, so you feel that you have accomplished it at the end of the day. However, while these strategies will help you invest your time in the best investment, they do not address the crux of the problem.
How to deal with time anxiety?
The essence of overcoming time anxiety is to perceive, understand, and then act, and from this standpoint, you can use programs that help you deal with time anxiety, so you do not wonder at the end of each day how time has passed.
Specially designed programs can monitor the time using applications, browsing sites, and implementing projects to provide detailed reports on your habits, which sheds light on the things that consume your time.
That may help you a lot to relieve time anxiety. Still, be careful that monitoring your time increases your anxiety and tension instead of wasting them. On the other hand, a lack of awareness of how you spend your time causes you the same amount of stress and may be the main reason for time anxiety.
Consider the situation from the perspective of someone on a weight-loss diet. One cannot follow the method of obsessively counting every calorie for a period without getting stressed, but completely ignoring eating habits will not produce the desired results. Finding a balance between awareness and behavior is the key to carrying on with your life without impeding one another. Here are five steps to help you overcome time anxiety and lead a better life:
1. Acknowledge your relationship with time
It's often been a very long time since you last thought about what time means to you, but time anxiety is exacerbated when you ignore or try to manipulate the way time affects your day, so the first step is to accept some facts about time:
- Time exists.
- You cannot stop or slow down time.
- All you can control is your actions in the future.
This step may sound silly, but acknowledging the impact of time on your life is an effective way to curb anxiety and move on.
2. Determine how to spend the time you find appropriate
One of the causes of time anxiety is not making the best use of your time, but you must first identify what that is for you. To do so, respond to the following questions:
- What does a productive day look like to you?
- Which tasks help you enter a flow state at work?
- What hobbies and activities do you enjoy without just being distracted?
Using the “Six Spoke theory” list of entrepreneur Darius Foroux may also help you by categorizing the activities as follows:
- Body: What do you like to do to feel energized and well?
- Mindfulness: Which activities are a good challenge in your mind?
- Love: Who are the people you love spending time with?
- Work: What work or tasks make you feel good?
- Money: How do you want to spend the money you have?
- Fun: Which activities or hobbies do you find very interesting?
3. Understand the mistake you make while planning
Adding many activities to your list will increase time anxiety if you are not careful. The goal here is to be realistic when you choose the things you do during the time available. Unfortunately, most of us are not good at planning. We believe we can plan every hour of our work period, but studies show that most people work productively for a maximum of 2.5 hours during their day. People spend their time working as follows:
- 15% of the time in meetings.
- 25-30% of the time using a computer, email, video calls, or chat.
- 40% of the time on multiple tasks with less than perfect productivity.
That does not include time spent on breaks or non-work-related activities.
This situation applies to your time outside of work as well. You may have 5 hours between returning from work and going to sleep, but it makes no sense to plan it as full free time without considering other activities required for housework, such as washing dishes, shopping, cleaning, and others.
The purpose of mentioning all this is not to make you feel more anxious but to help you understand that there are restrictions that you must consider, as time is limited and cannot be prolonged to complete your to-do list.
4. Make time for important things
Time anxiety may cause you to feel helpless, but the worst thing you can do is to give in to this feeling, waiting for the motivation to spend your time better. Psychologists have found that motivation does not precede action, but action precedes motivation; that is, you must get up and work to feel motivated and happy.
Think about the activities you think are good to spend time on and decide how you will add them to your day. That does not necessarily mean setting a specific time for them. Instead, consider how meaningful tasks can be added to your actual day. For example, decide whether to complete them in the morning before work, during your trip to work, or after dinner and after your children sleep.
Planning your day this way helps you remove distractions and time wasters that increase your anxiety. When you accept that your time is limited, it will become easier for you to turn off the TV or close social media applications and get up to practice a helpful activity.
5. Seeking satisfaction rather than maximizing benefits
We often ignore how we think about the future when discussing time anxiety. We get nervous thinking about whether we make the best choice. Many people think about making the best possible decisions, while there is no such thing as a “perfect” decision. Psychologists distinguish between two types of individuals according to their way of making decisions:
- The people who choose so that they get the most benefit in the future.
- People who choose only by their own standards in the present moment.
Trying to invest your time in every minute of your life will cause you more anxiety. Instead, think about the activities you identified in step two and the schedule you planned in step three and determine the best way to spend your time now. Studies have shown that people who seek the greatest benefit usually make worse decisions and suffer from anxiety and stress.
Time does not stop
We all want to spend our time in the best way possible, but worrying about every minute and every second is more harmful than helpful. As the writer Maria Edgeworth said in the past, “If we manage minutes, years manage themselves, so be realistic about your time and know the things that make you feel like you have accomplished, and let life take its course.”
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