Chronopathy: the obsession with making the most of time

We live in the society of immediacy, where everything around us leads us to a dizzying pace of life. We increasingly worry about our days being truly productive, something that can become an obsession called chronopathy.

As strange as it may seem, nowadays, it is frowned upon to admit that we have a tight schedule. The most normal and most accepted thing is to say “I don’t have time.” Some even hide their intentions to relax and “do nothing” at home. What society expects from us is maximum productivity.

What is chronopathy?

This lifestyle that many of us are forced to follow can easily lead to what is known as chronopathy. It is a disease that is marked by the obsession with making the most of our time. An intense and constant concern to make our days as productive as possible.

Beyond a neoliberal culture that demands constant productivity from us, this obsession has a enormous difficulty in stopping. And not just stop in the face of exhaustion; also to enjoy the moment, the family and the small pleasures of life. What is colloquially known as “stopping to smell the flowers.”

In the words of Marian Rojas Estapé, psychiatrist and author of the book How to Make Good Things Happen to You, this trend can be very harmful to society. She talks about the false idea that “hurry and acceleration produce greater and better results.”

“If someone comments: I don’t have time, I’m in a hurry, I’m very busy… We assimilate it as normal and correct,” he adds. What’s more, when we recognize that our agenda is not very busy, “one is surprised and negatively judges the person in front of them.”

Consequences of being slaves of time

Well, this concern about time can have serious consequences from a psychological point of view. And the worst of all is that it can affect our daily lives in different ways.

It is difficult for us to think clearly. Living in a constant state of acceleration and hyperactivity that prevents us from thinking clearly. We do not have the pause and calm necessary to establish priorities from coldness. The perception of time is more accelerated. If we have the feeling that time is eating us, in the end it will end up eating us. That is to say: the more we become obsessed with making the most of time, the greater the feeling that it slips through our fingers. Without contact with our emotions. When we’re worried about being productive, it’s easy to not pay attention to our body’s most important processes. Therefore, chronopathy is a problem that can distance us from our own emotions. We do not have the time or the necessary pause to listen to how we feel and identify relevant emotional events. Excess tension, anxiety and stress. No matter how much these emotional states go unnoticed, our body will continue to suffer their consequences, even if it is in silence. And this set of unlived or unexpressed emotions can translate into stress, tension and anxiety. We waste the moment. The saddest thing about all this is that this state of acceleration prevents us from enjoying the moment. Every day we waste countless moments that are very valuable to us and those around us. It is difficult for us to take advantage of the opportunity to disconnect, relax or do something that really motivates us.

Does the digital environment affect chronopathy?

Living in the society of immediacy, it is to be expected that chronopathy will find a favorable breeding ground in the digital world. And, according to Estapé, “what we constantly receive (from the digital environment) are alerts.” It can be a notification from a media outlet, a social network or a simple video that reaches your mobile. This bombardment of external stimuli leads us to a state of constant alert. “The warning system starts up and, then, I don’t relax,” explains the psychiatrist.

No matter how many positive elements the digital environment provides us, we must control the relationship we have with it. At the end of the day, only we have the ability to stop for our own health. “What we have to teach our brain today is to slow down and stop so that we don’t get so sick,” Estapé concludes.

How to leave behind the obsession with taking advantage of time?

It is clear that productivity and the use of time can become an obsession. But how is it possible to combat this current that seems to drag us all down without remedy? Here we leave you a few tips that you can try to apply in your daily life:

Don’t overload your schedule. As much as possible, try to reduce your task schedule so that you can complete them as calmly as they require. This way, you will be much more aware of what you do and you will not feel saturated due to lack of time.

Find some obligation that pleases you. This can be difficult at times, but if you could find some obligation that pleases you, your standard of living would increase entirely. This will make you feel good and will allow you to focus your attention on the positive aspects of what you do.

Leave free time unplanned. It is highly recommended to leave a blank space in the agenda. A portion of time that we will leave unplanned, entirely dedicated to us.

Enjoy the process more than the result. If we don’t enjoy the process, we may not even be able to enjoy the result. We all like to do things well and for it to bring us some benefit, however enjoying the process should be the only one of our obligations.

They are simple measures that can help us improve our quality of life.. With them we will feel that time does not run at a speed that we dislike, the days will stop passing like when we drive on autopilot, only paying attention to the most salient elements, while in the heaviest tasks we will not feel the anxiety of pushing. to the second hand mentally.

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