"I've only been swiping my phone for a while, why is it the middle of the night", "I just wanted to get up and do something, and the day has passed", "I've been busy lately, but I feel like I've done nothing", "The deadline is approaching, but I don't have a clue about my paper"......
Do you feel this way all the time? Sometimes before I start working, I am worried that I will not be able to complete the task within the specified time, and I feel anxious and stressed; Sometimes I can't wait to break a minute into two minutes, and imagine how nice it would be to have 25 hours a day; Sometimes I swipe my phone until late at night or even in the early hours of the morning, as if I want to "make up" the time that has been "delayed" during the day.
This kind of unconscious anxiety about time has affected many people's work, study and life, making people restless, disoriented, and physically and mentally exhausted. Some call this phenomenon time anxiety. Why is there time anxiety? Is it curable?
One
The so-called "time anxiety" refers to the tension and panic that people feel as time goes by. Chen Changkai, an associate professor at Nanjing University, defines "time anxiety" as "a state of tension in which time is reasonably planned, time is fully utilized, and time cannot be wasted, as well as the resulting behavioral manifestations and tendencies."
Young people are the main body of time anxiety, and the 2020 China College Student Health Survey Report shows that mental health problems related to time management have become one of the most concerned psychological topics among college students. Time narratives centered on busyness, hurry, urgency, and lack of time are common expressions of time anxiety, and they have the tendency to spread.
The first is the panic of not being able to complete the task within the specified time limit. This type of time anxiety encompasses a wide range of situations, from student essays to workplace reports, from personal literary works to factory orders, from daily assessment indicators to temporary emergency tasks...... Although many people have been notified a long time ago and want to prepare well and do a big job, they often put the "decisive moment" in the last few days or even the last day. Throughout the completion of the task, I was so nervous and tormented that many people talked about the deadline as if they were facing a big enemy.
The second is the nervousness of the fear of using time inefficiently. Many people are also prone to time anxiety when they usually have no special tasks, feeling busy but empty, working hard but not efficient enough, and often in a state of overwhelm, confusion and sleepiness. Looking ahead and procrastinating, always trying to use time in a better way and in a faster way, once the effect is not satisfactory, it is easy to have a sense of powerlessness and frustration.
The third is the guilt of not daring to relax to the fullest. should have come to rest and relax, but I think that "taking a break" is a plaything and not working hard enough; I should have concentrated on my work and study, but I felt sleepy and inefficient because of the lack of rest time. Finally, it is not easy to play and dry, and leisure and relaxation have become a luxury from a basic need.
Two
It cannot be denied that in the current fierce competitive environment, people's work and life are indeed stressful and objectively tiring. But this is only one aspect, and the anxiety of "my heart is not sewn" is also an important reason for increasing the feeling of exhaustion.
The analysis of the causes of time anxiety is not only the background factors of the times brought about by the accelerating pace of social production and life, the information overload brought about by the development of Internet technology, but also the role of excessive advocacy of successful learning in society.
Let's start with the continuous acceleration of the overall pace of society. From the perspective of historical development, from an agricultural society to an industrial society, and then to an information society, the rhythm of human work and life has been accelerating and iterating. In the agricultural era, "the sun rises and the sun sets", and the timekeeping units are also larger units such as "hours" and "quarters". In the industrial age, punctuality became the norm of modern life in minutes and seconds. Nowadays, we have even reached the point where every second counts and stays up all night: office workers use the App to check in and sign out every day, and they have to pay attention to the dynamics of the work group at all times after work; The takeaway brother is trapped in the "algorithm" system and is forced to constantly refresh the speed of food distribution; In the middle of the night, many office buildings are still brightly lit, working overtime day and night......
Then there is the information overload caused by the Big Bang of knowledge. With the great development of network information technology, the multiplication cycle of human knowledge has been shortening, doubling every 50 years in the 19th century, about 10 years in the first half of the 20th century, about 3 years at the end of the 80s of the 20th century, and in 2020, knowledge has doubled every 73 days. In the face of the ever-changing mass knowledge, a steady stream of news and all kinds of information, people are inevitably dazzled, overwhelmed, and even visual overload, brain downtime, once encountered do not understand the information, it is easy to breed "they are outdated" emotions, anxiety, panic, insecurity is not uncommon.
The over-rendering of the public opinion field is also an important reason for time anxiety. In recent years, there have been widespread remarks in society that one-sidedly emphasize the importance of time, such as "ordinary people exchange time for money, and successful people exchange money for time", "how to make you have an extra hour a day", "people who are better than you work harder than you!" …… Some media even used extreme cases of a few successful people, such as "the schedule of Peking University and Tsinghua University students××", "Harvard at half past four in the morning", and "how old did so-and-so become the youngest ......" as a model that the whole society should benchmark to publicize, which intensified the anxiety and impatience of ordinary people about time.
Three
At a time when time anxiety is spreading, we must learn to cultivate a "slow mentality" in the "fast life", stop the hurried pace from time to time, nourish the spirit, and "recharge" our state with appropriate relaxation.
Prioritize and respond to change. The road must be taken step by step, and things must be done one by one. No matter how many things you have to do, there is always a priority. In the face of multiple tasks, you may wish to use the "four-quadrant" time management method, divide the tasks into four quadrants according to the two dimensions of important and urgent, give priority to the important and urgent parts, followed by the important and non-urgent things, urgent but unimportant things can be delegated to others, and the unimportant and non-urgent things are put last, so as to ensure that the limited energy is concentrated on the most important things.
Learn to filter information, and don't think "there is no end". Zhuangzi said: "My life has an end, and knowledge has no end." With an end, there is no end, and it is gone! This sentence can be used as a footnote in the Internet era of knowledge expansion and information explosion. If you just passively accept information and treat your brain as a garbage can, you will only be overwhelmed by a large amount of junk information and physically and mentally exhausted. In the face of the massive amount of information in the Internet era, we must learn to choose and choose, take the initiative to identify false information and useless information on the Internet, reduce excessive dependence on digital products and unnecessary online time, and use mobile phones and the Internet as tools to receive valuable information and improve learning and work.
Pay attention to the combination of work and rest, and maintain a degree of relaxation. As the saying goes, the bow is easy to break when it is full, and the string is easy to break. No matter how busy you are with work and family affairs, you should also try to find a certain amount of time for leisure and relaxation: whether it is for a walk, drinking tea and chatting, or tasting food, listening to songs and dramas, or closing your eyes and resting, as long as it suits your physical and mental condition and can reduce physical, mental and psychological consumption, it is a good way to rest.
Generally speaking, we all have some fragments of time in our daily lives, such as queuing at the bank, taking the bus or subway, as well as meeting breaks, after tea and dinner, and so on. Many people use these fragmented time to scroll through Weibo, flip through Moments, watch short videos, and play small games. From a casual point of view, there's nothing wrong with that, but it's not necessarily a good way to relax. If these leisure methods are still taking a toll on your body and mind, making you more tired and unhappy, then it is advisable to change it.