
Time anxiety: is it too late? - anthilemoon
https://nesslabs.com/time-anxiety
======
rland
The single consistent thing I have noticed in dealing with this type of
anxiety is that if I spend time with people I actually like being with, it
completely disappears. It's impossible to be so self-directed if there is
another person in the room who I care about or love.

To that end, the fix is simple: surround myself with people that I love.
Friends and family.

Easier said then done, especially in our modern world, which is why I suspect
this comes up frequently.

~~~
scarejunba
Yeah, but it's deleterious to my societal productivity. Like I'm happier
spending my time with my friends. But I have less of that burning desire to
build. I think I might actually be content to live just happily on the beach
with the wealth I have now, so long as everyone I love is nearby and we
frequently meet.

But obviously I don't want to be content with that.

~~~
taneq
Well what do you want, to be happy or to be productive?

Happy people don't make great art.

~~~
ken
I used to believe that. These days, I'm certainly happier making art than
whatever it was people wanted to pay me to do on a computer.

Why can't happy people make great art? Do we also think that sober people
can't write great novels, or people who survive past age 27 can't make great
music? I can think of countless counterexamples to all of these. Just because
there were miserable great artists in the past doesn't necessarily mean you
have to be miserable to be a great artist.

------
hinkley
I know there are some people disproving parts of Malcolm Gladwell's theories,
but sometime in the last year or two it occurred to me that one of the
consequences of the 10,000 hours theory is that you actually have time to get
expert-level good at three or four things in your life even if you spent part
of it 'fucking around'.

I've expanded that into a philosophy about 'Software eats the world": the only
way that doesn't end up in a dystopian hellscape is if Software Developers go
out and meet the World. Dive into hobbies. Get good enough at them to be a
Product Owner. Make software that supports that hobby.

You'll also have something to talk to people about at parties other than what
you do for a living.

~~~
ksdale
I would take it even farther than that and say that people vastly overestimate
the time it takes to get good at most things. It might take 10,000 hours (or
more) to be considered an expert pianist, but you could spend a tenth that
much time getting good enough to impress everyone you know with a few songs at
parties, and with just 50 hours of practice, you'll be better at the piano
than basically everyone you know (you might not be "good", but a lot of people
are also easily impressed, if impressing people is your thing.)

I think this is true of practically everything that we don't personally make a
profession of. A few tens of hours doing carpentry, fiddling with plumbing, or
hooking up electronics, and you'll seem super handy to someone with no
experience. What passes for expert-level in a lot of arenas is more like what
an actual expert would consider passing familiarity, but passing familiarity
is enough to feel good and to be really helpful to your community in a lot of
circumstances.

I agree completely about hobbies. I think I read somewhere long ago that we
ended up with a zillion apps for ordering food because that's the kind of
thing that college kids think about. If we all learn a lot more about a lot of
things, we'll end up with a much more interesting tech-ecosystem.

~~~
joshkaufman
I wrote a book on this topic:
[https://first20hours.com](https://first20hours.com)

There's a ton of (replicated) psychology research that supports this thesis:
the early hours of skill acquisition are very effective/efficient in terms of
improvement-per-hour-invested. 20-50 hours is enough to see very substantial
improvements in any skill, even if you have no prior knowledge or experience.

I wish more people focused on the early process of skill acquisition: that's
what most of us will experience for most of our lives/careers.

Learning and practicing skills in many different areas is underrated: if you
think of skills from an ROI perspective, spending a little time to get a _lot_
better at a portfolio of useful things has a crazy high return.

~~~
kevinguh
I would add on by saying from personal experience that the wider your breadth
of experiences, the more you find that experiences in seemingly unrelated
fields overlap and synergize to make it even easier to pick up new skills.
Anecdotally I found my background in software + college coursework in signal
processing gave me a huge boost with getting into music production, and in
line with the ROI perspective I feel like I'm passively reinforcing my
understanding of Fourier transforms and whatnot when I'm playing around with
Ableton so it's akin to the effect of compounded interest

~~~
jimstr
The book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David
Epstein
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41795733-range](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41795733-range)
argues a lot for this as well, and goes on to discuss numerous examples where
generalists have made the breakthroughs and/or excelled in some way, due to
synergy, overlap and inspiration.

~~~
ylem
I will second this recommendation. It has some great stories about people such
as Van Gogh and inspired some new thoughts on machine learning.

------
thtthings
You think too highly of yourself. Why do you think whatever you create is
something special. It's most likely Shit. There is freedom in knowing you are
one in 7 billion. Real creation happens when you give freedom to your mind to
do whatever it wants to. There is no time constraint, no feeling that i need
to get this done. It's spontaneous. You are following someone else's script
here. You are equating activity with accomplishment

~~~
nostromo
While I appreciate the stoicism, this isn't just about delusions of grandeur.

Examples:

* I'm too old to learn how to surf

* My relationship with my child is too far gone to improve

* It's pointless for me to save for retirement at my age

* The environment is fucked no matter what I do

These are all time anxiety type dilemmas that real people get hung up on that
have nothing to do with impressing the world or building the next big thing.

~~~
thtthings
I think all these examples are of thinking too much. Why not just this very
moment do something you feel like. Then the next and then the next. Go learn
surfing, call your child and if you are too lazy then just accept you don't
care about that stuff as much and do what you care about. You care about
netflix then watch netflix. Don't do what you think society or other people
think is cool.

If we are completely present in the now and doing what feel rights. There is
no room for all these negative thoughts.

~~~
eduren
Dispensing advice like this to someone with anxiety issues is exactly the same
as telling someone with depression that they should get out of bed, meet
people, be happy for what they have, or smile more.

It is the kind of swapping of cause and effect that many neurotypical people
fall into when conversing with those who are suffering. All of the behaviors
and habits you describe are largely the result of healthy mental states, not
the cause (there can be feedback loops that make the distinction fuzzy, but
those feedback loops are very fragile and require constant maintenance).

I'm sure its well intentioned, but it's just not going to be very useful
advice.

~~~
thtthings
What is your solution?

~~~
eduren
To the issues raised in the article? Unfortunately I don't have one to present
to others. Everyone is different and my only advice is to find a professional
that can talk through specifics and provide the right approach.

If you're asking more personally, I identify with a lot of the same struggles
as outlined in the article and here in the comments, but I stop short of
feeling the excessive anxiety. Instead I'm just paralyzed by inaction and have
low energy for pursuing any ambition.

I'm currently in the process of ruling out all other possible health factors
first (ADHD, hormonal imbalances, sleep deficiencies, metabolic issues), but
if those end up being exhausted I'll probably explore Cognitive Behavioral
Therapy.

Training myself to have healthier mappings between emotions <-> thoughts <->
behaviors seems to me like the best approach. And then maybe I'll be capable
of applying the sort of "just do what you feel like" advice you provided
above.

~~~
badpun
> Instead I'm just paralyzed by inaction and have low energy for pursuing any
> ambition.

I guess that's... normal? Most people don't have ambitions, they're just
content with getting through life in a relatively painless way. The ambitious
people are the exception, not the rule.

------
pier25
I remember in my 20s I had this constant anxiety about running out of time.
That if I didn't accomplish whatever I wanted to accomplish soon I'd never be
able to do it. The emotion gradually disappeared during my 30s.

In a way I was right. I'm 40 now and the things that seemed of extreme
importance in my 20s are mostly gone now. In retrospect it's not that I
wouldn't be able to do those things, but maybe I feared that I wouldn't want
to.

Anyway, I feel much better about myself now. I would not trade this peace of
mind for the raw energy of the 20s.

~~~
x2f10
I'm not in my early thirties and time anxiety is actually growing stronger. I
worry about the big three: children, career, and personal health. My idea is
that with kids... my finace and I are aging. Are we going to do this or not?
We have to know within the next 2ish years. With career... what career path do
I want to take? I need to focus on schooling or professional certificates ASAP
so I can utilize those as I age. With health... how many years of testosterone
do I have left? I'm very skinny and would like to build a basic muscle
structure, not for vanity but for general health.

~~~
l_t
This is a personal comment, but if you're like me, I bet that anxiety is not
just related to time.

I would be telling myself: How can I commit to a lifelong project like
children? How can I decide what career path to choose, when there are so many
options and I can only pick one? How can I work out, when its basically
signing up to humiliate yourself? How can I take these _risks_?

In my experience, anxiety pretends that it's useful. It feels motivational --
like you are motivated to work out, because of your anxiety about being frail.

But contrary to how it feels, anxiety can have the opposite effect. You want
it _too much_ , that becomes dangerous, because you're afraid of trying and
failing.

If that sounds familiar at all, my advice (since all HN comments have to have
advice, right?) is to _distance yourself_ from those goals and aspirations.
Perform the Stoic exercise of meditating on the worst-case scenario. Let
yourself make mistakes and look stupid. Just _do it_ because you should, and
damn the outcome.

~~~
abvdasker
I am pretty cynical when it comes to the attitudes people seem to have about
children (I don't have kids so it's possible I don't know what I'm talking
about). You and many others use the same language to talk about attempting to
publish a book or starting a company that you use for having children: words
like "project". In general I don't agree with this conception of children
since failure in that endeavor often has disastrous consequence for a person
that wouldn't otherwise exist.

It's not merely a personal risk in the sense that somebody else will bear the
costs of failure. I tend to think people should generally feel more anxious
about the incomprehensibly huge responsibility of making a person, not less.

~~~
l_t
Thanks for calling that out, I'm not trying to imply that these are only
personal risks. In fact, it's often the risk _to others_ that causes anxiety.
So I wouldn't read too much into my use of the word "project" there. It's just
meant to imply something that's a daunting, long-term commitment. (I don't
have kids either, for what that's worth.)

------
CalRobert
I believe the word for this is Torschlusspanik
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Torschlusspanik](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Torschlusspanik)
\- and sums it up nicely.

I'm a kind of morbid person by nature, but the more time goes on the more I
realize that awareness of my mortality is helpful for getting me off my ass to
get things done. Not necessarily work, just life in general. I wanted to live
abroad "someday" and finally tried it when I was 30 (in the nick of time, it
turns out). I wanted to start a company, and see now how it would've been 50
times harder to do it with a child than without. In my 20's I always thought
I'd get around to going on X trip, maybe asking out Y girl, etc. and instead
wasted 9 years in the same town doing not much of anything. Fortunately, the
last 9 years have had a lot more going on.

~~~
bumby
I think there's a stoic principle of "Memento mori" \-- remind yourself that
you'll die so that you can make the most of your life now.

~~~
DoingIsLearning
Tangencial to your comment that is pretty much the spirit of the Dutch 16th
century 'Vanitas' paintings.

Wealthy patrons would comission art to act as a memento of their own
fragility/mortality.

------
nydel
> Time anxiety ... means that your well-being is determined to a large extent
> by the importance of the value you feel you are creating with your life.

As a hacker doing mostly odd jobs and remote volunteer work for not-for-
profits, I'm often consumed by the idea of whether I'll be able to "put my
name on the day" when the head hits the pillow.

I have had a regular 0900-1700 job before, and it was nice to have the
external validation thing to fall back on, the time-card that proves you
showed up at least, or the mere fact that you're holding the job etc.

> Define what “time well spent” means to you

This is a great piece of advice. One source of metrics I found helpful to
abandon is educational mobile apps / web programs etc that involve any sort of
gamification. For example, I wasn't enjoying learning Japanese during the
times I was redoing a lesson I didn't need to redo simply in order to make the
education app make a fanfare sound and tell me that I had achieved my "daily x
out of x points" ... I think measuring in time spent and effort exerted is a
lot healthier, even if its complete inability to be quantified can be
extremely frustrating!

------
Ancalagon
I agree with basically all of the points of this article, one thing I wanted
to point out though is that's also important to make time to _try new things_.
And I don't mean just try them once, sometimes I've found I need to form a
habit out of whatever it is I'm trying before I really enjoy it. Take exercise
(or running) as an example. Running when you're out of shape sucks. But give
it a couple weeks of running, gradually increasing the length of time and
distance you run, and it can become a very enjoyable activity.

That said, its a balancing act, and you cant spend all your time trying new
things.

~~~
TheGRS
I do believe you need a balance of habitual activities and trying new things.
Doing stuff you've never done before and going to places you've never seen has
the effect of slowing down the perception of time, which is great if you have
the sort of time anxiety described.

------
overcast
Welp, this article can't have come at a more appropriate time in my life.
Definitely struggling with these exact thoughts, constantly. Finding something
meaningful, and rewarding to be a part of has become obsessive. Always
thinking I'm wasting time if I'm not somehow maximizing it, with the end
result being I spend more time worrying about it than actually doing it.

~~~
Ancalagon
Maybe you're like me, maybe not, but meditation and CBT helps with this a bit.
Also - and I'm gonna say this may make your anxiety better, it may make it
worse - think about the most influential people in the last 100 years:
Einstein, Turing, FDR, Obama, etc. Now think about the most influential people
in last 1,000, then the last 10,000. How many people can you name from over a
thousand years ago (hopefully you're not a historian)? My point is, even the
greatest people today, although their contributions were great, will probably
not be remembered by very many 10,000 years from now. We all ultimately go to
the same place, great or not. Time is the great equalizer.

~~~
overcast
Thanks for the response, I've taken up meditation for the last couple of
weeks. Definitely helps clear my head, at least for a short period of time.
I'm really not concerned about being known throughout history, my only goal is
that by the end of my life, I feel like I've done something fulfilling and
rewarding enough to warrant the incredibly good fortune I've had being born
during this time, to this family, in this part of the world.

~~~
Ancalagon
Well my point with that response was more of: by who's metric are you
measuring your warranting being here? If it isn't history's, then I think it
should be your own. And if its your own, I really believe as long as you put
in a good effort - not even necessarily your best effort all the time - then
that should be good enough. A higher sense of purpose is excellent but you
also have to understand that life is really weird and almost never works out
how you expect it to.

But I'm guessing you already know all of that. At this point its probably more
about moving your own metric and zeroing in on what you want to do.

~~~
jodrellblank
_I really believe as long as you put in a good effort - not even necessarily
your best effort all the time - then that should be good enough_

Do cats "put in a good effort"? Rabbits? Gazelles? Grasses? Fish?

------
StanislavPetrov
While reading this article I couldn't stop thinking about the cliche (which I
believe happens to be useful), "today is the first day of the rest of your
life". The truth is we never know how much time we have left. You could walk
out your front door and get run over by a bus at any time. All we can really
do is engage in activities that we find worthwhile and fulfilling. At the risk
of using two cliches in the same, short post, "life is a journey, not a
destination". If you are trying to find meaning in life by reaching arbitrary
goal posts you're missing the point.

------
coldtea
> _Dr. Alex Lickerman, the author of The Undefeated Mind: On the Science of
> Constructing an Indestructible Self, says that time anxiety stems from some
> of the following questions: “Am I creating the greatest amount of value with
> my life that I can? Will I feel, when it comes my time to die, that I spent
> too much of my time frivolously?”_

Even before that, time anxiety stems from the idea that we're put here to do X
thing or achieve Y thing, and not e.g. just enjoy life.

While the notion is ancient, many cultures don't really have time anxiety to
any degree to write home about. It's more common in the US than in Europe, for
example, and perhaps goes with the "winners and losers" view of society as
some kind of race.

------
non-entity
> Future time anxiety: thoughts about what may or may not happen in the
> future, which are the cause of worry and “what if” types of internal
> questions.

gah, this has been torturing me for the past year, as I discover more and more
what I wish I was doing. I'm only 21 right now, so a lot of my anxiety may be
unfounded, but so many things I want to do require major risks, opportunity
cost, or more importantly monetary costs. I want to stop worrying about the
what-if's, but it just seems so much more complicated than that

------
cocochanel
It takes a lifetime to master a craft. The earlier you start, the longer it
takes.

------
some_eejit
Wait until you hit 50. That's when you _really_ hear the clock ticking (I'm
51).

~~~
hnick
Don't worry, a 60 year old will be along to correct you soon enough :)

------
flattone
"If I never start doing some thing then I'll never have to confront how far
behind / late / failure"

This is my current best try at translating a deep and very strong and very
vague physiological sensation that prevents people (me) from doing almost
anything of importance.

the article is as close as I've seen to something useful on this issue. partly
due to avoiding even confronting the issue. Presenting an audit process to
modify behavior and increase time spent in important ways +10 value.

------
mirimir
This is something that I deal with every day. You never know when you're going
to die. But even when I was in my 50s, barring surprise diseases and
accidents, it was far off in the distant future.

Not so much now. Especially because time is subjectively faster. Months seem
like weeks used to.

But there is an advantage. Now it's a convenient excuse to avoid doing
whatever I don't want to. I'm far less constrained by what others expect of
me.

------
dcolkitt
Personally speaking, the biggest specter for time anxiety is age-related
cognitive decline. Unfortunately it happens much earlier than most people
think. Especially with regards to both creativity and fluid intelligence.

Tech entrepreneurs are disproportionately clustered at 20-34. The probability
of making a major scientific discovery starts declining at 40. Poets peak in
their early 40s, and novelists not much longer after that. Mathematicians and
physicists may on average peak as early as their late 20s.

Anyway as someone in their mid-30s, who would still like to accomplish a lot
more than what I have so far, this has been bothering me a lot lately. I'm
happy to hear any perspective that others have here.

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/work-
pe...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/work-peak-
professional-decline/590650/)

~~~
thesausageking
> Tech entrepreneurs are disproportionately clustered at 20-34.

Do you have a source for this? The article you linked to quotes one 2014 HBR
article and then walks it back, saying, "all studies in this area have found
that the majority of successful start-ups have founders under age 50".

And there was also this more recent HBR article "The Average Age of a
Successful Startup Founder Is 45":

[https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-
succes...](https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-successful-
startup-founder-is-45)

~~~
hathawsh
Very interesting article. It even says that founders between the ages of 50
and 60 are significantly more likely to succeed at creating "extreme startup
success":

[https://hbr.org/resources/images/article_assets/2018/07/W180...](https://hbr.org/resources/images/article_assets/2018/07/W180621_AZOULAY_OLDERENTREPRENEURS-1.png)

"... it appears that advancing age is a powerful feature, not a bug, for
starting the most successful firms."

------
tagirb
I think this anxiety comes from deep inside of me reminding that I've lost
myself in that moment. It helps to just stop doing whatever I am doing, shut
off my mind, turn to myself, and re-establish the connection with my inner
self, which I tend to loose sometimes in the everyday hectic.

And what also helps me to retain and to strengthen this connection is simply
love. Basically, to replace the negative thoughts, ambitions, etc. with truly
positive values and things, to start caring about the people around, doing
something good for the others without expecting anything in exchange and many
other good things, which I'd never thought of before.

The books here have helped me to make the first step back then and are still
helping me to stay on this way:

[https://allatra-book.org/](https://allatra-book.org/)

Hope they help someone else as well.

------
Gusmann
The bigger problem is that time anxiety often comes together with self-doubt
so you spend a lot of time doubting your choices and ideas and then bump right
into time anxiety Probably the only thing you can do about it is do something
that feels right for you no matter when

------
nimroder
Feels like everybody in our society feels time anxiety, in a different level.

During my 20s, it grew (and I guess to all of the Y-generation when thinking
of my friends). It is interesting investigate the levels of time anxiety with
different ages and different environment.

\-- lately I had an increase of time anxiety, close to my 30s and big changes
in my personal life :) So thank you for the article, it makes me want to
investigate it more with myself.

------
Lio
Whenever I feel time anxiety I try to think of Ray Kroc[1]

He didn't get started on his version McDonalds until he was 64, an age that
many people would be about to retire.

I'm not a great fan of McDonalds food but if you can start a company like that
at 64 you can start anything at any age.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kroc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kroc)

~~~
mikelyons
It's worth acknowledging that it was a different world when Ray was 64.

~~~
Lio
Of course but that's always true. It'll be a different world again when/if you
or I reach the age of 64 too.

------
generated
My issue with the pursuit of leisure activities, or the “If we take care of
the moments, the years will take care of themselves” quote, is that it doesn't
leave room for ambition.

If I spend my years in momentary pleasure, I fear I will regret not tackling
more ambitious projects. What could I have achieved if I was willing to suffer
through activities that are not solely "activities you really enjoy?"

~~~
_def
> What could I have achieved if I was willing to suffer through activities
> that are not solely "activities you really enjoy?"

I feel like that's kind of the point. The answer is: you will never know. Of
course it's easier said than done but I think in the long run it's much better
to cherish the present instead of fearing the future. What if you suffer for
years and even then the question does not disappear?

------
drongoking
Interesting essay.

Related to time anxiety, Oliver Burkeman pointed out the paradox of "making
good use of time". Taken too far, it turns time into an instrumental goal. You
never really enjoy it; you're always just investing time in a future that
never comes. And you suffer time anxiety.

------
codesushi42
_Never, never, never give up._

\- Winston Churchill

------
munherty
Can confirm , in my 20s and it feels like the interal pressure to create
something gets greater everyday.

The worst part is that I came close a few years ago but couldnt rally my
partners to continue past the research phase...

However more recently ive been calming myself by just focusing on the present

------
aflag
Is it too late? My answer is always: I don't know, let's see. So far it
hasn't.

~~~
fuzzfactor
It's later than you think.

------
mikorym
I think we need to make peace with "achieving" later in life than our
renaissance ancestors. The same holds for the Fields Medal (with an age limit
of 40): many gre at mathematicians will only achieve much later than that.

------
some_eejit
What sort of person worries about having led a frivolous life? I can guarantee
you that's the last thing I'll be worried about on my deathbed (assuming I
have my mental faculties, which is not a done deal these days).

------
burakozgul
Me after reading this article : "Now I have a time anxiety"

------
chmielewski
"The lyfe so short, the craft so long to lerne" is certainly different than
'the life too short' or 'the craft too long to learn'.

------
starsinspace
> Cut out time-consuming distractions

Good idea. Time for me to close HN now.

Seriously... I spend (waste?) way too much time here.

------
mocha_nate
I enjoyed this. Also, I now have some vocabulary for things that bother me,
which is pretty nice.

------
chmielewski
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

------
z3t4
If the best time has passed, the next best time is now!

------
ubu7737
She's an ex-Googler, I trust her completely.

------
cryptozeus
Strange to assume that you have time which will run out. Only thing available
is “now”. Literally and figuratively.

Question is how do you convince your mind of this reality.

