slowing down to speed up

rushing is costing you the time it's supposed to save, and what slowing down gives back

Jul 26, 2026

sometimes it feels like i don’t know what i want or where to direct my energy. i feel like i’m always rushing, and yet somehow time is still going faster, and i’m not making progress at anything. i want to write a book, but the first draft sits, incomplete in the back corner of my brain. i want to work to grow my substack, and lists of ideas flow, yet the articles are unwritten. i want to be consistent with youtube, and then i look and somehow its already been weeks since my last upload. i want to be the person with a robust social life, but before i know it a month has passed and i haven’t made plans with anyone. i want to be the person who reads 100 books in a year, yet i’m behind on my reading goal with not much to show for it. how is it that i don’t seem to be getting anything i want done? how is it that the time not spent reading doesn’t automatically translate to time spent writing, or socializing, or keeping up on anything?

what’s that saying? want in one hand, sh*t in the other? that wanting and wishing is useless without action?

but what about when i think i am acting? what about the times where it feels like i’m giving up everything yet still not gaining anything for it? how is it that a month can fly by in a flash, and you look back and realize you have nothing to show for it? it doesn’t feel fair. i feel robbed of what could have been.

so what can i do about it? the solution sounds backwards, but i really think the answer is to slow down. slow down to speed up. slow down to breathe and give yourself a second to decide where your energy goes. because the energy will be flowing out anyway, wether you pause to direct it or not.

maybe thats an abstract way to think about it, but to me it feels like if i can’t actually slow down time (gosh, i wish!), i have to do the next best thing. slow myself down. sit with myself and feel out what i truly want, what truly matters. how i can make the most of the time as it whizzes by.

the fig tree

i’ve written about sylvia plath’s fig tree analogy from the bell jar before. that’s often what comes to mind when i feel like i’ve been rushing through life—wanting so many things in so many directions. that feeling that that in choosing one thing, i’m taking away my ability to do all the rest.

it goes on to say:

i saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because i couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs i would choose. i wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as i sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

it’s quite a hopeless feeling passage, but one that i think any multi-faced, multi-passionate person has felt. that in the pressure to choose, you’re losing the time that could be progress towards any of it. that your figs are rotting around you while you sit, frozen, unsure how to direct your energy.

but the thing is, you don’t have to become just one thing, just one fig. life is full and wonderful because it contains multitudes, not in spite of them.

i think plath’s fig tree gets some things right and some wrong. it’s right that sitting frozen, refusing to choose, is it’s own kind of loss. time passes whether we act or not, and opportunities don’t wait patiently for us to feel ready. a life spent agonizing over the perfect path can become a life spent standing still. and in that time, some of the figs do rot.

but you can also get new figs any time you want. you are never too old, and it’s never too late. the fig tree analogy is wrong in the premise underneath it: that choosing one fig means losing all the rest, permanently, forever. that the tree only fruits once. in my mind, it doesn’t work that way. the book, the substack, the youtube channel, the reading, the friendships, the goals not yet named—none of them are a single fig i pick once and never get to touch again. they’re all still on the tree. i just can’t hold all of them in my hand at the exact same second.

that’s the part slowing down actually fixed. not by making me choose one fig and abandoning the rest, but by letting me reach for one fig at a time instead of grabbing wildly at all of them and dropping every one. the rushing wasn’t caused by wanting too much. it was caused by trying to hold everything at once. thankfully, there’s a pretty simple sounding solution: put most of it down, hold one thing well, and trust the tree will still be there when you reach again.

that’s the difference between being frozen and being patient. frozen means staring at the fruit until it rots because you’re scared touching one means losing all the rest. patience is picking one, eating it, savouring it, and then reaching for the next one when you’re good and ready to.

trust that there is still time, still a tree, and still fruit.

motion vs. movement

what i’ve begun to notice: rushing is where the time goes. i’ve often felt too busy to write, too busy to read, too busy to reach out to a friend and make a plan. but if i’m being realistic, busy doing what? that was harder to answer and confront. i knew the time was slipping by, and i knew i wasn’t really doing everything i wanted to. but if i actually sat and paid attention to my days, so much of my time was being lost to a half-focused, frazzled state. scrolling while i eat dinner, half-watching a movie, starting a book and putting it down to scroll some more. spending time not knowing what to start on because there was so much i wanted and needed to do it felt impossible to pick a direction. starting five tasks and finishing none of them because i’m already thinking about the next four.

rushing feels productive because it’s motion. but motion isn’t the same as movement toward something. i can spend an entire evening feeling like i never stopped moving and still have nothing to show for it. or i can have an entire evening spent on one task, and come away feeling so accomplished. the rushing sometimes makes me feel like i’m running on a treadmill, yet expecting to get 10kms down the road. it doesn’t make sense. the movement alone isn’t enough to make progress.

motion is what happens when you rush, movement is what happens when you take the time to direct your energy.

slowing down isn’t the opposite of productivity, it’s the heart of it

i think the reason “slow down” sounds like a wrong solution at first is because we’ve been taught slow is the opposite of productive. slow in my mind used to mean lazy, behind, not doing enough. but slow doesn’t have to mean doing less all the time, it just means doing less at once. sitting with one thing instead of partially attending to six.

when i slow down enough to ask “what do i actually want to do with the next hour,” i actually feel the hour get just a little longer. i mean of course not literally, but it feels longer. the time feels more mine. when you choose to slow down and commit a stretch of time to something, no matter how small, that feeling of “i should be doing x, y, z” can fade away. it takes a while to tune it out, but that itch of should do more makes it feel like nothing you actually get done is good enough, and it costs you more time than any distraction could.

so slowing down isn’t about doing less. it’s about not paying the invisible tax of doing everything half-heartedly anymore.

what slowing down looks like to me (tips to implement)

for me, slowing down has mainly been an internal shift. often times, from an outside perspective, i’m sure my days already look slow and guarded. but the turmoil and despair of trying to do everything and be everything was costing me progress towards anything.

planning & productivity

before i sit down to work, i ask myself what i’m actually trying to do in this session, rather than opening up 5 tabs and hoping one of them sparks inspiration.
i check in with myself more, even just for thirty seconds. not “what should i be doing” in the anxious, guilt-trippy way, but a genuine check in. what do i want right now? what matters to me this week? what would feel like an accomplishment? what have i been missing?
keep a plans “short list” each week. ideally like 3 things that actually matter and need to get done. everything else is optional/ extra credit.
time blocking. i started set a time limit for a single task instead of having an open-ended block of work time. a defined start and end makes it easier for me to be present in the middle. no task feels overwhelming if you think “okay, i just have to do this for an hour”.
write your to-do list by hand, in pen, instead of typing it. it’s slower, and makes you commit to fewer things so you’re not constantly adding or renegotiating with yourself about what to cut when time gets tight.

on: rest

i’ve started protecting my small pockets of time. if i have 15 minutes to read, that’s what i’m doing. if i’ve decided to spend an hour in the morning writing, no one can take it from me, and i don’t take it from myself either.
i stopped treating rest as the thing that happens in the cracks, and started treating it as its own deliberate choice. not something to justify or earn.
separate real rest from numbing. scrolling isn’t rest if you feel worse afterward—actual rest should leave you with more capacity, not less.
let boredom happen instead of immediately filling it. some of the clearest thinking about what you actually want shows up in the boring, unfilled moments.

mental shifts:

i’ve tried to let go of the idea that if i’m not constantly producing, i’m falling behind. some of the most useful hours i’ve had lately were ones that were dedicated to one task, even if it wasn’t the most important thing i could do.
i try to intentionally do some things 10% slower than what feels natural. eating a meal, going for a walk, writing an email. notice how it feels to choose slowness with intention. sometimes it feels almost boring—thats good.
asking myself: if i could insert one extra hour into my day, what would i choose to do with it? and doing exactly that.
spend 10-20 minutes in the morning thinking. i know that sounds silly because our minds are always running, but i mean uninterrupted thinking. not for the purpose of journaling, just checking in, thinking about what i want that day to feel like, gaining some much needed mental clarity.

physically slowing down:

stop rushing when theres no need(duh.) i remember when i worked retail instead of at home, i’d find myself rushing even though i was early and had no reason to. rushing through my makeup, running to the bus, quickly walking into work for no reason.
build in slow breaks. give yourself a few minutes at the end of the hour to stretch, sit, think, whatever. use this time to decide what the next hour holds. if you work a fast paced job, a well timed bathroom break can become a moment to re-centre.
have one day each week where you choose to do less, and build it into your schedule. that could look like meal prepping so you don’t have to cook one night, leaving your phone on dnd for the day, committing to not checking your emails on sunday night in preparation for monday morning.

none of this is groundbreaking. it actually feels almost too simple. but simple isn’t the same as easy, especially when everything around us is built to reward speed and punish stillness. it’s hard to even remember to check in, to direct the energy, to take the pause. but when you do, it’s so worth it.

my book still isn’t written

and i have to be honest, this isn’t a foolproof system that will make your day feel double as long. slowing down hasn’t helped me magically finish my book, or gotten me to 100 books read this year, or filled my calendar with plans and friends. there are still days, or weeks, where i look back and feel like i have nothing to show for it. the promise in slowing down isn’t that all of a sudden life feels so much longer and fuller. the promise is smaller and more realistic: when i slow down enough to actually choose where my energy goes, the time i spend goes further. an hour of focused writing beats four hours of guilty, scattered kind of writing, kind of scrolling, kind of bouncing between tabs and tasks. one real plan with a friend beats a month of meaning to reach out.

i still feel time slipping by too fast. i don’t think that feeling will ever fully go away (if anything, as we get older it gets worse which feels so unfair). but the thing is, it will move too quickly regardless, and i’d rather feel time slip by while i’m actually pointed at something i care about, than feel it slip through my fingers while i’m too busy rushing to notice where it went.

i hope you join me in slowing down to speed up, because your figs aren’t rotting and you actually do have the time.

with love, kyla

ps. if you feel called to share—what would you do today with just one extra hour?