Watch on YouTube: The 'Hurry' Trap: Why You Can’t Declutter | A Factor In "Hoarding" Overlooked By "Experts"
One of the key observations I've made recently -
Hurry may well be the root of a lot of evil, and particularly it may play a significant role in Dysfunction in Possessions, in the accumulation of clutter, unfinished projects and unused things, assorted failures by mistakes and neglect, as well as all other kinds of imbalance in life.
Simple check - if slowing down even briefly causes other parts of your life to “blow up,” you are not dealing with a time-management problem — you are already in a Trap.
Let's take a look.
Hurry, Haste, Shortage of time..
What is the effect of that ?
It changes the decision making process - favoring expedient decisions, and postponing everything else, including decisions that are good, healthy, beneficial in the longer term, but aren't urgent. You don't have enough time for this or that.
Hurrying also means that not only your schedule is overloaded, but also your mind is overloaded - on top of everything, you have to think how to get everything done on time, and that actually adds more overhead and errors and takes away from your resources.
It is a clear red flag that you are in what I call a Trap, a situation of deficit which is also worsening the same deficit.
For the simplest example, imagine 2 slightly different variants of the same scenario - you need to get somewhere - from point A to point B - let's say, by driving.
Scenario 1 - you are in a hurry. You're running late for your work or some appointment. You rush out the door, you step on the pedal, you wait impatiently at a red light, you try to run the yellow light to avoid being stuck at each intersection, and at all times, you change the lanes trying to squeeze some precious seconds and make some precious green lights, and at all times, you're worried about not making it on time, and the possible consequences of that. Your appointment may get cancelled, you may get charged a fee, your boss might reprimand you for being late, you might miss a meeting, a client, and so on. And on top of that, all the efforts to go faster aren't making much difference, while creating a substantial risk of an accident and a great deal of stress. This all adds up to one unpleasant and likely unsafe situation.
Scenario 2 - exactly the same path, but you have no concern about time. Maybe you are just going somewhere at your leisure, on your own schedule, with no particular arrival time. Maybe you are just running early, and have plenty of time to spare. You are not compelled to squeeze every last second, so you slow down and stop for changing traffic lights, you let other drives merge and pass with courtesy, you have situational awareness to catch other driver's mistakes, and you're just enjoying the ride. You arrive with time to spare no matter what, and you're thinking of something pleasant or useful or even nothing at all.
Running late and having to hurry happens to the best of us from time to time, I'm sure.
But what's particularly bad is chronic hurrying, chronic shortage of time.
( As a side note, another point I'll be making is - shortage of time, shortage of money, and other kinds of shortage are all the same thing in most cases, so I'm going to generally call this "shortage of resources" - see Zero Surplus Theory )
The reasoning is like this - if you are short of time, that means you are in some way compelled to take on more work, to commit to more things, than you have time for. That means something or someone is compelling you to take on all these commitments. That means you have a negative balance of resources, and are not entirely in control of the situation. If you had an abundance of resources, you could afford to take time off work, to delegate work, to hire someone, or simply skip it, postpone or slow down, and then do something of your choice that's also valuable for maintaining a balance in your life. You could take the time to purge, declutter and organize your things, for one example from our favourite topic of possessions. You could take the time to finish some hobby projects, eliminate materials and work in progress, clean up and enjoy the results of a job well done.
What's driving the imbalance and the shortage of resources is another matter, there may be any number and combination of causes, both internal and external. It may be due to underestimating your real workload and resources available, and committing to more than you can realistically accomplish. It may be a salary that doesn't pay enough. It may be others taking advantage of you by asking you to do things at the expense of your own agenda, attention, workload, spare time ; others not being considerate of your realistic workload, needs and throughput ; or even you yourself not having realistic awareness of this. It may be voluntary or involuntary commitment to overtime at work. It may be any combination of these or other things.
Having someone else constantly rush you, or "redirect your priorities", is the absolute worst - a lot of stress, loss of productivity, disruption, distraction, loss of intentionality, it's very, very inefficient, and your more subtle and holistic needs go out the window first.
Chronic Hurry doesn't have a one-to-one correlation to Dysfunction in Possessions - just because one might have a shortage of resources, it doesn't necessarily mean that they end up with a mess ; only in combination with certain cognitive, acquisition and retention patterns and other factors ; and conversely, abundance of resources and opportunities doesn't guarantee that no Dysfunction in Possessions occurs - there will be plenty of cases where, even under all the favorable conditions, stuff builds up and purging doesn't happen.
But, whatever the situation, chronic hurrying, that is, shortage of resources, will have a negative impact on it, and is seriously unhealthy in every possible way.
Dysfunction in Possessions, for one, often emerges not because people want chaos, but because hurry repeatedly defers the very actions that would prevent it.
I know firsthand exactly how it's possible to get into a point-of-no-return situation, a catch 22 - no matter what you do, other aspects of your life start blowing up, and parties concerned refuse to wait. Now, getting out of such a situation is the million dollar question.
Stay tuned, as I will be examining and testing solutions and alternatives.