It started with a kettle. A simple, stainless steel electric kettle sitting on my kitchen counter. I was standing there, watching the little blue light, and I realized I was tapping my foot. I was actually irritated. It had been, what, ninety seconds? Maybe two minutes? And yet, there I was, feeling this weird, buzzing pressure in my chest because the water wasn’t boiling fast enough. I had things to do. I had emails to answer. I had a day to “get through.”
That was the moment I realized I’d lost the plot. I’d become so obsessed with the end result—the cup of coffee—that the two minutes of actually making it felt like a hurdle. A barrier. An inconvenience. And it’s not just the coffee. It’s everything, isn’t it? We’ve turned our lives into a series of obstacles to be cleared as quickly as possible so we can get to… well, where exactly? The end of the day? The weekend? Retirement?
I don’t think I’m alone in this. We’ve been conditioned to believe that if something can be done faster, it should be. Efficiency is the god we all worship now. But lately, I’ve been wondering if we’re accidentally optimizing all the joy out of our lives. I’ve started trying to do things the “hard” way again, and honestly, it’s been a bit of a revelation. Not because I have extra time to kill—nobody does—but because the friction is where the life actually happens.
The invisible pressure of the phantom clock
There’s this clock in our heads that we didn’t put there. It’s a phantom clock, ticking away, whispering that we’re falling behind. Behind whom? I don’t know. But the feeling is real. It’s that low-grade anxiety that bubbles up when you’re stuck in a slow-moving line at the grocery store or when your computer takes a few extra seconds to restart. We’ve become allergic to the “in-between” moments.
I’ve noticed that when I try to rush through the mundane stuff, I don’t actually save that much time. If I rush my morning routine, I might “save” ten minutes. But what do I do with those ten minutes? I usually just spend them scrolling through a screen, feeling slightly more frazzled than I did before. It’s a bad trade. I’m trading peace for a tiny sliver of time that I don’t even use well.
We’ve forgotten how to just exist in the gaps. We treat every spare second as a vacuum that needs to be filled with “productivity” or “content.” But those gaps are where we breathe. They’re where we process what just happened and prepare for what’s coming next. When we eliminate the gaps, we’re just constantly “on,” and that’s a direct path to burning out before lunch.
Why friction is actually a good thing
We’re told that the goal of modern life is to remove friction. We want “frictionless” payments, “frictionless” travel, “frictionless” relationships. But friction is what gives things texture. It’s what makes them memorable. Think about the best meal you’ve ever had. Was it a protein shake you chugged in thirty seconds because it was “efficient”? Probably not. It was likely something that took hours to cook, or a meal where you sat around a table for three hours talking to people you love.
I’ve started leaning back into the things that require a bit of effort. I’ve started buying whole beans and grinding them by hand. It takes longer. It’s louder. It requires actual physical effort from my arms. But the smell is better. The ritual makes the coffee taste like something I earned rather than something I just consumed. It forces me to be present in my kitchen for five minutes instead of hovering over a machine like a caffeinated vulture.
The lesson of the sourdough starter
A few years ago, like everyone else, I tried my hand at sourdough. I failed, obviously. My first loaf was a brick. My second was a pancake. I got frustrated because I wanted to “master” it in a weekend. But sourdough doesn’t care about your schedule. It moves at its own pace. You have to feed it, wait, fold the dough, wait, proof it, wait.
It taught me that some things simply cannot be rushed. You can’t “hack” fermentation. You can’t “optimize” the growth of yeast. You just have to be there with it. There’s a quiet humility in realizing that you aren’t the boss of everything. Sometimes, you just have to wait for the dough to rise.
The lost art of the long way home
I’ve started taking the long way home. Not every day, and certainly not when I’m running late for something important, but when I can. I’ll take the side streets instead of the highway. I’ll walk to the store that’s twenty minutes away instead of driving to the one that’s five minutes away. It sounds counterintuitive, right? Why would you choose to spend more time in transit?
Because transit is where the observations happen. When you’re zooming down a highway at sixty miles per hour, the world is a blur. You’re just trying to get from A to B. But when you walk, you notice things. You see the way the light hits the neighbor’s garden. You see the stray cat that always sits on the same porch. You hear the sounds of the neighborhood. You’re in the world, not just passing through it.
- You notice the change in seasons more clearly.
- You run into people you might actually want to talk to.
- Your brain has space to wander without a specific destination.
- The physical movement settles your nervous system.
It’s about reclaiming your attention. We spend so much of our lives being told where to look and what to think about. Taking the long way is a small, quiet act of rebellion. It’s saying, “My time is mine, and I’m going to spend it looking at these trees if I want to.”
Learning to be “bad” at something for a while
Part of why we rush is that we’re afraid of the “middle” part of learning. We want to go from “beginner” to “expert” overnight. We see the polished results of other people’s work and we feel ashamed that our own first attempts look like a mess. So we look for shortcuts. We look for the “fast track.”
But the mess is the point. I’ve been trying to learn to play the guitar lately. I’m terrible. My fingers hurt, the chords buzz, and I can barely transition from G to C without a five-second pause. A “smarter” person might say I’m wasting my time. I could just listen to a professional recording of the same song, right? It would sound much better.
But there’s a specific kind of satisfaction in the struggle. There’s a neurological joy in that moment when your brain finally figures out where to put your ring finger. If I “hacked” my way through it, or if I only played things I was already good at, I’d miss that spark. We need to give ourselves permission to be mediocre for a long time. It’s where the growth happens. And honestly, it’s much less stressful when you stop trying to be a prodigy and just accept that you’re a hobbyist having a go at it.
The myth of “clearing the deck”
I used to tell myself that I’d relax once I “cleared the deck.” You know the feeling—once the laundry is done, the emails are answered, the house is clean, and the bills are paid, then I can sit down. Then I can enjoy myself.
The problem is that the deck is never clear. As soon as you finish one thing, two more appear. It’s like trying to dry the ocean with a paper towel. If you wait for everything to be “finished” before you allow yourself to slow down, you will be waiting until you’re dead. Life is messy and unfinished by design.
I’ve had to learn to sit in the middle of the mess. To have a cup of tea while the sink is full of dishes. To read a book when there are still things on my to-do list. It feels wrong at first. It feels like I’m failing. But it’s actually the only way to live. You have to find the quiet in the middle of the noise, not wait for the noise to stop.
Practical ways to stop the rush (from someone who is still trying)
I don’t have this all figured out. I still find myself checking my phone while I’m waiting for the elevator. I still get annoyed at slow drivers sometimes. But I’m getting better. Here are a few things that have actually helped me lower the temperature of my daily life:
First, I’ve stopped multitasking. Or at least, I’m trying. They say multitasking is just the ability to screw up multiple things at once, and I think they’re right. If I’m eating, I try to just eat. No TV, no phone. Just the food. It’s surprisingly hard, which is probably a sign of how much I need to do it. When you focus on one thing, that thing becomes enough. You don’t feel the need to rush through it to get to the “next” thing.
Second, I’ve started building “buffer” time into my day. If I think a drive will take fifteen minutes, I leave twenty-five minutes early. Those extra ten minutes are a gift to my future self. It means if I hit a red light, I don’t feel my blood pressure rise. I have the “luxury” of being slow. It’s a strange thing to call a luxury, but in this world, I think it might be the greatest one we have.
Third, I’m learning to say “no” to things that are just “fine.” We often rush because we’ve overcommitted. We say yes to every invitation and every project because we’re afraid of missing out or letting people down. But when we say yes to everything, we end up doing everything poorly. A few meaningful commitments are worth more than a dozen half-hearted ones.
The quiet at the end of the day
As I’m writing this, it’s late evening. The house is quiet. Usually, this is when I’d be “winding down” by looking at a screen, filling my head with other people’s lives and opinions until I fall asleep. But tonight, I’m just sitting here. I can hear the hum of the refrigerator and the wind outside.
It’s a little uncomfortable, to be honest. Silence is loud when you’re not used to it. It forces you to look at your own thoughts, and not all of them are pretty. But there’s a peace in it, too. A sense that for right now, in this moment, nothing needs to be “done.” I don’t need to be faster, better, or more productive. I’m just a person in a room, and that’s plenty.
Maybe the point of slowing down isn’t to be more “mindful” or to improve our health, though those things are nice. Maybe the point is just to actually be here for the life we’re living. We only get one shot at this, and it seems like a shame to spend the whole thing trying to get it over with. So, next time you’re waiting for the kettle to boil, maybe try just… waiting. Don’t check your phone. Don’t tidy the counter. Just stand there and feel the floor under your feet. It’s only two minutes, but you might find they’re the best two minutes of your day.