by Sophia Diep
I remember staring at the clock in my room, feeling the weight of every passing second. It was not just about finishing my assignments or preparing for the next test—it was something deeper. A constant, nagging fear that I was running out of time.
I told myself I should be further ahead. That I should have studied harder, achieved more, planned better. Every day felt like a countdown to some invisible deadline, one that everyone else seemed to be keeping up with—except me.
I tried to shake the feeling, to remind myself that I was doing fine. But the panic always crept back in. Time was slipping through my fingers, and no matter how fast I worked, I never felt like I was doing enough.
At first, I thought this was just stress. But what I was experiencing had a name: time anxiety. While time anxiety is not an official diagnosis in the DSM, it is a colloquial term used by young people and even researchers to describe the overwhelming fear of wasting time, falling behind, or not living up to an impossible standard of efficiency (Sun et al., 2024). And it turns out, I was not alone.
Why the Brain Feels Like It’s Running Out of Time
Time anxiety is not just in our heads—it is wired into our brains. When we constantly worry about the future, our prefrontal cortex (which helps with planning and rational thinking) gets overwhelmed, making it harder to process what actually needs to get done. At the same time, the amygdala, the brain’s fear center, kicks into overdrive, heightening anxiety that every second is slipping away too fast.
The more I stressed about time, the harder it became to focus. I would sit down to work, but instead of being productive, I’d spiral—thinking about all the time I had already lost, how much more I needed to do, and how other people seemed to be ahead of me. My brain was stuck in a loop, convincing me that I was falling behind even when I wasn’t.
And it didn’t help that we live in a world obsessed with timelines. College applications, internships, career milestones—there’s an expectation that everything needs to happen at a specific time, in a specific order. If you don’t keep up, it feels like you’re failing.
The Illusion of Falling Behind
One of the hardest things about time anxiety is that it convinces you that everyone else has it figured out.
I would scroll through social media, seeing classmates getting into prestigious summer programs or landing impressive internships, and I would panic. It did not matter what I had accomplished—my brain only focused on what I had not done. I started measuring my progress against a timeline that wasn't even real, comparing my journey to people who had completely different paths.
I kept telling myself, “If I just work harder, I’ll catch up.” But the truth is, there was nothing to catch up to. The fear of falling behind was an illusion—one that my brain had been trained to believe.
Research has shown that time anxiety does not just affect our mindset—it can also impact our well-being. A study by Zhe Sun, Xinchao Gao, and Penghui Ren from the Frontiers in Psychology found that higher levels of time anxiety are associated with poorer sleep quality among college students. This anxiety does not just keep students up at night; it also leads to irrational procrastination, which further worsens sleep. The study revealed that procrastination mediates the relationship between time anxiety and sleep, meaning that students who feel anxious about time tend to put things off, which in turn disrupts their rest.
However, there is hope. The study also found that physical activity can help reduce the negative effects of time anxiety. Exercise not only improves sleep quality but also lessens the impact of irrational procrastination (Sun et al., 2024). This suggests that finding ways to stay physically active—whether through sports, yoga, or even a daily walk—could help ease the burden of time anxiety.
What Helped Me Shift My Perspective
I do not have a perfect answer for how to escape time anxiety, and honestly, I still struggle with it. But a few things helped me start seeing time differently.
One of the biggest shifts came when I realized that time is not something you win—it is something you experience. I used to think that if I just managed my time perfectly, I would finally feel in control. But in chasing that feeling, I was missing out on the present.
Another thing that helped was recognizing that success is not linear. We are all moving at our own pace, and just because someone reaches a milestone before you does not mean you are behind. Life is not a race, even though it often feels like one.
Final Thoughts
If you have ever felt like time is slipping away, like no matter how hard you work, you are still falling behind—I get it. I have been there. And even though it might not feel like it now, you are not as behind as you think.
The pressure to be constantly moving forward can be suffocating, but real progress is not about racing against time. It is about learning to exist within it—without the fear that you are running out of it.
Sources
Sun, Zhe et al. “The relationship between time anxiety and college students' sleep quality: the mediating role of irrational procrastination and the moderating effect of physical activity.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 15, 4 Jul. 2024, doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1410746.
