I'm here for women who are done apologizing for their emotions, asking permission to change, and building lives designed by committee. Your intensity isn't too much - it's your superpower. Your thoughts aren't broken - they're just protective patterns ready for revolution. Your dreams aren't too big - they're finally big enough.
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Time Anxiety, Perspective Change through Fiction, & Finding Time for Yourself
Published 21 days ago • 5 min read
Hello Reader!
After a busy holiday weekend, I hope you had some time to yourself. A chance to really relax. However you like to, whether that's unplugging, reading, or bingeing shows or video games with friends and family. I hope you had time to enjoy guilt-free fun and relaxation!
Feel
My kiddo said something over the weekend that gave me an eerie sense of connection with him. After watching the 4th of July fireworks, he said, "Well, summer's almost over." Almost over? I thought about the entire month of July stretched out in front of us with golf competitions, library workshops, vibe-coding, and hopefully lots of pool time. Almost over?!? Even though my kiddos start in mid-August, there are still a lot of days of running to do and squeezing work in the margins.
But his thought echoed my childhood self if that same feeling. June always felt like the whole summer stretched out forever! The 4th of July always felt like the beginning of the end. And now even more so. I only have 6 more summers before my oldest goes off to college. Only 5 more summers with back to schools that I don't take him somewhere and not bring him home. Probably only 3 more summers of driving him around. Just writing this brings tears to my eyes. Time can stop now. It can stop racing out of my control and towards an unknown future I hope is awesome but am still in no hurry to get to.
This is one of the ways time anxiety manifests and is covered in Chris Guillebeau's new book, the aptly named, Time Anxiety: The Illusion of Urgency and a Better Way to Live.The best-selling author of The $100 Dollar Startup, Chris is no stranger to hustle culture and productivity hacks. But no matter what strategies he tried, he still felt like there weren't enough hours in the day and time was flying by at an alarming rate. So instead of trying to be even more productive, he went the opposite way and decided to slow it down and work on his own priorities.
His steps include:
Breaking the Cycle - We are culturally conditioned not to waste time. We compare ourselves to others' productivity and deduce that we should work harder and rest less to get even more done.
Rewriting the Rules - To stop this, we have to decide what really matters to us vs. what society, our friends, and our families expect of us. He also recognizes that typical productivity hacks do not work for neurodivergent people.
Owning Your Time - Setting boundaries around our time by saying no and putting our own joy first are important steps to stop the feeling of time anxiety.
Like the book I'll cover below, Chris also suggests time tracking to see where our time really goes and how to reallocate it. I resisted this at first, like I resist tracking anything that I don't want to know how much I'm wasting: food, money, braincells :) But just doing it for one week, really shows where I can stop scrolling and pick up the book I brought with me!
Change
I normally don't recommend fiction on here. Especially not a thriller. But that's no surprise because I'm a wuss and don't read many thrillers. However, Glass Houses by Madeline Ashby is interesting beyond the intriguing mystery and tension throughout the novel. Set in the near future, I couldn't get over the technology and behind the scenes of tech start-ups. The author is a consulting futurist with years of experience at tech companies and startups. I love new technology and am fascinated with how authors weave it into their stories. This author also does an amazing job giving a voice to what it's like to be a woman in tech!
And my favorite line, "What would it be like to live in a sphere of slow quiet? Wasn't that true luxury, after all - time and space and silence?" really captures what women face in all professions. We are still seen as the doers, the fetchers, and multitaskers to the point where every aspect of our lives is in high gear all the time. The luxury of taking our time and not hurrying is saved for rare moments alone or during a sanctioned hobby or holiday (but not with family we are providing all the fun for.) It got me thinking that's what we're working towards. Time to think. Time to enjoy. Time to be ourselves. Unhurried. Unexplained. And guilt-free.
So if you like smart thrillers along with the sex and violence that the internet brings, check out Glass Houses by Madeline Ashby!
Build
I've been thinking a lot about time justification and women lately. How we have to announce our 'me' time and justify what we're doing every second of the day. Oh, we're working. We're volunteering. We're watching the kids. We feel we can't say 'no' to anything unless we're doing something else worthwhile. We feel we need to tell the world what we're doing and why it's valuable.
The ultimate luxury in life isn't nice things, fancy trips, or expensive dinners out; it's time. It's the ability to do what we want when we want. Most of us can't do that whenever we want. But we can set boundaries and take back what extra time we do have without guilt.
Cassie Holmes has great strategies on how to do this in her book, Happier Hour. She refers to the phenomenon of feeling like you have too much to do and not enough time to do it in as time poverty. Her hints for combating this are:
Time tracking (again!) but this time with the purpose of finding what brings you joy and what doesn't. She suggests pairing unfun tasks with fun ones, like watching a Days of Our Lives while I clean!
Prioritizing time with the ones you love. This doesn't mean obligatory relatives! This means with people you actually enjoy spending time with.
Get rid of distractions while enjoying time with loved ones or on hobbies. Put your phone away at dinner and on the golf course. Give whatever you're doing your full attention and the time will feel longer and well spent.
Create the sweet spot of free time: 2-5 hours a day. Enough to enjoy a good hobby or relaxing time with friends but not enough to feel like you wasted your day.
And look at that, it was all books this week! Reminds me of the old days of The Bookletter. Summer is for reading!
Thank you for taking the time to read!
Please share with a friend to help the Feel Change Build Newsletter grow. More women need to know they can not only feel better but also go after what they really want!
Have a lovely day! - Kate
PS
Thank you to everyone who has taken my 90-Second Dual Awareness emotional processing course and for your feedback! If anyone else is interested, here's a chance to try the course for FREE:
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I'm here for women who are done apologizing for their emotions, asking permission to change, and building lives designed by committee. Your intensity isn't too much - it's your superpower. Your thoughts aren't broken - they're just protective patterns ready for revolution. Your dreams aren't too big - they're finally big enough.
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