A Modern Guide to Self-Sabotage

Hurry Up and Waste Time

Hi, I’m Claudia. I help you face a hurried world with greater confidence in your “Power of Slow.”

You are reading the sub-section SlowPOWER of the publication Un-Rush-The Power of Slow in which I demonstrate the absurdity of rushing and make you realize how slowing down benefits your life and work.

Don’t be shy to share it with fellow rebels against the hurry culture and click the❤️ button, so more people can discover it on Substack. Thank you!

A Modern Guide to Self-Sabotage

Hurry Up and Waste Time

Hurrying often creates more problems and pain than it solves.

With anger and shame, I remember a ridiculous scene from decades ago that put my mom in danger on a Japanese train. I walked with my mom and aunt the stairs up to a train platform in Tokyo and the train arrived. The sliding doors opened, ready to spit out the busy crowd and receive the next load of commuters. I started rushing to catch the open door, and very stupidly not pay attention if my mom and aunt were right behind me. They weren’t. My aunt made it and my mom got half stuck in the door closing tightly on her. No joke, half of my mom was inside the train the other half hanging outside and the train started moving. A bunch of passengers helped pull her in, my mom in panic and fear. We made it. It wasn’t funny.

And why again did I have to rush to catch the train? I guess my “automatic reaction” when spotting the arriving train was not so different from anybody else’s reaction. We have the urge, without being aware of it, to run for moving targets, such as trains, taxis, elevators, open seats, or dogs. It’s an impulse ingrained in us. We need to catch it. Otherwise, it’s gone, lost, taken by someone else, or we arrive late. We need to hurry, otherwise we feel behind. That’s what we learned. That’s what society and media teach us. That’s what we experience daily.

Let’s take a step back and reconsider. There was no need for me and my mom and aunt to run for the train. There was a next one coming. Like Sir Richard Branson once said about business opportunities: “Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.”

In our fast-paced world, we've normalized a constant state of hurry. Yet this perpetual rush often leads to consequences that are not just counterproductive but sometimes downright absurd. Hurrying often creates more problems and pain than it solves.

Absurd?

Something is absurd when it’s extremely silly, unreasonable, or illogical, often to the point of being laughable. It describes situations or ideas that lack sense or rationality.

Absurdity happens when things don't make sense. It's when our actions lead to the opposite of what we want. It's the gap between what we expect to happen and what actually happens—when our logical plans produce completely illogical results.

And nowhere is this absurdity more perfectly executed than in our modern obsession with rushing. We've mastered the art of self-sabotage, skillfully undermining our own goals in the name of efficiency. We hurry to "save time," only to waste more of it. We run faster on our hamster wheels, convinced we're getting somewhere. We worship at the altar of efficiency while sacrificing the very results we seek.

What could be more absurd than voluntarily subjecting ourselves to a perpetual state of panic, stress, and pressure that actively sabotages our way of life? We are champions of working against ourselves, frantically trying to exit through a door marked "pull" while we desperately push.

Keep pushing, people!

But don’t be surprised or frustrated when no solutions or paths are opening up.

---

Real Life Examples Of Useless Rushing

Look at these 8 ways of rushing in your daily life that will only cause you to lose both your time and your mind.

1. The lost keychain phenomena all over again

You're running late, so you rush out the door, frantically searching for your keys. The more urgently you need to leave, the more elusive they become. Your movements grow clumsier, and you empty your bag repeatedly, checking the same pockets multiple times. What should take seconds stretches into minutes. Had you simply taken a deliberate breath and approached the task calmly, you would have found them immediately and actually left earlier.