Chris Guillebeau
Appearances
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
You will you will feel physically better. It's not just about, you know, having something marked off your list. You know, it's not just about your intellectual process. You're going to like feel a physical sensation of relief even as you start to do it. And so maybe one thing is like the simplest thing you can do towards that task.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
If it is like a difficult email or something, you just kind of open the email because you've been avoiding it. You know it's there, but you've been avoiding it. So you just open it. And you just write the first line. Hi, Mike. And you just start. And then as you work through it, as I said, relief is on the other side of working through the to dread list or the to dread items.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
Do you finish every book? I know you read a lot of books. Do you finish every book that you read? Do you ever watch a show on streaming TV or movies that you start watching and then don't finish? Are you a completionist or not? Yeah, there's plenty of those, yeah.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
right well i think i i do hear from people and it's across all media it's like some people who believe that they should not you know stop if they start a book they should finish it you know this is like a point of pride and um i just you know i think there's so many great
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
books in the world if you start reading a book and you read 30 50 pages and you're not into it that book is just not for you at this point in your life and that's great so stop and get back all those hours you know these days with entertainment it just kind of drags on and on with tv shows if they're making money then they just keep going and it should have been one or two seasons but now it's seven or eight seasons so you think well i'm locked in i'm hooked i'm invested but
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
can you not just say, well, I enjoyed that story for a little while and now I'm ready to do something else. So that's media and entertainment, which is easy. But you can also think about this in all parts of your life.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
If you're starting a business, if you're starting your own creative project, like writing a book, it's actually, I think, a really important skill, in fact, to be able to say, I'm going to stop doing this and do
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
something else um i you know i will i walk out of movie theaters i don't go to movie theaters too often these days but whenever i do if i don't like the movie i'll leave you know i'll i'll sit down at restaurants and if i don't like the menu i'll get up and go somewhere else it doesn't matter if i've already sat down and i think this is also something that might feel a little bit strange to some people at first but it's going to also bring you relief and you're going to feel proud of yourself you're like oh i actually realized that i would rather have that hour
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
you know, doing something else. And just because I paid for the movie ticket or whatever, it doesn't, it doesn't matter. Um, I want, I want to have my time back.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
I mean, it's a sunk cost, you know? Yeah, right. And, you know, it's a sunk cost. And I think it's not just about the financial cost that people get hung up on. They're like, I have already started this thing. I'm already in this thing. So somehow I'm... I'm not doing a kindness to my past self or something, but I think you're actually doing a kindness to your future self in making these choices.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
Another thing is people tend to say yes to requests if those requests are referring to a far off time period. If somebody is like, hey, will you go to this wedding with me in three months or something? And, you know, most people without thinking they'll probably kind of agree, even if they're not sure about it.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
One thing that's really helpful is whenever you have this far off request, just consider if if the event, whatever it is, was happening tomorrow or the next day or sometime in the very near future and then decide, then see, like, how do I feel about this? And if it if your answer is, oh, that's great, I would love to do that tomorrow. then okay, great.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
You know, I would love to do that in three months. But if you think about it and you're like, actually, I don't know, but I want to do that tomorrow or this week, you're probably not going to feel any different in three months or however long the time period is. So do yourself a favor, do your future self a favor and think about those commitments as if they were happening sooner.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
And you'll probably start saying no to more of them.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
Yeah, it's ultimately just a perception because obviously time is constant. But if you think about when we're kids, everything is unfolding. It's a great pace in some ways, but it also feels very slow.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
Like the time between significant moments, you know, when you're waiting for your next birthday or you're waiting for, you know, to go to middle school or high school or all these milestones, you know, getting your driver's license, graduation and so on. It just feels like so far off, right? And your parents feel so old, like you can't possibly relate to them.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
And then as we get older, right, we notice, we perceive, you know, that the time is passing a lot quicker and there are fewer of those milestones. So we begin to kind of appreciate time more. And I think this is just something that, this is just one of these interesting natures, interesting characteristics about time, that as we become more mindful of time,
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
then perhaps we might think more about how to use it. One thing I noticed in the research, I was talking to lots of people, different ages and backgrounds, and there was a lot of commonality. A lot of people would use the same phrasing. People would say, there's something I should be doing right now, but I don't know what it is, and I have this low-grade angst about it.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
Another thing they would say is, I feel like I'm too late for something, like I have missed something in life. And we tend to associate that with people who might be older. By older, I just mean adults or middle age. But even people who, you know, people in their 20s, people in their late teens, they would say almost exactly the same thing.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
And so for those of us who are older, it's easy to say, well, you have your whole life in front of you, you know, you're in college or whatever. Um, but it's a very constant thing of feeling like I've missed my chance somehow, or I wish I could go back and do something over.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
Um, and so I think it's important to maybe consider, you know, some relief for that as well, to understand that this is somewhat universal. Like we all have a certain amount of regret in life and you know, what matters is not what lies behind us, but what we can do with the time that's to come.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
First thing is to start paying attention. Just start paying attention to how you spend your time. And so today, tomorrow, this week, notice like, where does my time go? How do I respond to different requests? When I have free time, how do I spend it? And by doing this, you don't actually have to make any decisions differently. You're just noticing.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
You can also ask this question of more of this, less of that. What do I want more of in my life? What do I want less of? And again, by doing this, you're probably going to make some different decisions even without getting really strategic about it. It's a very low pressure, easy thing to do. Another thing that I think is important, especially if you're feeling really overwhelmed,
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
Um, because people often want to kind of like rewrite their whole lives and that's, that's difficult. Like when you're in the midst of stuff. So something to do is, uh, start by giving yourself more time. Like what can you do to give yourself more time? Um, you know, there's this whole decluttering thing and I think that's great in some ways.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
Um, but I think it's actually more helpful to practice time decluttering, like rather than just cleaning out your closet or your sock drawer. It's like, what can I do to look at my calendar over the next few weeks and can I remove just going to challenge myself to remove two or three items.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
And as you do that, notice how it feels and don't just immediately fill that time, but clear that space and consider what do I what do I want to do and how do I want to kind of spend this time? And so for most people, like buying back their time or just giving themselves time in some way, it tends to feel pretty good. So those are some things you can do like right away.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
And then, of course, you can get more detailed later.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
I wrote this story in the book about this guy from Amsterdam who every Wednesday for 20 years would take a trip and he would go to Schiphol Airport and he would fly somewhere in Europe. He'd fly to Stockholm or Barcelona or somewhere and he would just wander around the airport and he would fly back the same day.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
Basically, Wednesday was his day to take this little day trip and he never really went outside the airport, at least on those trips. And I thought that was such a really interesting story because, you know, a lot of people would say, well, what a waste that is. And like all that traveling without any real travel. But the point is he had found something that made him happy.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
It was a pretty simple and easy thing. There's all these budget airlines, you know, costs less than $100 every time he did it. And he did it, you know, as I said, once a week for most of his life. And so if you can find something that makes you happy, even if it seems kind of weird or odd to someone else and practice doing that, then I think that's a good start, whether it's scheduled or not.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
Yeah.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
Right. There might be something unusual that you like to do. I'm sure there is. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
I really enjoyed it.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
When I came up with the concept for this book, Mike, I think it's, you know, I've been writing books for 15 years. I don't think I've had anything that is as universally resonant. You know, if I would talk to people and they're like, what are you working on? You know, time anxiety, pretty much every person was like, I have that or I identify with that or whatever.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
They would immediately start describing what it looks like to them. So I think it's very common. I think it's in the culture. I think there are two types of it. One type is what I call existential, where it's kind of like time is running out. There's not enough time in my life. And the other kind is that day to day. What should I do next? There's not enough time to do everything.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
I can't make decisions. I'm just struggling because there's so much to do. So you said, like, are you wrong? I think, well, I think you might have some cognitive distortions that affect your working process, but I don't think you're unusual to feel like, wow, there's this time pressure that I feel all the time. And what is the best remedy for that?
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
People look at all sorts of productivity advice, and I think that's kind of counterproductive to actually dealing with the real problem.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
What do I do with that?
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
great thing to do whether it's maybe this might not work when you first wake up but any point during out during the day is to just kind of look back i call this your your last 40 minutes okay so you look back and like how did i spend the last 40 minutes i like 40 minutes rather than an hour for some reason it's this really specific amount of time and you can just ask yourself was that time valuable
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
I walk out of movie theaters. If I don't like the movie, I'll leave. I'll sit down at restaurants, and if I don't like the menu, I'll get up and go somewhere else. It doesn't matter if I've already sat down. And I think it might feel a little bit strange to some people at first, but it's going to also bring you relief, and you're going to feel proud of yourself.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
and valuable doesn't only mean productive you know it can mean like you can find value in lots of different ways but you look back and like did i spend that time well and if so great you know and if not well there's all kinds of times during the day that we realize maybe that wasn't the best use of time then I'm going to kind of regroup and do something else.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
And as for like, you know, waking up and there's all these, all these things. Yeah. I mean, that's like, that's the modern world that we live in. And I think we live in this culture in which there is only one speed, you know, there's only one pace.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
Like if you, if you're getting directives from different people or you're working collaboratively collaboratively with, with folks, then there is this kind of, insistence that everything is urgent. And as you said, obviously, everything is not urgent. And so beginning to understand what is truly urgent, which is a very small, you know, number of things and what could be done at any point.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
And that third category, I think you clued into this as well, when you said some stuff might just disappear, the third category of stuff you could just not do. I think that is a really helpful thing to begin like finding some relief in this process. There's so much I have to do, but what actually really matters here?
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
What is something that I probably should do at some point, but the time of it is not that important. And what could I just not do? And maybe it'll go away and not come back to me.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
you know even if they are mike uh you know i guess this is time this is one of those things where it's like it's helpful to have a big picture view of like imagine that they actually are nevertheless you know what is the goal of your life you know is the goal of your life to be the most responsive person for every person who's waiting for you to hit the ball back and
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
you know, if you get really good at doing that, then you're going to have more balls coming your way. That's the whole problem with this process of like, I'm just going to become super efficient and I'm going to use all these tools. And now we have AI and, you know, and I like some of the stuff, but like,
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
Just making it your mission to become hyper responsive is kind of like the mission of accumulating wealth. It's good to have money, right? But if your life goal is to accumulate as much wealth as possible, I think that's not ultimately a very satisfactory goal. So the same thing with being responsive. It's much better big picture to goal to be like, what do I actually want to do with my life?
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
What is the purpose of my life? How can I then Try to align my day to day with that as much as possible while recognizing that, of course, there are expectations of me and I'm going to need to respond to some of them. But I don't want to start with the goal of like I need to be as responsive as possible because that is ultimately a losing battle. Talk about your idea of the eighth day of the week.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
i have this um this whole other activity about the eighth day of the week like imagine you get an extra day every week so it's not just your perfect ideal day like you experience one time in your life but it's a recurring day and on on this eighth day we can also say like nobody's expecting anything from you like you have responsibilities you know family work otherwise.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
But on this eighth day, like it's a bonus day, everybody else has kind of gone away. You can do anything you want. I started asking people about this. And the number one thing that they said they would do on their eighth day was catch up. They're like, I feel so behind.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
And the thing I want to do most of my life is to catch up on my email or catch up on, you know, whatever these responsibilities are. So you can see how much of a burden it is, you know, how overwhelming it can become. And ultimately, catching up is an elusive goal. So we have to somehow let that go because it's impossible.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
And if we really think, what would we do with that eighth day, then that's where things kind of get interesting. And that's when you realize, this is how I want to spend more of my time.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
Yeah, well, I mean, let's do big picture and then let's do details. So big picture, you pointed to it right at the top of our conversation. Like, I don't think you put it in these words, but I would say someday you're going to die. And it's actually very helpful to be mindful of that. You know, I had a previous book
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
where I looked at people who pursued big quests, did all kinds of stuff like I did about going to every country in the world and so on. And one commonality was they had this emotional awareness of mortality. And everybody has an intellectual awareness, like, yeah, everybody dies. But an emotional awareness is more personal. It's more like, yes, someday I'm going to die.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
And the interesting thing is when you have this mentality, I mean, it can sound kind of like overbearing or scary, but it actually can feel very purposeful because you're like, OK, someday I'm going to die. Time is running out. Therefore, that might actually that knowledge might actually help me let go of some of those things, maybe not all those things that you mentioned.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
But when I once I understand, you know, it kind of gives you this like built in excuse for anything you don't want to do. You know, if somebody asks you to do something and you don't want to do it, you're effectively like, No, thank you. I'm going to die one day, you know, like hopefully not tomorrow, but I don't know, right?
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
And we might not use that exact language, but my point is the framing of understanding your mortality can be very helpful in making decisions.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
Well, I think avoidance is a huge strategy and practice and I come by it honest. I can avoid with the best of them. I have some stories in one of the chapters about there's this guy in the UK who was going to prison for fraud. I think he had like a two-year sentence and he
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
avoided his sentence at least for a while by pretending to be in a coma and it's very difficult to pretend to be in a coma you know for a long period of time he was even hospitalized so how do you do that for like yeah how do you do that right um and obviously he eventually gets found out when cctv finds him you know doing some grocery shopping and such but
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
And there's stories of like the runaway bride, you know, didn't want to face, you know, the wedding. And so it got cold, but cold feet. But instead of having a conversation, you know, actually like disappeared and then it becomes this nationwide thing. So avoidant people will do a lot of things right to to avoid and simply facing some of those things.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
I know that's not easy, but simply facing some of those things can be so helpful and provide so much relief. One thing I do is I have a to dread list. Right. Which is like just like it sounds, you've got your to do list, your to dread list is like these are the things I am putting off. And I'm just thinking about it here in real time as we're having this conversation.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
I'm like, OK, there is actually a conversation I need to have with someone that's a little bit difficult and I don't want to do this, but it probably needs to happen. And it's not going to be out of my head. Like if I don't do it, It's I'm still thinking about it. So the energy that it's consuming, you know, it's going to be in my best interest to somehow find a way to to face that.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
So I saw this sign once that was like, you know, face everything, avoid nothing. And I really liked it. But I also thought it was kind of ambitious because I was like, I'm probably going to be avoiding some things. So I don't know what the like the downsized version of that is, but like face more things. Right. Avoid fewer things. facing things can bring relief.
Something You Should Know
Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck
So the to dread list is very helpful for things you don't want to do. Like you got something to do for your tax return. You got some of that conversation that's difficult or, you know, the thing that's delayed, like you need to write a response that begins with, I'm so sorry for the delay. You know, just the more you can do that, then the better you will feel.