Alternatives to living like clockwork

Last week I talked about people who have the so-called hurry sickness. They live by the clock and feel the urgent need to make every minute productive. They place undue pressures on themselves which in turn contribute to health problems.

Although these pressured people are often successful, they usually will admit they are not easy to live with and wish they could have life just a little simpler.

They can, and here are some things that can be done to alter a sense of time urgency:

• Admit that time urgency is something you wish to change, that you are unhappy with the pressures you create and that it is a problem you are willing to deal with.

• Remind yourself frequently that much of life is timeless and lacks closure. Not everything has to have a beginning or an end. When one begins to see things as part of an overall continuing process, deadlines become less of a necessity.

• Stop trying to do more than one thing at a time. Crowding too many activities into too short a time is like going down the aisles of a supermarket without a basket. Your arms will hold just so many items before things begin to hit the floor and break.

• Try to develop hobbies and leisure-time activities that discourage deadlines. Many people find fishing or painting offer these opportunities. They can – if one doesn’t set a quota on the number of fish he has to catch or a deadline for when a painting is to be completed. This also necessitates setting time for leisure and hobbies and not scheduling work during every waking hour.

• Before starting a new project, ask yourself the following questions:

Is it absolutely necessary that this task be done right now? Will the completion of this task in an expedient manner really make a difference a few years from now? Can the task be delegated to someone else?

• Try to decrease the amount of time spent thinking in terms of numbers.

• Try going without your watch for a whole vacation or perhaps even for some weekends. Enlist your family’s support in helping you become less time urgent. If you live in a large city, try driving in the slow lane. Reevaluate your need to switch lanes and pass every car that is not traveling at 15 miles above the speed limit.

• Begin to tolerate what you perceive as slowness in someone else’s work. Ask your child to help you with the yard work. Then let him work at his own pace. Don’t rush him.

• Force yourself to practice listening to others’ conversations. Don’t interrupt or finish their sentences for them.

• Practice taking relaxation breaks. Don’t work through lunch. Do something that reduces tension between the morning and afternoon hours. Listen to music, read something unrelated to your work.

• Take time each day to enjoy and experience some aesthetic event. Watch a sunset; look at cloud formations, shadows, changes in colors in the sky.

• Take a long, unplanned weekend. Let the time evolve and spend it doing something relaxing, creative and undemanding.

Harold H. LeCrone, Jr., Ph.D. Copyright 1987