Life Is Speeding By. Why Do We Tell Ourselves to Move Faster?
Slow vibes. Photo by Quinn Corte, August 2024.
Life Is Speeding By. Why Do We Tell Ourselves to Move Faster?
Deadlines are dead to me.
Don't get me wrong. For nearly 40 years, deadlines served me well as a student and then a project manager. Planning things out and maintaining a sense of urgency felt necessary to keep moving forward, especially when I was tired or unmotivated. And let’s face it, checking boxes felt good and looked good.
All those years, I was managing my life. Making up goals for myself, applying pressure, doling out rewards and consequences based on performance. I used logic to decide how long something should take, and then would push, shame, and rush myself to meet my phony deadlines.
Sometimes I chose deadlines based on convenient timing. For example, “I would like to find a new home before my lease runs out in September…but not too long before.” Or, “I’d like to get over this cold before my trip.”
Sometimes I set deadlines based on age. Society likes to say there are “correct” ages at which we should graduate college, have successful careers, get married, become parents, buy a house, or whatever. On the path to finding myself, I hit some of my “ideal” age milestones and totally missed others.
I used to feel like a failure when I missed an arbitrary, self-imposed deadline—even when the timing was completely outside of my control. I felt like I wasn’t good enough. Didn’t move fast enough. Didn’t try hard enough. That my life didn’t look the way it should.
Enough of that.
Life isn’t supposed to be managed! It isn’t supposed to follow a schedule.
And despite what society tells us, it’s actually not possible to “manage” time. Time—and life—are wild horses that can’t be tamed.
So that’s why I’ve stopped setting deadlines.
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What if we abandoned all our beliefs about acceptable timing and just lived at a pace that felt really, really good? What if planning isn’t actually serving us, but weighing us down with impossible expectations? What if a constant sense of urgency is making us sick and resentful?
I’m reminded of the early days of the pandemic. In one hot minute, we were all relieved of the illusion that we have control over our lives. For awhile, we couldn’t make any plans. We had zero control over the timing of anything. Our immediate response was to lose our shit. And then…we started to feel the freedom.
If you relate to this newsletter, it’s very likely that you have ambition. You have drive and grit and are good at making things happen. I imagine you have dreams and goals, and you probably get overwhelmed trying to do everything you want to do.
If that’s you, I invite you to consider that you don’t actually need more urgency.
The world around us is like a raging river. Everything is rushing forward so damn fast. Aging happens in the blink of an eye.
We don’t need to hurry up. We need to slow down.
You may worry that if you stop pressuring yourself, you’ll stay on the couch forever. You might believe your life won’t amount to anything if you don’t set deadlines. If these are your fears, try to have faith in yourself. You long to have a meaningful life; to be in the world and do things. You’re not lazy—you’re just exhausted.
If you aren’t able to act right now, it’s probably not because you need a deadline. It’s more likely that you’re grieving, resting, or in transition. Let yourself stay there as long as you need. And know that one day, hope and curiosity will get you moving. They will organically nudge you along, lighting up the next tiny step in your journey.
You know when you’re running late, and your dog or toddler suddenly stops on the sidewalk and sits down in protest? And the more you demand and tug and beg them to MOVE, the more they dig in their heels? That’s the dynamic here. We don’t move faster when we pressure ourselves to hurry; we feel threatened, and that makes us freeze or hide or fight back.
When we stop applying pressure, things start to flow.
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I recently did an audit of all the things I wasn’t “doing fast enough.” All the paperwork, all the projects, all the big life steps. I let it all go.
I let go of all the things I thought I should be doing that I didn’t actually want to do (like networking). I started doing more “pointless” things that felt good (like reading novels by the river). And a funny thing happened. As my nervous system slowly relaxed, things in my life started drifting forward.
I don’t actually need—or want—my life to move faster. I don’t have to wear myself out by paddling like crazy through a raging river. It’s already nearly impossible to appreciate the scenery as it flies by.
Life is in beautiful flow, even when we don’t push ourselves. All we have to do is be open, let the river carry us, and steer our boats towards joy.
Your turn:
What aren’t you doing fast enough? Make a list.
Is there anything on your list that you can let go of? Cross it off.
Is there anything on your list that’s naturally moving forward, without extra effort? Cross it off.
Of each thing that’s left, where does your sense of urgency come from? Does this goal benefit or suffer from your deadlines and pressure?
You might also like:
How to Move Forward Without Planning, Deadlines, or Pressure