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Why I Felt Rushed All Day, Even When I Had Time · Afzal's Reset Entropy Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: A while back, I noticed something strange about my mornings.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: I would wake up on my own, reach for my phone, and check the time.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: If I saw that I had another 20 minutes or half an hour before I had to get up, I would go back to sleep.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: It sounded completely reasonable.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: I had time, so why not use it?
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that extra bit of sleep.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: But often I wouldn't wake up exactly after that 20 minutes.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'd get up half an hour or an hour later than I intended.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe there will be alarms going on and off, and it'll be closing, opening, god knows what that half sleep, half awake behavior.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then everything began at once.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: I needed to get ready first, check what was happening, check all the messages, decide what to do first, what to reply to the email, and make up for the time I felt I'd lost.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I have to reach out to a particular place.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that feeling didn't always leave after the morning was over.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: I felt rushed throughout the day.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: I want to talk about what I noticed and what I changed.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the larger question is, I brought up for me.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes we look at the whole day and say, Why am I so stressed?
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Today's day was so hectic.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Without looking at the small moment where the day begins to feel that way.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: What was actually happening?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: The interesting part is that my body had already woken me up.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that every time you open your eyes, you must jump out of the bed.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't slept enough, you are tired and you need rest.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about those mornings when I felt awake but checked the clock and made a decision based on the time it showed.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: I would think I don't need to start yet.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Then I'd go back to sleep.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Later when I woke up, I was no longer choosing how to begin.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like I had to catch up.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's the part I had missed.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: I thought the issue was that I needed a better schedule for the rest of the day.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: But for me, the rush had often begun before the day work even starts.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: That hectic breakfast, that running to washroom, going out, getting ready, getting going out of the house.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Everything starts feeling back to back to back.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: One meeting after other rush to rush to rush.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I tried something simple.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: On mornings when I'd slept enough and woke up feeling ready, I got up.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't immediately try to be productive, I didn't turn those extra minutes into another task I had to complete.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I use them to meditate or do some breath work.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I simply had little before everything else began.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And now because I have been doing it since a while, I have developed in itself a different kind of routine where I do breath work, meditation, and visualization all three.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I noticed a difference.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: I used to feel rushed through the day.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now I don't feel that constant rush in the same way.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't go into a position to take decision on the spot rushly.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like I can slow down a part of my time and feeling to execute a lot more clearer rather than feeling of taking any decision or any action out of abruptness.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that is my experience.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sharing it because it made me examine a response I had repeated so often that I barely saw it.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm awake, but the clock says I can postpone starting.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: The pattern beyond the morning, this made me think about other places in life where we do something very similar.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know that feeling where we postpone the task until that urgency starts creating, until it reaches that bottleneck.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, now I have to do something.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: That reaching that thing in every small essence stuff which we do in our life gets replicated in big thing.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: How you do anything or how you do one thing is how you do everything.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: But the deadline is still a week away.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: So you say, I have time, you leave it.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Then the deadlines come close and the work happens in a rush.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know you want to have a conversation, but it doesn't feel urgent today.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: So you tell yourself, you'll do it later.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Then something happens, emotions build up, and now the conversation feels harder.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: The more time passes, the more it becomes harder.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'll give you a super nice example.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Have you being an introvert, this this connects to me the most, but I can understand it will connect to everyone to be honest.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Have you walked into a place or you're sitting somewhere and there's someone next to you who you don't know?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: If you are able to say hi immediately in the initial three, four seconds, you have that comfortableness.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: If that person you have to talk to and the time just gets along, it you start thinking in your brain, okay, now this, now that, now this you go in overthinking spiral.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Same happens in our life too.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: When we delay our task, we start going in an overthinking loop.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: So one loop doesn't stop there, it starts creating n number of different different loops and different different segments as well.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: And with all of that on our head, we enter a thing where we feel rushed.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now the details are different, but I'm interested in the moment where I have time becomes a reason to stop listening to what is already clear to you.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes waiting is the right choice.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you genuinely need rest, preparation, or more information.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: The point is to notice whether you made that choice consciously or whether you followed a familiar response and only noticed that effect you know later on.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: The question I now ask is for me, the question wasn't how can I force myself to get up earlier?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: I have tried that too, by the way.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: If and whenever I tried that, it would be forcing myself and force worked work max for like three to four days.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: After that, I would start beating myself up that I won't.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: That is what happens when we forcely do anything, it doesn't last much.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: It was when I wake up feeling ready, feeling all relaxed.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Why am I letting the clock decide whether I begin?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: My body itself is telling me and I can get up.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that question gave me a choice.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: I could check how I actually felt.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: If I needed sleep, I could sleep.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: If I was awake, I could get up and start gently.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: The little bit of space matters to me.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Not because every day is now perfect, things still happen, plans still change, abruptness, things will happen.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: But I no longer want my first decision of the day to be automatic, one that leaves me feeling behind.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: And subconsciously, like I said, it starts repattering a lot of things in your life, and especially it kind of delays that overthinking path also.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: A practice for the listener.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you recognize this, don't make a rule that you must get up the instant you wake up, just observe your next couple of mornings, and in that time frame, add add stuff, add breath work, add things.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: We are double targeting on calmness, stillness, and overthinking.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because of course the meditation part will help you in all of this.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: But what's more important is even as we are finishing things and doing things on its correct time and course, we never feel that much rushed or go into the spiral of overthinking.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: So when you first wake up, ask yourself, am I still tired or am I awake and looking for a reason to stay in bed?
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, that habit development will take time because when we get up, we are like half drunk to be honest.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: What happens when I go back to sleep?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Ask that.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: How do I feel when I begin my day?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: You might notice the same pattern I did.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: You might notice something different.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's useful too.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: And one small trick I have to give you if you feel a bit of readiness, just get up and go to sleep in a different position.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: You will get up in one, two minutes after that.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you lie back down, you are dead gone.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: You will get up after half an hour only.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: You might notice the same pattern in all of this.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if you do find yourself with a little time in the morning, you don't have to fill it with work.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, we are looking for stillness here.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: You could sit quietly, breathe, meditate, or simply give yourself room to arrive in the day.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: I used to think of that extra 20 minutes as time I was gaining.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: But on many mornings, going back to sleep let me begin the day feeling like I was already late.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And once I saw that, I could make a different choice.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Which is what I suggested, and how to make it.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I want you to look for in your own life.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: A small response you repeat automatically, and the effect it has long after the moment has passed is on a different level.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Just notice that for a week.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: If you try this for a day or two, tell me what you actually notice.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Did your morning feel different?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Did the rest of the day feel different?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or was there another reason you felt rushed?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Break the loop, reset reality.