What I Noticed When I Stopped Rushing Through My Own Life

Image by @charlieegan3 from Unsplash

Chop, chop, let's go!

Fast. Quick. Now. Immediate. That's how we've been brought up.

I grew up around someone for whom "pause" and "breathe" were never in the vocabulary. Always on the go, always on the run. When I once told her to slow down, she said it plainly: it's just her nature.

Some of that rubbed off on me. I plan to maximise, to be as efficient as possible, to fit in as much as the day allows.

Take a weekend morning when I become the designated chef. I plan the whole thing before I've even had breakfast. Wake up, go for a run, buy food for breakfast and ingredients for lunch. Come back, load the laundry. While it's running, mop the floor. Prep the food. Hang the laundry. Cook. Wash up. By the time lunch is over, I'm already spent, and I sleep through the afternoon. The day disappears before I've actually lived any of it.

There's nothing wrong with planning ahead. But somewhere in that list is the part I don't say out loud: I've burnt the garlic because I was folding laundry in my head. I've forgotten to check if the rice was even in the pot. Small things. Forgivable things. But they happen because I wasn't actually in any one task — I was three steps ahead of myself, and my hands were the only part of me still in the kitchen.

That's the part rushing takes from you. Not just time, and not just energy. Attention. When you move fast enough, you stop noticing the process itself — the exact moment the onions turn, the small warning sign in a conversation, the detail in an email that mattered. You don't see the mistake happening. You only see it once it's already made.

And it isn't only the kitchen. It's the holidays too.

We plan a trip as a chance to slow down, to rest, to switch off. And then we do the opposite. We pack the itinerary tighter than any working week — three cities in five days, an early flight after a late dinner, one more must-see attraction squeezed in before checkout. We tell ourselves we're maximising the time, getting our money's worth, seeing everything while we're there.

Then we come home more tired than when we left. And the joke that isn't really a joke starts doing the rounds — I need a holiday to recover from my holiday.

We laugh, but sit with that for a second. A holiday is meant to restore you. If it leaves you needing a second one just to function, something in how we approach rest is broken, not just the schedule.

I don't think the answer is doing less. I think it's doing fewer things properly, rather than more things half-noticed. There's a difference between a full day and a fast one. A full day still lets you remember it. A fast one just gets you to the end of it.

So here's the honest question I'm asking myself, and maybe you should too: is this the pace I actually want to live at, or is it just the one I've never stopped to question?