It's Not About Time: How Busyness Makes You Fall Further Behind
Have you ever had multiple tasks but none completed? Eating while worrying about deadlines? Even during rest, your mind is still on work. It feels like everything must be finished today, despite no real threat requiring immediate completion, leaving you constantly rushed.
Ironically, according to Cox (2022), the more you rush and push yourself, the less optimal your work becomes, making you feel even more behind. Have you experienced this? If so, this is different from simply being ‘too busy’ as commonly understood.
In today’s fast-paced modern era, many feel 24 hours a day is never enough. But we must ask ourselves: is it really a lack of time, or is something deeper happening within us?
Understanding Hurry Sickness: More Than Just Busyness
Hurry sickness differs from mere busyness; it is a psychological condition where individuals feel constantly pursued by time, rushing through almost every aspect of life. The term was first introduced by cardiologists Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman in the 1950s and has become increasingly prevalent in today’s fast-paced modern lifestyle (Sword & Zimbardo, 2013).
Hurry sickness is characterised by specific symptoms, including:
• Juggling multiple tasks (multitasking) without completing any optimally.
• The brain remains active with work or exhausting tasks even during rest.
• Gradual decline in focus.
• Anxiety and unease when not ‘productive’.
Raypole (2021) explains this condition affects emotional well-being, leading to increased frustration, inability to enjoy moments, and deteriorating social relationships.
Why Modern Life Is Prone to Triggering It
Modern society is a major factor in hurry sickness. A civilisation that builds an extreme busyness culture as a symbol or standard of success is termed ‘hustle culture’ (Quinn, 2026). You may feel this too: in today’s era, not being ‘always busy’ often leads to perceptions of lacking ambition or productivity.
Exposure to social media content showcasing others’ achievements indirectly creates unspoken pressure to keep moving fast and producing to avoid falling behind, often leading to a feeling of never truly resting and viewing rest as a luxury that must be ‘earned’ through heightened productivity.
Yet humans are not machines. No individual can sustain continuous high-energy activity indefinitely.
Practical Strategies to Overcome Hurry Sickness
The good news is that hurry sickness is manageable. Here are practical strategies to tackle it:
Breathing exercises: Try box breathing—inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 4, exhale for 4. This technique effectively calms the stress-activated nervous system. Practice whenever panic or rush feelings arise.
One task per day principle: Instead of an impossible to-do list, focus on one meaningful task for the day. This reduces cognitive load and builds tangible achievement.
Eisenhower Matrix for prioritisation: Categorise tasks into four quadrants: (a) important and urgent, (b) important but not urgent, (c) unimportant but urgent, (d) unimportant and not urgent. Focus energy on the first two quadrants.
Limit social media consumption: Information overload from social media creates false urgency. Setting specific times to check it, say twice a day, can reduce this pressure.
Maintain basic bodily needs: Adequate sleep, healthy eating, and light exercise like walking are fundamental to mental and cognitive health. Neglecting these actually reduces long-term productivity.
Practice gratitude for small things: Positive psychology research shows that regularly acknowledging small achievements, like ‘today I showered and had breakfast’, shifts focus from anxiety to appreciation.
We don’t have to always be fast; life isn’t a race. Slow down, and you’ll still reach your destination. Remember: ‘Speed is not always progress’.