Urgency
Urgency
Quick, quick, quick. Agitated whispering in my ear, I can’t help but heed the hearkening. I can’t escape the urgency. It’s been with me all this time. With me as a kid, young adult, new employee, and now half retired person. I am always in a rush. Always anxious about moving from point A to point B. It’s not just geographical but mental as well. From one achievement to another. One thought process to another.
I used to call it restlessness, but now I know better. It is not some tense reaction to boredom. It runs deeper.
Time Stress
I have always been in a rush. from the moment I arrive somewhere, I am working on my exit strategy. I have my schedule memorized for the day, and am acutely aware of how much time each activity takes.
This was extremely helpful in my working career as a physician. When confronted with a schedule full of complex patients, it was quite handy to be on top of time constraints.
But it’s not so great when this tendency bleeds into personal life. The urgency sometimes follows for no reason other than habit. How many times have I stood by the back door tapping my feet as I wait for my children? For no logical reason. It’s the weekend, why be in such a rush?
Semi retirement has helped some. But it’s not so easy to shake this habit. It bubbles up and must be consciously suppressed in order not to rear its ugly head
The Achievement Treadmill
It’s not just about time. The achievement treadmill works much the same way. There is an urgency to change the world. Make a mark. Be the most successful, or profitable, or well known.
This urgency has no limits. It complies with no bounds. And like any other treadmill, it rarely is quenched by reaching ones goals. The goalpost can and will always be moved.
There is never a finish line.
This sort of perspective makes much sense when someone is at the beginning of a career. When they are at the starting line of a long race. The drive and determination can do wonders. But it may not be the most gratifying feeling in mid to late career. To learn that good is not good enough can be somewhat off putting.
There is no peace.
Returning To Mindset
As discussed in the last post, it seems that the road to financial independence is more affected by mindset than income or debt. In many ways, I think the same applies to post financial independence happiness.
Letting go of this urgency requires a complete mindset makeover. You, at some point, have to realize that writing that book, selling that coarse, or becoming the most internet famous blogger won’t actually solve any problems.
Indeed, it may actually create more.
Final Thoughts
I have spent a great part of my life conquering economic obstacles. Achieving financial independence is quite gratifying. Yet, this sense of urgency continues to plague me. Whether it be time stress, the achievement treadmill, or whatever else I find to obsess over. There has to be a better answer.
Maybe that answer is to let go of urgency. To concentrate on the here and now instead of what will be. To squelch yearning and become an adorer of what already is.
There is so much out there that I want to achieve. So many places I want to go.
And most likely none of them will make me any happier.
I’m starting to become okay with that.
I think this is a very honest post and applies to many “overachievers,” whether in medicine or not. While it may be somewhat exhausting to be plagued with constant urgency driving you to your next accomplishment, lack of urgency may result in inactivity and depression rather than contentment. The Founding Fathers were perhaps aware of this when they declared that all men should be allowed the “pursuit of happiness,” recognizing that “happiness” was elusive if not unobtainable. I suspect that “urgency” is genetic and cannot be dispelled. Perhaps it can be managed, however, as you are doing.
I hope it can be managed because I think letting go of it is more healthy.
I’m still not sure whether restlessness is a blessing or a curse. Of all living things on this Earth, humans are self-aware, aware of our transience in space and time. I think it’s the awareness that our time will come to an end that leads to the fierce drive to make use of the time available to us.
You say that “There is so much out there that I want to achieve. So many places I want to go.
And most likely none of them will make me any happier.”. Hopefully, to draw from Harry Potter, you reach this conclusion because you feel you are already happy. When you look in the Mirror of Erised you see yourself as you are?
HH
I think we focus on the “once I have” or “once I go” to bring happiness. Those types of joy are transient.
Maybe it’s baseline neuroticism. Perfectionism, optimisation, always being on time, never letting others down, never being late, being early.
I reckon I have some too.
I’m sure it gets expressed some way whatever I choose to do. if I’m not obsessing about something, it’ll be something else.
My happiest moments were reading Walt Whitman’s poetry 23 years ago. There is something very nice about renaming everything and turning it into a fairy tale. But when I really connected with childhood hurts later in life, I realized all the poetric whimsy is still at the end of the day a poor defence mechanism and way of coping with the tragedy of life.
Your post for some reason reminded me of a poem by Whitman I read 23 years ago that I hadn’t thought about for a decade, I like the first stanza:
“When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring…”
I read another poem once on Antony and Cleopatra by a stoic who said when faced with grief to not cry like a child, but to turn your head bravely and continue. Sounds great. I later learnt that he later got throat cancer and cried like a child.
I think sometimes it’s ok to cry like a child. Maybe for a minute before you compose yourself to the world again.
Anyway, with the Whitman poem, it’s endlessly charming that idea of naming the bird a star, and imagining the lilac, star and bird twined to the chant of his soul. But it’s still an intellectualization. Beneath the ceaseless energy is a deep grief. For me it was that my father left.
You could say, there was once a glass and it broke, when I was a child, and there was a deep hurt.
And over the years it became hidden. It took a while for me to realize that I had a deep fear that one day I might inadvertantly do the same to my children. Sometimes I find it very difficult to be present to people important in my life.
Putting my son to bed tonight I thought about that and that poem I hadn’t thought about for a long time.
Thank you Doc G for your post.
Your welcome. Some part of all of us is broken. We scurry our whole life to try to fix the inadequacy. Maybe the solution is rather to accept our brokenness.
This is a terrific post. I am glad I am ambitious but my mind is always racing…often wish it would not.
As you reference…where to go next, who to call, what deal to put together, what business to expand,etc.
I find mediation helps a lot. I find staying away from my cell phone also helps a lot. I donot do eitehr of these as much as I would like, but baby steps help and over time I think it will be very effective.
sorry for my typos, see I was thinking of what I had to do next 😉
I’m horrible with typos.
I find meditation and staying away from screens to definitely help. Working out too.
It turns out thinking may actually be a “doing” process first. You presume you form a thought and then act on that thought but I have read the minute motor activity precedes the thought and is integral to the thoughts creation. I have often wondered if this motor preplanning is why people with early dementia seem to mouth words said to them as an aid to understanding. It may be in your case your premotor planning is a little hyperacute. Kids are often designated low tone, normal or high tone and is a soft sign giving some insight into the activity of the brain. Low tone kids are more floppy and high tone kids are more springy and wired so you may be just out into the hypertonic tail of the spectrum of physiology.
Interesting about motor activity preceding thought.
I did a post about slowing down and becoming more patient in semi-retirement. It’s hard, a work in progress. But I am improving.
You and me both.
I loved this post!
I’m already in the process of slowing down – once I moved to The Best House in Melbourne and quit my side-hustle, I needed to have a (slightly) slower pace in life.
I laughed at this typo early on in this post: “I am working on my ext strategy.” Even when writing about slowing down, you sped up the writing by skipping a letter!!!
Yep, that typo was on purpose. Wink, wink!
I love your posts. You are such a a hard worker while I am such a slouch. Yet as part time highly paid professionals we share a lot. You are the better man but we fight common demons! We both worked long hours for solid goals, I worried about 712 employees, you worried about your patients. But at the end of the day we find ourselves worried about us, and how the rest of lives should go. I for one appreciate your honest and vulnerable look at the inner truths of life after the hamster wheel.
Slouch? I highly doubt that. I have read enough of your writing to know the truth.