I have always struggled with one thought. The kind of recurring thought that never really leaves you: “It’s too late.” Too late to publish a boo

Time anxiety: is it too late?

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2024-09-22 18:00:04

I have always struggled with one thought. The kind of recurring thought that never really leaves you: “It’s too late.” Too late to publish a book, too late to start a company, too late to learn a new language. This is called time anxiety.

The number of skills I haven’t acquired and the opportunities I didn’t take because of that very thought are, frankly, infuriating. It’s only recently that I have managed to get over that thought, and, while in my case it is still a daily struggle, I wanted to share some of my strategies.

While death anxiety is the fear of running out of time, time anxiety is the fear of wasting your time. It’s an obsession about spending your time in the most meaningful way possible. And when society tells us—or when we interpret signs from society as saying—that it’s too late to achieve a particular goal, we don’t perceive it as meaningful enough. We need—we demand—that what we do with our lives actually matters.

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?”