The kind of recurring thought that never really leaves you: "It's too late." Too late to publish a book, too late to start a company, too late to learn a new language. This is called time anxiety.
While death anxiety is the fear of running out of time, time anxiety is the fear of wasting your time. It's an obsession about spending your time in the most meaningful way possible.
Beating time anxiety means shifting our focus from outcomes to output so we can spend our energy on things we can actually control.
A few truths should be accepted:
- Time exists and we can't change that.
- Time will move forward.
While purpose in life is an important factor, spending too much mental energy on finding it rather than doing things that make use happy can be anxiety-inducing.
Define what "time well spent" means to you:
sit down, and think about what really makes you happy and gets you in the flow, without overthinking about how feasible the final outcome would be. Just think of your output and how it makes you feel to work on producing it. Create a short list of activities you really enjoy and that bring value to yourself or to the world.Make space for these moments:
Think of where you will incorporate these moments into your life.Cut out time consuming distractions:
You should focus on these matters which produce outputs, rather than the ones which are regarded as the input matters, such as reading, watching and so on.
the moments we spend mindlessly scrolling on social media or watching random videos do contribute to time anxiety. Do a quick audit of you content consumption patterns and try to cut out the amount of time you spend in an input rather than output mode.
