Worrying about Time shrinks Time.

Being overly concerned, anxious or paranoid about the way we spend our Time tends to rob us of the full use of that time.

Our focus grows scattered, our mind is unable to seamlessly slot into the activity being done, because the Container that holds that Activity has been punched full of holes, and is Leaking.

The Container is Time. The holes are Temporal Anxiety.

The hum in the back of your mind that you’re doing the wrong thing, the discomfort of spending your time in this exact way you’re spending it now. If this is telling you something useful and you really could be spending your time better, sure, no problem. But for most of us, Temporal Anxiety never actually stops. It just follows us around no matter what activity or task we’re doing.

How you spend Time isn’t Wrong.

Believing that it is, that’s the only way to truly spend it ineffectively because it slows you, it robs you of the chance to move efficiently. Even if you’re spending your time in a less effective way than you personally think you could, assigning excess concern and anxiety to that mind-pattern isn’t helping you. It’s just stressing you out and making the Time that you’re spending less useful.

This is how that happens, and how it feels:

Instead of getting 100% Value out of the Time Spent, you’re getting maybe 77% because the rest is being Consumed by fear, by turmoil, by inner conflict.

You know when you stop second-guessing, when you just accept what you’re doing, you end up doing it a lot faster than you believed was possible? That’s what happens when Temporal Anxiety can’t touch you.

Likewise, when you are too worried, you stumble more, you become Avoidant, your discomfort drains you, slows you to a sluggish crawl. This makes you do and finish things way slower, it makes you take longer since your mental resources are being stolen by discomfort. If you let yourself Use the Time you’re using, confidently and boldly and without fear, you’ll find yourself actually saving a lot of time because you’re able to just do much more stuff inside of the same amounts of less time spent.

Imagine what this phenomenon does to people who are constantly under temporal pressure. Pressure to get things done fast. Pressure to pay bills. Pressure to deliver. Pressure to hand in work.

It would very quickly rob them of Time. And we don’t really have to imagine, this describes many of us.

The best thing would be if there were as little temporal pressure on us as possible, since that makes us more effective (if you care about that over happiness) and more happy (if you care about that over productivity).

Still, since that’s usually not possible, we can apply push-back against Temporal Anxiety, by using mental tricks, meditations — especially mindfulness — allowing us to “punch above our time-allotment” since again, we’re making stronger Use of the Time we actually Have.

Being pressured temporally is debilitating but Temporal Anxiety is worse, and we have some amount of choice regarding how much of it we’re consumed by. Wherever you can, whenever you can, however you can, in any way that you can, just remember;

How you spend your Time isn’t Wrong. That single phrase alone will let you spend time a lot more meaningfully, and finish all tasks and activities you decide to do, much quicker.

As long as you let yourself to slip into the stream of it and fully engage, immerse, focus and cast away as much Worry as you can, you’ll get a lot more done. Afterward, how you spend subsequent Time will begin to feel less and less discomforting and lead to less self-doubt as well, since you know how to deal with it.