"I'm So Busy": The Tyranny of the Rush

A Personal Reflection on Urgency and the Cost of Always Doing in a World Obsessed with Speed

My alarm blares, and instantly, my mind races. It's an internal clock, already calculating how much I need to get done, how to move quicker, optimize, salvage precious minutes. Conversations with friends, family, and colleagues? They often take a backseat to the looming to-do list. Ask me how I'm doing, and the answer's almost always the same: "Busy" or "Same shit, different pile". I feel like I'm running a one-person race against an invisible countdown, a relentless "do or die" mentality that fuels me when exhaustion sets in. It's a metaphorical cortisol shot, a jolt of doom-and-gloom that pushes me to keep going. Before I know it, the week's gone, blurring into the last, a continuous Groundhog Day with nothing to distinguish all this doing. Victories pass unnoticed; who has time for small wins when the next engagement, the next checkbox, calls? Always so much to do, never enough time. This is the engrained state of emergency—of urgency—that so many of us know intimately, and what I've been reflecting on lately.

Photo by Linus Belanger on Unsplash

There’s a subtle tyranny at play in our modern lives, a relentless drumbeat of urgency that quickens our pulse even when there’s no immediate threat. This isn't about healthy productivity or smart optimization, it's an internalized compulsion to move, respond, and achieve immediately. It's the constant, almost unconscious pull to respond instantly, to find the fastest shortcut, often without pausing to consider the invisible trade-offs being made beneath the surface. We've watched this frantic energy seep from our overflowing inboxes and endless to-do lists into our very bones, until our thoughts themselves become one rapid, anxious procession after another. Our eyes are always already one step ahead, our minds perpetually buzzing with all that has to get done, effectively speeding through life without much presence or true intention.

The Neglect of Self

In this relentless current of "more, faster" we gradually lose the ability to hear our own inner calling. The wisdom that truly serves us — the clarity born from sitting, the stillness that reveals answers, the profound insights that emerge only in settling, in non-doing — it all gets drowned out. It's the unspoken neglect of our true selves, as we prioritize external demands over the gentle whispers from within, leaving us with a gnawing sense that something essential is missing. We become strangers to our own deepest desires, caught in a cycle of doing without truly being. Is this, we might silently wonder, truly what living is about?

The Fear-Driven Cycle

So many of us, when we actually stumble upon these moments of stillness, struggle. We find ourselves bewildered by what to do when there's nothing pressing to be done. Instinctively, we fill the void, reaching for devices, inventing tasks, trying to get as much done as quickly as possible. This is where the surge of productivity gurus finds its fertile ground, offering "hacks" for everything, reinforcing the belief that urgency is the true currency of value. And this belief is fiercely protected by a deeper, often unspoken fear: the fear that if we don't reply to that email immediately, our boss will deem us lacking, that friends we haven't texted instantly will feel ignored or forgotten, that we'll lose our edge, our advantage, our relevance in a world that demands constant, visible motion. The ever-present terror that if we slow down, even for a moment, we will simply fade into oblivion. Perhaps, most insidiously, urgency also breeds — and is bred by — an internalized state of anxiousness, making us believe that constant motion is our only solution to quell the internal storm. Yet, this is rarely the true answer we desperately need. The mantra, "if you're not first, you're last" has become an internalized command, and rebelling against this ingrained, fear-driven belief feels incredibly difficult, almost impossible.

The Cost of Inaction

This isn't an easy predicament, and escaping this hamster wheel of perpetual motion feels like an act of rebellion against the air we breathe. But here's the uncomfortable truth: by allowing ourselves to be constantly pushed and pulled by these impulses, both within us and from the world outside, we are silently accepting the immense cost of our own inaction. We dissociate, our eyes always fixed on the next thing, the next task, the next goal, until, without realizing it, we've missed crucial turn-off exits on the highway of our lives. We've allowed ourselves to drift, to lose sight of where this path is truly taking us, often waking up only when life forces a pause – perhaps through a health scare, an injury, or a gnawing regret that we didn't choose differently when we had the chance.

The Call to Choose

But what if we could choose our pauses? What if we dared, now, to challenge these ingrained beliefs, given to us by our jobs, our bosses, our friends, family, the gurus we follow, the books we read, and the capitalist engine that screams "more, more, more"? To finally trade "pedal to the metal" for a pace that truly serves our soul? My hope for you is this: to find even a single second to question if this really is the only way to live. To ask yourself, honestly, if this is how you want to keep living the next year, or five years, or ten. Because you are enough. Perhaps that's the fundamental truth we need to reclaim, realizing that your worth isn't tied to your response time, the sheer volume of your output, or your ranking against your "so-called" competition. There will be seasons of intense activity, but let those seasons change naturally. You are not a failure if you can't produce consistent output at a rate unheard of for days, months, or even years on end. It's time to remember: Urgency isn't the only currency.

If this resonated with you, I'd love to hear it. Drop a like, leave a comment (heck, even an emoji! 👋), and let me know if there's anything you've been reflecting on lately that challenges the status quo, or what you'd be interested in reading next!