Stop rushing and start living with purpose.

Rushing is an approach to life that heightens stress and anxiety and reduces access to our cognitive resources. 

It takes us away from the ideal state of being calm and alert and instead leaves us feeling tired and wired. 

Let’s explore how to eliminate rushing from your life.  

1. The tragedy of Rushing
2. Slow Down to Speed up
3. Transition From Busy and Rushing to Composed and Effective (The Rusher vs. The Intentional)
4. 10 Ways to Eliminate Rushing for Good
5. Remember

So today we’re going to be covering why rushing is a myth, why we rush, and how to end rushing. 

1. The Tragedy of Rushing

Rushing is a tragic thing. 

I often woke up in the morning, jumped up at the alarm, pulled on my clothes, and got ready for school,  packing my bag, and trying to get out of the house all at the same time for school. 

I would rush from class to class trying to cram everything together because my time here on earth is running out.

I would then hurry to help my mom at the taco truck or oftentimes have to pick up my brothers and then go help her. Manage the finances, manage sales taxes, inventory, cleaning, do homework while trying to start my marketing side hustle, and much much more. 

I was tired most of the time. I wanted a different life for myself and my family. I thought that doing everything and rushing was the answer. 

My days ahead looked just as hectic every day. My body felt heavy and I started losing feelings and emotions. I was getting depressed and having an existential crisis.  

My parents started having marriage problems more often and the family eventually went to shit. 

The purpose I had created for myself as the oldest of five was no more. 

Eventually, my parents separated and my 3 middle brothers moved in with me, while we still visit the youngest brother as much as possible. Eventually little by little I started to come back and I started to see clearly. 

Juggling college, helping my mom, trying to grow a side hustle, and dealing with life was not an ideal life. 

Living like this is just not a pleasant way to live. 

Now I’ve gained focus, clarity, energy, and a state of mind where I can now enter into flow almost at will. 

The Disease of Hurry

And in fact, hurrying or rushing is a disease. 

Hurry sickness is a continuous struggle and unremitting attempt to accomplish or achieve more and more things or participate in more and more events in less and less time. 

Hurry Sickness

People with hurry sickness think fast, talk fast, and act fast. 

They multitask and rush against the clock, constantly feeling pressured to get things done and getting flustered by any sign of a problem that could slow them down. 

Professor Richard Jolly of the London Business School recently found that 95% of managers he studied suffer from the condition.

So Hurriers are everywhere. 

And as we’re articulating this, you may be identifying as one also.

Now here’s the thing, the cliche is true.

2. Slow Down to Speed Up

You want to slow down to speed up. 

Rushing is actually creating significant stress for only marginal benefits. 

Urgency has many negative impacts on performance. 

Research shows that doing things too fast or trying to multitask, significantly lowers performance and can even cause reductions in productivity. 

A Perceptual Glitch – The Consequences of Falling Behind

The perceived consequences of falling behind, the perceived increase that we get in performance or accomplishment or speed by rushing far far outstrips the real consequences. 

By rushing, we get this perceived dopaminical minuscule marginal improvement. 

But, the reason we rush is that we underestimate how little impact rushing has in terms of the degree to which it speeds us up and we overestimate how much benefit it actually yields. 

And so bear this in mind when thinking about rushing. 

Nature Does Not Hurry Yet Everything is Accomplished

As Lao Tzu said, “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished”.

Life is better slower. 

We can accomplish more, experience more, do more, and go further. 

You Can Slow Down

If I had slowed down sooner I would have gotten faster and gone further a long time ago.

I would have been pressured by my family to do things their way and I would have realized sooner what I really wanted. I would have been forced to say NO.

Doing it faster thinking that I’ll just get it over with was not the solution. I was not pursuing what I really wanted out of fear. Hurrying seemed like the better option.  

And of course, you can slow down. Whatever your excuse is, it’s likely that slowing down will improve it, regardless of whether you’re worried about time, demands, or pressure. 

Is a book better if you can speed read it or if you take your time and get lost in it? 

Is a song better if you skim through it or if you take the time to really listen? 

Is food better if you cram it down your throat or if you savor every bite and really appreciate the flavor? 

Is your work better if you try and do ten things at once, or if you really pour yourself into one key important task? 

Is your time spent with a friend or a loved one better if you’ve got to rush through the interaction? 

Or a meeting interrupted by emails and text messages? 

Or if you can relax and really focus on the person, job, project, meal or task at hand?

In general life as a whole is better if you can go slower and take the time to savor it and appreciate every moment.

Life is Better Savored and Work is Better Focused

Rushing Creates Significant Stress for Marginal Benefits 

And again physiologically this kind of rushing affects stress, cortisol levels, and anxiety. It puts our automatic nervous system out of balance. 

Excessive rushing affects attentional processes, decision-making, judgment, and even creativity. 

My lower back would often hurt. I would often have headaches. I really thought I was weak and that something was wrong with me. 

I couldn’t focus and I would procrastinate more and more. Focus has always been a problem for me but slowing down and isolating myself as much as I could gave me a lot of answers. 

So what we want to do is:

3. Transition From Busy and Rushing to Composed and Effective (The Rusher vs. The Intentional)

Rather than saying to yourself:

I can never get enough done. 

There is never enough time. 

I don’t want to miss out. (This was big for me before.)

I don’t have time to slow down. (And this too. So much I want to do in my life.)

If maybe I throw enough things at the wall something will stick. 

Or if I cram or squeeze enough in, something good will emerge and then I just have to keep going. 

Instead of that, we want to say to ourselves:

What is the most effective way to produce this end result? 

And what end result am I even looking for in the first place?

Time is ideally seen as just one of many resources which means that rushing is over-indexing on time as a single resource.

You want to ask yourself how you can best deploy your other resources and ask yourself is what I’m rushing to do even worth doing?

So now that you’ve got a sense of the fact that rushing ultimately is a perceptual glitch, we don’t actually get the increase in speed or performance that we feel like we get, how do you reduce rushing?

4. 10 Ways to Eliminate Rushing for Good

1.  Double Your Time Allotments

This is super super simple. 

This is just building an additional buffer to your day and your schedule so you don’t have to rush between things rather than trying to squeeze in a workout before nine other things. 

Just give yourself double the time for that block. Give yourself more time to get ready in the morning. Give yourself more time to do things. 

Double the allotments of time that you give to people, commitments or responsibilities.. 

2. Remove Your Addiction by Wall Staring

Remove the addiction to the stimulation that rushing provides by reducing stimulation with little breaks. Even just five minutes throughout your day can help recharge your brain and improve your productivity.

So giving your mind the opportunity to wander and process the events of the day in real time can help you recalibrate if you’ve been getting off track. 

It’s super important to create space and be comfortable just living and breathing and thinking within that space.

Often you’re going to have your biggest breakthroughs and creative ideas in those gaps.

If you’re frantically rushing from one instance to the next, you’re eliminating the space needed for the creative exponential leaps that presumably you want to take at least in some parts of your life. 

3. Sacrifice or Trade-off Over Rushing

Sacrifice or make trade-offs instead of cramming it all in and rushing.

Less is more

Now without sufficient leverage with insufficient leverage, you can’t get it all done. 

And obviously, ultimately you want to focus on increasing leverage and amplifying your output. 

But in the meantime, you may have to reduce obligations, and ideally, you do that, and you make these tradeoffs and sacrifices over rushing and trying to cram it all in. 

Because with rushing, you’re sacrificing more, you’re sacrificing how you feel, you’re sacrificing your state, your nervous system, you’re producing chronic stress. So become okay with making sacrifices or tradeoffs.

4. Apply Ferocious Scrutiny Before Accepting Anything onto Your Plate

Next thing you want to do is apply really significant levels of scrutiny before accepting anything new onto your plate.

Question why you’re being asked to do something?

If someone told you to jump, what would you say?

Would you say how high or would you say why?

Because a lot of the excessive rushing that you may be engaged in might be due to just blankly saying yes to people’s requests, or even to your own request upon yourself and just taking too much on mindlessly. 

It’s important to take a moment and question the rationale behind the demands that are made of you by others and by yourself so that you can prioritize and say no to tasks that are outside of your immediate most important priorities, which will help other people who are better qualified to do those things.

Do those things and preserve your state for being whatever is the highest and best use of your time. 

5 Be Religious about Single Tasking

Next thing is to get religious about single-tasking or unitasking because multitasking is a big part of the chaos and scattered state that comes with rushing. 

While you’re trying to get out the door to an Uber, while making a call, while replying to a text or an email, while drinking coffee, or even making your coffee. 

By getting religious about single-tasking, you wash out and eliminate a lot of what is negative about rushing in the first place.

That means when eating, just eat, when working just work. When getting an Uber just get the Uber and do nothing else and just let your mind sit still and be quiet.

When responding to messages on your phone just respond to messages on your phone and batch them rather than trying to stack all these things in on top of each other and suppressing down the space that facilitates the kinds of creative or breakthrough ideas that we want to make sure to actively encourage. 

6. Identify Your Rushing Hotspots

Another tip is to identify your rushing hotspots and these are the periods where you are most often late.

We want to eliminate these first, if possible. In order to change the behavior of constantly rushing, first, you need to be mindful of when you’re most likely to rush. 

Ask yourself, are you most likely to rush during your morning routine, during boring or routine tasks, or before workouts?

Because knowing when you have a tendency to rush will help you pinpoint the reasons for your rushing. 

Find these periods where you do a disproportionately large amount of rushing and then create more space or reschedule or make trade-offs specifically around those rushing hotspots. 

7. Be Late Like a Stoic – Accept What You Can’t Control, Change What You Can

The next thing is to be late like a stoic. 

So if you’re going to be late for something and you can’t possibly speed it up, you’re in a car and it can’t go faster without breaking the law or whatever. 

If you’re on a train and you’re not even the one driving, then don’t spend time focusing on the possible consequences of your being late. 

People use so much Mindshare getting anxious about the possibility of being late before they’re even late or when they can’t prevent the fact that they’re already late. 

So focus that energy instead on making sure you’re completely prepared for when you do arrive and obviously to help avoid being late in the first place you want to make sure that you’re applying these other practices and doubling time allotments and properly scoping out and predicting how long something is going to take you.

Because starting a day out rushed is not a pleasant thing.

It’s not one of the things we want to do. But, if you are going to be late no matter what, then don’t add additional rushing. 

A lot of people are on a train or a bus or they’re in a car and they can’t no matter what they do, they can’t speed it up. 

They’re going to be as late as they’re going to be no matter how fast they try to move. 

So just relax when that happens. Sound to yourself and make sure that you’re as well prepared as possible for when you do arrive. 

Be late as a stoic. 

Accept what you can’t control, change what you can. Try to be early but if there is no way that you can for whatever reason then chill. 

8. Time It All to Free Your Mind. 

This is not necessarily to track time but rather to allow us to relax and enhance our presence. 

So when you have blocks of time that are clearly mapped out in advance and you know certain things take you a certain amount of time, you can just relax.

You’ve timed things out. You know realistically what your morning of work takes or what your morning routine takes or what your trip to the gym takes or what your trip to the hosp takes or how long collecting your kids takes.

You’re going to time that stuff out and then just give yourself that allotment of time repeatedly with consistency rather than trying to squeeze down blocks of time that map to certain things that you know can’t be squeezed down. 

9. Cultivate and Protect Space and Avoid Filling It! 

Having 2 hours empty on our calendar in the afternoon is a beautiful thing. 

You don’t need to cram crap into that little block. A calendar with blocks of totally empty space that are undecided upon in terms of where they will be directed and to what activities they will go towards is great. 

So cultivate that sort of space in your life and on your calendar and protect that space. 

Some of your most useful mindshare will develop there.

 10. Forget the Word Busy

A lot of people gauge their progression or their productivity or how well they’re doing by how busy they are. 

Again, business activity, how much you’re doing, and how frantically you’re moving has no correlation.

If anything, it has a negative correlation.

So rather than saying I’m so busy or it’s so busy the next time someone asks you how things are, replace that word with something else. 

I’m doing a lot

I’m achieving al ot

I’m making great progress.

I’m balancing things well. 

Not, I’m so busy. 

There is no pride in being busy. Being busy is not equated with being accomplished. 

The Rushing Prevention Protocol

1. Ask yourself:

What’s the worst thing that could happen if I act normally and don’t rush? This tends to be surprisingly insignificant. 

Maybe your friend will be by himself for 10 minutes or I’ll be a little embarrassed for 30 seconds. 

This does not mean that you should not be considerate of other people’s time. But, the more you relax and focus on dissecting your thinking about your perception of time the better you can adjust to it and the more you can improve in the future. 

2. Ask yourself:

What are the best and worst-case scenarios if I choose to rush? The best will likely be a marginal improvement from acting normally, while the worst may be significant. 

Best: you arrive at the destination 5 minutes earlier. 

Worst: You get a speeding ticket or get in a crash. 

5. Finally

Remember: Track Your Rushing Hotspots, Expand the Time Allocation & Block 30 Minutes of Space into Your Day