April 16, 2025 • 25 mins
Author Chris Guillebeau shares how to feel less anxious and get more done
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a longer one part of
the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
take their days from great to awesome and any advice
they might have for.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
The rest of us. So today I am excited.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
To welcome Chris Gilibo to the show. Chris is the
author of a brand new book called Time Anxiety. You
might also know him from Side Hustle School or the
Art of non Conformity.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
So Chris, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Thank you so much, Laura. I's a huge honor to
be here. I'm a big fan of you, as you know,
reading your blog for many years. So this is very exciting.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
I'm excited to have you. So why don't you tell
our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Sure, a little about myself? Well, I was born at
a young age. It's always like a dangerous question, right,
So like what is pertinent?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
You know?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
In my early twenties, I spent a few years as
an aid worker in West Africa. That was like a
very transformative time for me. Led to me traveling to
a bunch of other places and just getting interested in
like cross cultural things. I'd always kind of worked for myself.
I was like this classic unemployable, you know, archetype, Like
I really like to work on things I'm excited about.
(01:19):
It's very adhd. But if I'm not excited about it,
then I don't want to work on it at all.
So you have to kind of work for yourself. So
did lots of little entrepreneurial projects. Had a project of
going to every country in the world which I started
in two thousand and eight and wrote a blog about
it called The Art of Nonconformity. That's kind of how
I started writing and sharing online. Been doing some version
of that ever since. Started writing books, started this podcast
(01:43):
that I've been doing every day for twenty eight hundred
days now. And I hosted an event called the World
Domination Summit, which you were a keynote speaker at an
opening keynote speaker one year, which was really fun. And
I have a really wonderful community. So a little bit
more about neurodivergence and mental health and you know, related
(02:05):
topics these days. But I try to work on things
i'm excited about.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, and you actually made it to all of the
countries I get, yes, including the ones that we are
not supposed to go to anymore.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
I think, yes, that's right. Yeah, it was actually easier
a few years ago than it is now. People are
still doing this quest, but I think it was a
little bit easier. Yeah, back in the early.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Early two thousands before there are fewer restrictions. Yeah, it
is an amazing thing to contemplate doing. But I want
to talk a little bit about what time anxiety is.
So what is this concept of time anxiety?
Speaker 3 (02:40):
I'm curious. I mean not to derail, because I'll answer directly.
But when I first do it, started doing like the
research for this book, I had this phrase, and I
started just asking people about it. I'd be curious what
the concept time anxiety means to you, Laura, without even
any context of the book and such. But I started
just checking with people, and like, people are like, what
are you working on? It's like, I'm exploring this concept
(03:01):
and I come to it honest, I don't come to
it as like an academic or a researcher. Like I
actually felt like my life was kind of governed by
this sense of like I feel like I'm running out
of time. There's not enough time to do what I want.
And I mean, you've written about this extensively, you know,
from your own perspective and such, And how do I
decide what to do next in the face of so
many options and such? So I started asking people, or
(03:23):
I started telling them, I'm working on this concept called
time anxiety, and almost everyone would have a really strong
opinion about it. They would have an experience with it.
They would say, I have this thing. I talk about
this with my friends all the time, but we didn't
have a name for it, you know, like I feel
like this is like the greatest problem of my life.
You know, some people would even say so. For me,
I think it's you know, there are two types of it.
(03:46):
It's one is this existential type of time is running
out in my life right and or maybe there's something
I should be doing but I don't quite know what
it is, and I have this sense or maybe I
have some regret over things I done or not done
in the past and feel like I can't change that now.
And then the second type is just the day to
(04:06):
day routine of how do I, you know, kind of
triage and sequence my work and my life and my
relationships and my hobbies and all the you know, how
do I make these choices? In this world of knowledge work,
even if you have like a somewhat defined job, you know,
for a lot of people doing knowledge work, there's like
an infinite array of you know, the task that you
(04:27):
work on and how you you know, approach and schedule them,
and so it can be really overwhelming. And so that's
the second part.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
I think you had talked a little bit about it
being like the sense that you're always behind in some
way or another.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Sure, yeah, always behind and not sure how to course
correct or you know, like if you ask people like
what they really want, A lot of people say, I
want to catch up, you know, I want like if
I had an extra day, you know, how would I
spend How would you spend it? And you expect that
they would say like, I, you know, would have like
a vacation, or but it's I would catch up on
(05:01):
my email. That's my greatest aspiration is I would catch up.
And I kind of felt like this way myself for
a long time, and so I felt like it was
really troubling and like what do we what do we
do about it?
Speaker 1 (05:09):
But Yeah, it's curious.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
I mean the idea of catching up or being behind
implies that there's some objective standard of where everyone is
supposed to be, which I guess I've never figured out
where that standard was kept or.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Who decided that.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
So well, we're all suffering from our time anxiety. In
the book, I wanted to talk you know, you have
a lot of different tips and hacks of things to try,
which I loved about The book is very practical, But
I want to talk about one speecific issue. You mentioned
time blindness, So now what is time blindness and how
(05:42):
can people address this?
Speaker 3 (05:43):
So it's kind of a neurodivergent e concept, So for
anybody with ADHD or autism, or anybody who identifies with
any conditions like that, but not exclusively, A lot of
people can have time blindness, which is basically like where
we kind of chronically misestimate, underestimate, or overestimate how much
time something takes, and this leads to us kind of
(06:06):
always feeling rushed, like always feeling rushed, always being behind.
So if you're the kind of person who's always late,
you probably don't like that about yourself. You know, it's
not like, oh, this is just but your friends have
kind of like gotten used to it, like so and
so is always late to things, but it's in this
case it's probably because you are not estimating, you know,
the amount of time that's required for transitions and such.
(06:27):
And people will also go the other way and like
overestimate time too. But a really simple thing to do,
and this is not like mind blowing, but it can
actually change your life, is simply to allow like ten
or fifteen more minutes than you think you need, you know,
for transitions. And it's going to be the coolest thing
because now you are like five minutes early to things.
And what's interesting is when I've shared that with people,
(06:49):
some people really are worried about, like what will I
do with the five extra minutes? You know, and like
this is not a problem. This is a good thing.
To take a book with you, right, or do something,
you know, like it's a thing to have extra padding,
like to have buffer and margin in your life. Is
actually it provides relief, I think, And I think what
a lot of people are looking for more than organization,
(07:10):
And again I'd be curious what you think about it,
but like more than organization or hyper optimization, what they're
looking for is relief, a sense of like, help me
feel better?
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Well, and the thing is, honestly, people who are chronically late,
adding in ten to fifteen minutes is not going to
make them early.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
They will probably be there right on time.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
So you know, it's really one of those funny things.
And yeah, people always like but what I could have
emptied the dishwasher before I left. But we just need
to nip that thought right there. Well, we're going to
take a quick ad break and then I will be
back with more from Chris Guillibo. Well, I am back
(07:48):
with Chris Gilbo, who's the author of the brand new
book Time Anxiety. We've been talking about time blindness. If
you find yourself always late, how you can just add
ten to fifteen minutes and you will probably be on time.
You may find yourself early, but that would be a
happy thing that you could celebrate if that happens. So
you mentioned people feeling like they would spend their extra
time getting caught up on email. I know from the
(08:10):
book Time Anxiety that you find email particularly stressful. In
case anyone listening to this also suffers from that anxiety,
I wonder if there's anything you've done to help yourself there.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Yeah, I mean this kind of ruled my life in
a negative way for many years, and I felt really
bad about it. Like I was very bad about getting
back to people and getting back to people that I
cared about. You know, you probably wrote me at some
point and I wrote you back three months later, and
I would begin almost every email with the same sentence,
which is like, I'm so sorry for the delay in reply, right,
(08:42):
you know. And so I have this whole chapter about
the inbox of shame, and I honestly felt like I'm
just always letting people down. And it wasn't just a
matter of like, oh, I need to schedule twenty minutes
into my I need to Like sometimes I would have time,
and I would have this great resistance to like there's
this block over there's something I'm dreading and I can't
force myself to do it. I think this is also
(09:04):
like a NERD divergent kind of thing and understanding that
sometimes really small things can can be difficult, you know,
to do. And so I think there's a process of it.
Like I wrote a little bit about radical acceptance, some
of it is you just accept like there are some
things that you that you are going to be better
at than others. You can try to and you write
about this, like minimizing some of your communication and closing
(09:25):
off some inboxes so that you don't have, you know,
the ability to get a direct message on every single
platform and such. Ultimately, I think you just you do
what you can. Like you try to do what you can.
You try to prioritize, prioritize like the important relationships and
not worry as much about everything else. I also do
things like the you know, inbox bankruptcy, you know where
(09:47):
I'm just like, Okay, I've had all these messages there
forever and I'm not doing anything about it. This is
probably going to stress you out right, you would never
do this, but some of your listeners are probably more
like me, and they've just had all these things there
for so long. And so the the whole point is
if you just like you know, archive or delete and
move on, then yes, you may feel a little bit
bad about some of that stuff, but you've been feeling
(10:08):
bad about it and not doing anything about it, and
now you're going to do a better job moving forward
with things. So that helps me from time to time.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah, No, honestly, I mean, I don't respond to everything
instantly or anything like that, but I do. I do
an email triage is what I call it, every like
two to three days and trying to get myself to current,
and sometimes that involves deciding that I'm not going to
respond to something which you know, you have your Friday list,
you know, which I know the world has not stopped
spinning yet, so it seems to be okay at this point.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
So, Chris, what is a reverse bucket list? I love
this idea of a reverse bucket list.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
A reverse bucket list is about celebrating what you've actually
already done, what you've already accomplished. So obviously listeners know
that the bucket list is like, oh, here's all the
things that I want to do. I want to go
to Paris, and I want to go bungee jumping, and
you know, et cetera, et cetera, And I'm very future minded.
I tend to be very goal oriented. But always being
(11:04):
future minded means sometimes that I don't appreciate the present
or actually reflect on, Oh, I've been able to do
some cool things. I have been to Paris. I don't
actually care about bungee jumping, so the reverse bucket list
is like, this is a list of things I have done,
you know, and it can be any It can be
bucket list like items, it can be accomplishments of any kind.
It can be relationships that you are proud of, or
(11:26):
times that you've made good choices in relationships, times that
you've showed up for yourself. I mean, it's your list, right,
So it's good. It's a way of like, look, I
actually have done, you know, a lot, and so I
think so there's the big picture bucket list reverse bucket
list kind of thing. But I also think even at
the end of the day, just a short little because
we have a to do list, you know, we always
have like our running stuff that we got to do
and then we check it off and it's gone. I
think it can also be helpful, like at the end
(11:48):
of the day, for example, or a week, to be like,
what are three things I actually did today, not just
the three things I need to do going forward, because
I tend to not I tend to just finish stuff
and move on. Finish stuff and move on. And I
think it's really helpful to decide, like what's enough, and
then I can celebrate that.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Yeah, well, I'm a big fan of daily celebrations. We
should have more celebrations in general. I mean, I've added
stuff to my to do list that I've done just
to cross it off, so you know, I like giving
that little gold star.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
So you mentioned that when you ask.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
People what they do with an extra day of the week,
many people suggest that they'd get caught up on their email.
But you suggest that people actually do an exercise of
thinking what they would do on an extra day of
the week. And I presume you don't want them to
do email, So maybe talk a little bit about that
exercise and what.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Yeah, I had to take. I had to take catching
up off the list of options. So the idea is
instead of thinking about your one single, ideal perfect day,
which is kind of another thought exercise, and that can
be helpful, but it also is like pressure inducing, like
it's like a one day, it's got to be perfect.
You know, what if you had an extra day every week,
and so it's the eighth day of the week, you
(12:53):
got seven days a week, but now there's an extra
day and on this day, not only can you not
use it to catch up, you know, presumably you have
other responsibilities and obligations and such on the other days,
but on this day, nobody is asking you for anything, right,
So it's your day. And the key point is it repeats,
so you know, you get fifty two of them a year.
So what would you do on that day? And if
(13:14):
you think of it in that context, I think it's
more helpful than just thinking about like what do I
want to do with my life or what's that single day?
Because sequentially you can do a lot, right, and Lauria
you're the model of this, right, with like war and
peace and the bak and everything else that you do.
So it's like, you know, people can write a book
in a year, you know, using this framework, they can
(13:36):
learn a language, they can learn something else, they can
practice something. So I think it just kind of helps
you get in tune with what you really want. And
I think a lot of people don't think very deeply
about that what is it that I really want to
get out of life? And what is it that I
want now? And what do I want in the future?
And how how can I be kind to my future self?
What are the choices I need to make now so
(13:58):
that my future stuff will be able to you know,
whatever that thing is, and maybe just to give it
make it even more simple. Just a really practical thing
is like as you were going through the day, like
maybe you're doing the trademark Laura VANDERCAM time tracking system,
which I love and respect and have talked about many times.
But you can also just intuitively, maybe just notice and
(14:19):
ask yourself, like what do I want more of and
what do I want less of? And I think when
people do that, they tend to just like moving forward,
kind of interact differently with the world once you know,
oh I want more of this or I want less
of this. I don't actually want to talk to this
person all the time. Maybe I have to talk to
them some of the time, but you know, I want
to lessen those interactions. And I'm actually I'm really enjoying,
(14:41):
you know, these puzzles that I'm working over something else,
and like, be cool if I spend more time.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Doing that, Yeah, yeah, on the eighth day of the week,
we would not be talking to that person that well.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
I think the idea is most people don't.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
We don't really think about what we'd like to spend
a lot more time doing because people assume they have
no time.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
So what would be the point of asking what you
want to do more time?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
But if you think about it, then hopefully we can
start to build that into the one hundred and sixty
eight hours we have in the week without actually getting
one hundred and ninety two hour week.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Great, right, right, right, very good? Yeah, exactly. I think
you can do it strategically or you do it intuitively,
and like both both ways are going to help. Ultimately
you're going to be better off.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Excellent.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Well, We're going to take one more quick ad break
and I will be back with Chris. Well. I am
back interviewing Chris Gilibo, who's the author of the brand
new book Time Anxiety. He's also the author of the
book The Art of Nonconformity. Been telling us all about
his amazing projects, like visiting all of the countries in
(15:41):
the world back in the day. So, Chris, among the
happy tips in your book is to think about death
once a day.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Yeah. Is that great?
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Why should we have this memento Maury every day?
Speaker 1 (15:53):
What's in that for us?
Speaker 3 (15:54):
It's so interesting. I was talking with Ryan Holiday about
this recently because he has a similar take. I think
not everybody has the same awareness of mortality. Everyone has
an intellectual awareness of mortality, which is like everyone dies,
we know this, but to have a more personal awareness
is like someday I will die. And when I was
(16:17):
doing the country quest, I wrote a book about other
people doing quests of all kinds and such, and one
of the commonalities I found among them is that they
often had this more personal awareness of mortality. Maybe they
had had something that happened to them a close call
of their own, or they had lost someone close to them,
or maybe not, but they had this more personal understanding
of it, and it instead of being like pressure inducing
(16:40):
or a sad and scary thing, well maybe it is
a sad and scary thing, but it could also be
like a purpose inducing thing. And it kind of makes
you think, well, okay, life is short. We know that,
you know intellectually, but if I what does it look
like to like live each day with that understanding? And
maybe I will make different choices if I just remember, okay,
I won't get this this day back. Time is precious, right,
(17:03):
You're right about this a lot. So you know, for me,
like thinking about death is it's not meant to be
like overly negative thing. It's meant to be like I
want to do more. You know, I don't actually want
to be a minimalist. I don't want to like less
is not the answer, you know, I want there's some
things I want to do less of, but actually, like,
I love my life and I want to do more
(17:24):
stuff that's exciting, and I want to set goals and
I want to get closer to people that I care
about and like try to have as much impact as possible.
And you know, part of the reason that I want
that and other people you know want that, is because
we realize like that time is limited. Right, What is
it that you say? You know, what was the classic
phrase that we borrowed? You know, I think at WS
one year you know it better than me. It's the
(17:48):
Laura of Andercam phrase.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Yes, I don't have time.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
It's not a priority, no, No, it's about the expectations
are infinite.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Time is finite.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
You are always choosing, well, right there, you go choose, well,
all right, we're going to choose. Well, well, one of
the things you want is to choose. Chris, though, making
this a little lighter now is a granny hobby. So
why are we choosing a granny hobby?
Speaker 1 (18:14):
And what is yours.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Sure, Oh yeah, wow, I wasn't prepared for the second part.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Other people.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
So a granny hobby, and some people might prefer the
term cozy hobby, but granny hobby is not meant to
be disrespectful in any way. Granny hobby thinking of something
like like crafting or knitting or crochet or baking or gardening.
You know, we think about like some of the things
that our grandmothers or grandfathers you know, might traditionally do,
and like I grew up like gardening with my grandma,
(18:44):
and it was like this really special time. So there's
actually a lot of research. It's not just like, oh,
this is a fun thing to do. There's a lot
of research that a tactile doing that is tactile and
sensory and low stakes can actually like increase our cognitive
you know, attention, our focus, as well as reducing our anxiety.
So the low stakes is key, right. It's like it's
relatively easy to learn to do the basics of a
(19:06):
lot of these kinds of crafts and then you can
get better of them over time. But it's not that hard,
and if you mess up, it's okay, right, if you
if you if the cake gets burned in the oven,
then you can make another cake the next day. You
haven't like sent the email, you know, like c see
the entire office on the wrong email or something right,
So low stakes, it's tactile, it reduces anxiety, and it's
(19:27):
also like I think the person that I borrowed this
idea from Anu mentioned her in the book. She also
calls it like hands on thumbs down, so your technically
you're still using your thumb, but you're not scrolling on
a device, so it's a device free. So I actually
don't know if I have at the moment a good
granny or cozy hobby. Yeah. I like some board games,
(19:49):
but I'm not actively like playing them right now, So
maybe I need to work on that after the book
launch and tour. Find my my granny hobby a challenge
exactly exactly?
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Well, are there any particularly mentioned?
Speaker 2 (20:01):
I mean, among the many things you do, you know,
your daily podcast for twenty eight hundred days.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
I mean that's a that's a pretty long time.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
I'm curious about your daily routines, if there are any
routines you have that you feel make you more productive.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
I love this thing about how we all have like
two to three hours a day of like you know,
productive energy of like this cognitive focus. And the more
and more I have thought about it, the more I
understand how true it is for me. And I've tried
to be really protective of that time. I think that's
the biggest thing I do. I do exercise every day,
run every morning, and so I like to have that
(20:37):
and then I like to not schedule myself a lot
in the morning. Typically, I like to have that time
just for creative work that I can structure however I
see fit. I do like these repetitive kinds of projects.
I find a lot of like comfort in making the
podcast every day. It is you'll understand this perfectly. It
is easier for me to make it every day than
(20:59):
it would be to it three days a week, you know,
And that's something that not everybody understands. They're just seven
days a week for like seven years. I'm like, no, no,
that's the secret. It would have been harder, you know
if it was weekly. So I tend to like a
lot of those kinds of like building blocks, milestones of things.
And so I think the trick is to make sure
you're doing the right things, because I also want to say.
(21:21):
I try to be very like candid in the book,
like it sounds like I have all this expertise and
I've done all this stuff, but I actually really had
like a mental breakdown and really really struggled and felt
like I was getting I was so into the productivity
like industrial complex that I was getting good at doing
the wrong things, Like I was getting really really efficient
(21:41):
at being ineffective. And so I think it's you know,
I think it's just important to mention that that it
was a little bit of a journey that I've been on.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Yeah, well we've all been on our journeys. And I
guess one last thing about a journey here, Chris. I mean,
normally I ask people that I interview what they've done
recently to take a day from great to awesome. But
I'm not going to let you choose, because I want
you to talk about the time you walked twenty miles
to dinner.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Okay, this was so funny and I'd never done this before. Yeah,
I just had this idea maybe three or four days
in advance, so it wasn't like completely spontaneous, but it
wasn't super planned. There was a restaurant twenty miles from
me in San Diego, and I was like, I should
I should walk there, And I was like, how okay,
(22:30):
was there a good route for that? And how much
time would that? I mean, I do run every day,
so I'm somewhat used to, you know, those kinds of things.
I've done marathons, but I maybe actually walked like for
hours and hours and hours, and so I just I
just had this idea and it wouldn't leave me alone.
And I thought, well, it could be like a really
dumb thing, but it's also low stakes again, like if
I don't like it, okay, And so I did that.
(22:51):
I left it around lunchtime, and I got to the
restaurant at like right after seven pm. I made a
seven pm reservation. I showed up like right after ten
minutes after, and it was so much fun there. I
ordered this like large pan of cornbread that's supposed to
be like a shared appetizer, and obviously ate the whole
thing myself. And then afterwards I took an uber back,
which took like twenty five minutes, you know, and I'm
(23:12):
passing like all the ways that I had, all the
things that I had passed on my course. It's funny
because I thought when I went on this long walk
that I was going to be productive, you know, it's
just how I think. I was like, I'm gonna make
some phone calls, I'm gonna do some stuff. But then
like my phone battery like charged down, like within the
first couple of hours because you're using GPS, and I
was like, oh, okay, so I really do just have
(23:32):
to I can't even listen to music for most of
that walk. And so it's just a small, small thing
that is now a core memory of mine. And it
wasn't that hard to do. And so the reason I
did it, I probably should have said this first is
I just I found myself too much in the routine
and I wanted to disrupt it a little bit. And
so I was a chapter in the book about practice
having fun and how do you actually practice having fun?
(23:54):
And for me that's that is a little bit of
a journey because I like to work. So it was
good for me.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
It was good.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
All right, Well people can try that if they wish, sure,
you know, maybe just do something else.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
That's a little adventure for well, Chris, where can people
find you?
Speaker 3 (24:09):
Oh? Thank you, Laura. So the new book is Time
Anxiety Time Anxiety dot com. There's some information about the book.
I'm doing a tour across North America, and then I
write a weekly newsletter. E're of mental health dot com.
You can read it there. And then I'm on social
media at Chris killipo, which nobody can spell, but if
you talk about in something close to that, you'll get
to me.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
That sounds good, well, Chris, Thank you so much for
joining us. Thank you everyone for listening. If you have
feedback on this or any other episode, you can reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. In the meantime,
this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
the most of our time.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
(25:13):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a longer one part of
the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
take their days from great to awesome and any advice
they might have for.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
The rest of us. So today I am excited.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
To welcome Chris Gilibo to the show. Chris is the
author of a brand new book called Time Anxiety. You
might also know him from Side Hustle School or the
Art of non Conformity.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
So Chris, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Thank you so much, Laura. I's a huge honor to
be here. I'm a big fan of you, as you know,
reading your blog for many years. So this is very exciting.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
I'm excited to have you. So why don't you tell
our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Sure, a little about myself? Well, I was born at
a young age. It's always like a dangerous question, right,
So like what is pertinent?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
You know?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
In my early twenties, I spent a few years as
an aid worker in West Africa. That was like a
very transformative time for me. Led to me traveling to
a bunch of other places and just getting interested in
like cross cultural things. I'd always kind of worked for myself.
I was like this classic unemployable, you know, archetype, Like
I really like to work on things I'm excited about.
(01:19):
It's very adhd. But if I'm not excited about it,
then I don't want to work on it at all.
So you have to kind of work for yourself. So
did lots of little entrepreneurial projects. Had a project of
going to every country in the world which I started
in two thousand and eight and wrote a blog about
it called The Art of Nonconformity. That's kind of how
I started writing and sharing online. Been doing some version
of that ever since. Started writing books, started this podcast
(01:43):
that I've been doing every day for twenty eight hundred
days now. And I hosted an event called the World
Domination Summit, which you were a keynote speaker at an
opening keynote speaker one year, which was really fun. And
I have a really wonderful community. So a little bit
more about neurodivergence and mental health and you know, related
(02:05):
topics these days. But I try to work on things
i'm excited about.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, and you actually made it to all of the
countries I get, yes, including the ones that we are
not supposed to go to anymore.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
I think, yes, that's right. Yeah, it was actually easier
a few years ago than it is now. People are
still doing this quest, but I think it was a
little bit easier. Yeah, back in the early.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Early two thousands before there are fewer restrictions. Yeah, it
is an amazing thing to contemplate doing. But I want
to talk a little bit about what time anxiety is.
So what is this concept of time anxiety?
Speaker 3 (02:40):
I'm curious. I mean not to derail, because I'll answer directly.
But when I first do it, started doing like the
research for this book, I had this phrase, and I
started just asking people about it. I'd be curious what
the concept time anxiety means to you, Laura, without even
any context of the book and such. But I started
just checking with people, and like, people are like, what
are you working on? It's like, I'm exploring this concept
(03:01):
and I come to it honest, I don't come to
it as like an academic or a researcher. Like I
actually felt like my life was kind of governed by
this sense of like I feel like I'm running out
of time. There's not enough time to do what I want.
And I mean, you've written about this extensively, you know,
from your own perspective and such, And how do I
decide what to do next in the face of so
many options and such? So I started asking people, or
(03:23):
I started telling them, I'm working on this concept called
time anxiety, and almost everyone would have a really strong
opinion about it. They would have an experience with it.
They would say, I have this thing. I talk about
this with my friends all the time, but we didn't
have a name for it, you know, like I feel
like this is like the greatest problem of my life.
You know, some people would even say so. For me,
I think it's you know, there are two types of it.
(03:46):
It's one is this existential type of time is running
out in my life right and or maybe there's something
I should be doing but I don't quite know what
it is, and I have this sense or maybe I
have some regret over things I done or not done
in the past and feel like I can't change that now.
And then the second type is just the day to
(04:06):
day routine of how do I, you know, kind of
triage and sequence my work and my life and my
relationships and my hobbies and all the you know, how
do I make these choices? In this world of knowledge work,
even if you have like a somewhat defined job, you know,
for a lot of people doing knowledge work, there's like
an infinite array of you know, the task that you
(04:27):
work on and how you you know, approach and schedule them,
and so it can be really overwhelming. And so that's
the second part.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
I think you had talked a little bit about it
being like the sense that you're always behind in some
way or another.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Sure, yeah, always behind and not sure how to course
correct or you know, like if you ask people like
what they really want, A lot of people say, I
want to catch up, you know, I want like if
I had an extra day, you know, how would I
spend How would you spend it? And you expect that
they would say like, I, you know, would have like
a vacation, or but it's I would catch up on
(05:01):
my email. That's my greatest aspiration is I would catch up.
And I kind of felt like this way myself for
a long time, and so I felt like it was
really troubling and like what do we what do we
do about it?
Speaker 1 (05:09):
But Yeah, it's curious.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
I mean the idea of catching up or being behind
implies that there's some objective standard of where everyone is
supposed to be, which I guess I've never figured out
where that standard was kept or.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Who decided that.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
So well, we're all suffering from our time anxiety. In
the book, I wanted to talk you know, you have
a lot of different tips and hacks of things to try,
which I loved about The book is very practical, But
I want to talk about one speecific issue. You mentioned
time blindness, So now what is time blindness and how
(05:42):
can people address this?
Speaker 3 (05:43):
So it's kind of a neurodivergent e concept, So for
anybody with ADHD or autism, or anybody who identifies with
any conditions like that, but not exclusively, A lot of
people can have time blindness, which is basically like where
we kind of chronically misestimate, underestimate, or overestimate how much
time something takes, and this leads to us kind of
(06:06):
always feeling rushed, like always feeling rushed, always being behind.
So if you're the kind of person who's always late,
you probably don't like that about yourself. You know, it's
not like, oh, this is just but your friends have
kind of like gotten used to it, like so and
so is always late to things, but it's in this
case it's probably because you are not estimating, you know,
the amount of time that's required for transitions and such.
(06:27):
And people will also go the other way and like
overestimate time too. But a really simple thing to do,
and this is not like mind blowing, but it can
actually change your life, is simply to allow like ten
or fifteen more minutes than you think you need, you know,
for transitions. And it's going to be the coolest thing
because now you are like five minutes early to things.
And what's interesting is when I've shared that with people,
(06:49):
some people really are worried about, like what will I
do with the five extra minutes? You know, and like
this is not a problem. This is a good thing.
To take a book with you, right, or do something,
you know, like it's a thing to have extra padding,
like to have buffer and margin in your life. Is
actually it provides relief, I think, And I think what
a lot of people are looking for more than organization,
(07:10):
And again I'd be curious what you think about it,
but like more than organization or hyper optimization, what they're
looking for is relief, a sense of like, help me
feel better?
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Well, and the thing is, honestly, people who are chronically late,
adding in ten to fifteen minutes is not going to
make them early.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
They will probably be there right on time.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
So you know, it's really one of those funny things.
And yeah, people always like but what I could have
emptied the dishwasher before I left. But we just need
to nip that thought right there. Well, we're going to
take a quick ad break and then I will be
back with more from Chris Guillibo. Well, I am back
(07:48):
with Chris Gilbo, who's the author of the brand new
book Time Anxiety. We've been talking about time blindness. If
you find yourself always late, how you can just add
ten to fifteen minutes and you will probably be on time.
You may find yourself early, but that would be a
happy thing that you could celebrate if that happens. So
you mentioned people feeling like they would spend their extra
time getting caught up on email. I know from the
(08:10):
book Time Anxiety that you find email particularly stressful. In
case anyone listening to this also suffers from that anxiety,
I wonder if there's anything you've done to help yourself there.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Yeah, I mean this kind of ruled my life in
a negative way for many years, and I felt really
bad about it. Like I was very bad about getting
back to people and getting back to people that I
cared about. You know, you probably wrote me at some
point and I wrote you back three months later, and
I would begin almost every email with the same sentence,
which is like, I'm so sorry for the delay in reply, right,
(08:42):
you know. And so I have this whole chapter about
the inbox of shame, and I honestly felt like I'm
just always letting people down. And it wasn't just a
matter of like, oh, I need to schedule twenty minutes
into my I need to Like sometimes I would have time,
and I would have this great resistance to like there's
this block over there's something I'm dreading and I can't
force myself to do it. I think this is also
(09:04):
like a NERD divergent kind of thing and understanding that
sometimes really small things can can be difficult, you know,
to do. And so I think there's a process of it.
Like I wrote a little bit about radical acceptance, some
of it is you just accept like there are some
things that you that you are going to be better
at than others. You can try to and you write
about this, like minimizing some of your communication and closing
(09:25):
off some inboxes so that you don't have, you know,
the ability to get a direct message on every single
platform and such. Ultimately, I think you just you do
what you can. Like you try to do what you can.
You try to prioritize, prioritize like the important relationships and
not worry as much about everything else. I also do
things like the you know, inbox bankruptcy, you know where
(09:47):
I'm just like, Okay, I've had all these messages there
forever and I'm not doing anything about it. This is
probably going to stress you out right, you would never
do this, but some of your listeners are probably more
like me, and they've just had all these things there
for so long. And so the the whole point is
if you just like you know, archive or delete and
move on, then yes, you may feel a little bit
bad about some of that stuff, but you've been feeling
(10:08):
bad about it and not doing anything about it, and
now you're going to do a better job moving forward
with things. So that helps me from time to time.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah, No, honestly, I mean, I don't respond to everything
instantly or anything like that, but I do. I do
an email triage is what I call it, every like
two to three days and trying to get myself to current,
and sometimes that involves deciding that I'm not going to
respond to something which you know, you have your Friday list,
you know, which I know the world has not stopped
spinning yet, so it seems to be okay at this point.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
So, Chris, what is a reverse bucket list? I love
this idea of a reverse bucket list.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
A reverse bucket list is about celebrating what you've actually
already done, what you've already accomplished. So obviously listeners know
that the bucket list is like, oh, here's all the
things that I want to do. I want to go
to Paris, and I want to go bungee jumping, and
you know, et cetera, et cetera, And I'm very future minded.
I tend to be very goal oriented. But always being
(11:04):
future minded means sometimes that I don't appreciate the present
or actually reflect on, Oh, I've been able to do
some cool things. I have been to Paris. I don't
actually care about bungee jumping, so the reverse bucket list
is like, this is a list of things I have done,
you know, and it can be any It can be
bucket list like items, it can be accomplishments of any kind.
It can be relationships that you are proud of, or
(11:26):
times that you've made good choices in relationships, times that
you've showed up for yourself. I mean, it's your list, right,
So it's good. It's a way of like, look, I
actually have done, you know, a lot, and so I
think so there's the big picture bucket list reverse bucket
list kind of thing. But I also think even at
the end of the day, just a short little because
we have a to do list, you know, we always
have like our running stuff that we got to do
and then we check it off and it's gone. I
think it can also be helpful, like at the end
(11:48):
of the day, for example, or a week, to be like,
what are three things I actually did today, not just
the three things I need to do going forward, because
I tend to not I tend to just finish stuff
and move on. Finish stuff and move on. And I
think it's really helpful to decide, like what's enough, and
then I can celebrate that.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Yeah, well, I'm a big fan of daily celebrations. We
should have more celebrations in general. I mean, I've added
stuff to my to do list that I've done just
to cross it off, so you know, I like giving
that little gold star.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
So you mentioned that when you ask.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
People what they do with an extra day of the week,
many people suggest that they'd get caught up on their email.
But you suggest that people actually do an exercise of
thinking what they would do on an extra day of
the week. And I presume you don't want them to
do email, So maybe talk a little bit about that
exercise and what.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Yeah, I had to take. I had to take catching
up off the list of options. So the idea is
instead of thinking about your one single, ideal perfect day,
which is kind of another thought exercise, and that can
be helpful, but it also is like pressure inducing, like
it's like a one day, it's got to be perfect.
You know, what if you had an extra day every week,
and so it's the eighth day of the week, you
(12:53):
got seven days a week, but now there's an extra
day and on this day, not only can you not
use it to catch up, you know, presumably you have
other responsibilities and obligations and such on the other days,
but on this day, nobody is asking you for anything, right,
So it's your day. And the key point is it repeats,
so you know, you get fifty two of them a year.
So what would you do on that day? And if
(13:14):
you think of it in that context, I think it's
more helpful than just thinking about like what do I
want to do with my life or what's that single day?
Because sequentially you can do a lot, right, and Lauria
you're the model of this, right, with like war and
peace and the bak and everything else that you do.
So it's like, you know, people can write a book
in a year, you know, using this framework, they can
(13:36):
learn a language, they can learn something else, they can
practice something. So I think it just kind of helps
you get in tune with what you really want. And
I think a lot of people don't think very deeply
about that what is it that I really want to
get out of life? And what is it that I
want now? And what do I want in the future?
And how how can I be kind to my future self?
What are the choices I need to make now so
(13:58):
that my future stuff will be able to you know,
whatever that thing is, and maybe just to give it
make it even more simple. Just a really practical thing
is like as you were going through the day, like
maybe you're doing the trademark Laura VANDERCAM time tracking system,
which I love and respect and have talked about many times.
But you can also just intuitively, maybe just notice and
(14:19):
ask yourself, like what do I want more of and
what do I want less of? And I think when
people do that, they tend to just like moving forward,
kind of interact differently with the world once you know,
oh I want more of this or I want less
of this. I don't actually want to talk to this
person all the time. Maybe I have to talk to
them some of the time, but you know, I want
to lessen those interactions. And I'm actually I'm really enjoying,
(14:41):
you know, these puzzles that I'm working over something else,
and like, be cool if I spend more time.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Doing that, Yeah, yeah, on the eighth day of the week,
we would not be talking to that person that well.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
I think the idea is most people don't.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
We don't really think about what we'd like to spend
a lot more time doing because people assume they have
no time.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
So what would be the point of asking what you
want to do more time?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
But if you think about it, then hopefully we can
start to build that into the one hundred and sixty
eight hours we have in the week without actually getting
one hundred and ninety two hour week.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Great, right, right, right, very good? Yeah, exactly. I think
you can do it strategically or you do it intuitively,
and like both both ways are going to help. Ultimately
you're going to be better off.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Excellent.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Well, We're going to take one more quick ad break
and I will be back with Chris. Well. I am
back interviewing Chris Gilibo, who's the author of the brand
new book Time Anxiety. He's also the author of the
book The Art of Nonconformity. Been telling us all about
his amazing projects, like visiting all of the countries in
(15:41):
the world back in the day. So, Chris, among the
happy tips in your book is to think about death
once a day.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Yeah. Is that great?
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Why should we have this memento Maury every day?
Speaker 1 (15:53):
What's in that for us?
Speaker 3 (15:54):
It's so interesting. I was talking with Ryan Holiday about
this recently because he has a similar take. I think
not everybody has the same awareness of mortality. Everyone has
an intellectual awareness of mortality, which is like everyone dies,
we know this, but to have a more personal awareness
is like someday I will die. And when I was
(16:17):
doing the country quest, I wrote a book about other
people doing quests of all kinds and such, and one
of the commonalities I found among them is that they
often had this more personal awareness of mortality. Maybe they
had had something that happened to them a close call
of their own, or they had lost someone close to them,
or maybe not, but they had this more personal understanding
of it, and it instead of being like pressure inducing
(16:40):
or a sad and scary thing, well maybe it is
a sad and scary thing, but it could also be
like a purpose inducing thing. And it kind of makes
you think, well, okay, life is short. We know that,
you know intellectually, but if I what does it look
like to like live each day with that understanding? And
maybe I will make different choices if I just remember, okay,
I won't get this this day back. Time is precious, right,
(17:03):
You're right about this a lot. So you know, for me,
like thinking about death is it's not meant to be
like overly negative thing. It's meant to be like I
want to do more. You know, I don't actually want
to be a minimalist. I don't want to like less
is not the answer, you know, I want there's some
things I want to do less of, but actually, like,
I love my life and I want to do more
(17:24):
stuff that's exciting, and I want to set goals and
I want to get closer to people that I care
about and like try to have as much impact as possible.
And you know, part of the reason that I want
that and other people you know want that, is because
we realize like that time is limited. Right, What is
it that you say? You know, what was the classic
phrase that we borrowed? You know, I think at WS
one year you know it better than me. It's the
(17:48):
Laura of Andercam phrase.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Yes, I don't have time.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
It's not a priority, no, No, it's about the expectations
are infinite.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Time is finite.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
You are always choosing, well, right there, you go choose, well,
all right, we're going to choose. Well, well, one of
the things you want is to choose. Chris, though, making
this a little lighter now is a granny hobby. So
why are we choosing a granny hobby?
Speaker 1 (18:14):
And what is yours.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Sure, Oh yeah, wow, I wasn't prepared for the second part.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Other people.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
So a granny hobby, and some people might prefer the
term cozy hobby, but granny hobby is not meant to
be disrespectful in any way. Granny hobby thinking of something
like like crafting or knitting or crochet or baking or gardening.
You know, we think about like some of the things
that our grandmothers or grandfathers you know, might traditionally do,
and like I grew up like gardening with my grandma,
(18:44):
and it was like this really special time. So there's
actually a lot of research. It's not just like, oh,
this is a fun thing to do. There's a lot
of research that a tactile doing that is tactile and
sensory and low stakes can actually like increase our cognitive
you know, attention, our focus, as well as reducing our anxiety.
So the low stakes is key, right. It's like it's
relatively easy to learn to do the basics of a
(19:06):
lot of these kinds of crafts and then you can
get better of them over time. But it's not that hard,
and if you mess up, it's okay, right, if you
if you if the cake gets burned in the oven,
then you can make another cake the next day. You
haven't like sent the email, you know, like c see
the entire office on the wrong email or something right,
So low stakes, it's tactile, it reduces anxiety, and it's
(19:27):
also like I think the person that I borrowed this
idea from Anu mentioned her in the book. She also
calls it like hands on thumbs down, so your technically
you're still using your thumb, but you're not scrolling on
a device, so it's a device free. So I actually
don't know if I have at the moment a good
granny or cozy hobby. Yeah. I like some board games,
(19:49):
but I'm not actively like playing them right now, So
maybe I need to work on that after the book
launch and tour. Find my my granny hobby a challenge
exactly exactly?
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Well, are there any particularly mentioned?
Speaker 2 (20:01):
I mean, among the many things you do, you know,
your daily podcast for twenty eight hundred days.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
I mean that's a that's a pretty long time.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
I'm curious about your daily routines, if there are any
routines you have that you feel make you more productive.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
I love this thing about how we all have like
two to three hours a day of like you know,
productive energy of like this cognitive focus. And the more
and more I have thought about it, the more I
understand how true it is for me. And I've tried
to be really protective of that time. I think that's
the biggest thing I do. I do exercise every day,
run every morning, and so I like to have that
(20:37):
and then I like to not schedule myself a lot
in the morning. Typically, I like to have that time
just for creative work that I can structure however I
see fit. I do like these repetitive kinds of projects.
I find a lot of like comfort in making the
podcast every day. It is you'll understand this perfectly. It
is easier for me to make it every day than
(20:59):
it would be to it three days a week, you know,
And that's something that not everybody understands. They're just seven
days a week for like seven years. I'm like, no, no,
that's the secret. It would have been harder, you know
if it was weekly. So I tend to like a
lot of those kinds of like building blocks, milestones of things.
And so I think the trick is to make sure
you're doing the right things, because I also want to say.
(21:21):
I try to be very like candid in the book,
like it sounds like I have all this expertise and
I've done all this stuff, but I actually really had
like a mental breakdown and really really struggled and felt
like I was getting I was so into the productivity
like industrial complex that I was getting good at doing
the wrong things, Like I was getting really really efficient
(21:41):
at being ineffective. And so I think it's you know,
I think it's just important to mention that that it
was a little bit of a journey that I've been on.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Yeah, well we've all been on our journeys. And I
guess one last thing about a journey here, Chris. I mean,
normally I ask people that I interview what they've done
recently to take a day from great to awesome. But
I'm not going to let you choose, because I want
you to talk about the time you walked twenty miles
to dinner.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Okay, this was so funny and I'd never done this before. Yeah,
I just had this idea maybe three or four days
in advance, so it wasn't like completely spontaneous, but it
wasn't super planned. There was a restaurant twenty miles from
me in San Diego, and I was like, I should
I should walk there, And I was like, how okay,
(22:30):
was there a good route for that? And how much
time would that? I mean, I do run every day,
so I'm somewhat used to, you know, those kinds of things.
I've done marathons, but I maybe actually walked like for
hours and hours and hours, and so I just I
just had this idea and it wouldn't leave me alone.
And I thought, well, it could be like a really
dumb thing, but it's also low stakes again, like if
I don't like it, okay, And so I did that.
(22:51):
I left it around lunchtime, and I got to the
restaurant at like right after seven pm. I made a
seven pm reservation. I showed up like right after ten
minutes after, and it was so much fun there. I
ordered this like large pan of cornbread that's supposed to
be like a shared appetizer, and obviously ate the whole
thing myself. And then afterwards I took an uber back,
which took like twenty five minutes, you know, and I'm
(23:12):
passing like all the ways that I had, all the
things that I had passed on my course. It's funny
because I thought when I went on this long walk
that I was going to be productive, you know, it's
just how I think. I was like, I'm gonna make
some phone calls, I'm gonna do some stuff. But then
like my phone battery like charged down, like within the
first couple of hours because you're using GPS, and I
was like, oh, okay, so I really do just have
(23:32):
to I can't even listen to music for most of
that walk. And so it's just a small, small thing
that is now a core memory of mine. And it
wasn't that hard to do. And so the reason I
did it, I probably should have said this first is
I just I found myself too much in the routine
and I wanted to disrupt it a little bit. And
so I was a chapter in the book about practice
having fun and how do you actually practice having fun?
(23:54):
And for me that's that is a little bit of
a journey because I like to work. So it was
good for me.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
It was good.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
All right, Well people can try that if they wish, sure,
you know, maybe just do something else.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
That's a little adventure for well, Chris, where can people
find you?
Speaker 3 (24:09):
Oh? Thank you, Laura. So the new book is Time
Anxiety Time Anxiety dot com. There's some information about the book.
I'm doing a tour across North America, and then I
write a weekly newsletter. E're of mental health dot com.
You can read it there. And then I'm on social
media at Chris killipo, which nobody can spell, but if
you talk about in something close to that, you'll get
to me.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
That sounds good, well, Chris, Thank you so much for
joining us. Thank you everyone for listening. If you have
feedback on this or any other episode, you can reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. In the meantime,
this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
the most of our time.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
(25:13):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Before Breakfast News
Host
Laura Vanderkam
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