Every day, even on weekends, I set three alerts within 15 minutes of each other to ensure I’m out of bed by my “real” alarm. For dates, weddings and big work meetings, I carve out two hours for getting ready. Not because I need two hours (nowhere close, really), but because I can’t stand the feeling of being rushed.
And the only days I ever spend in bed are the ones when I’m too sick or hungover to move; otherwise, I have to be doing something. I have an obsession with time – or more specifically, anxiety about the inevitable lack of it. Turns out, I’m not alone.
“People who lead very meaning-driven lives tend to struggle with the idea of wasting time, be it theirs or someone else’s,” says Dr Alex Lickerman, co-author of The Ten Worlds: The New Psychology of Happiness. Experts call this “time anxiety” and it’s a fixation on the passage of time, he says. It can take a few different forms: you might have an inability to sleep in, feel stressed by uncontrollable time-sucks (even when you have nowhere to be) or worry about showing up late to anything and everything. “When you base your happiness and success on your ability to be purposeful, to add value in some way, you feel very unsafe just watching the seconds tick by,” Lickerman says.
Running Like Clockwork
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