Today’s fast-paced world increasingly demands that we do more and more things in less and less time. This is especially true for the professional work environment.
Very often, employees are continuously forced to be more efficient, more effective, more productive, and more adaptive — all to make more money for the business, or for the business to remain competitive —, which obviously leads to rushing things because in the end we only have limited time.
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As it is, the relationship between hurrying and economic consequences is a trade-off between short-term speed and long-term costs, both for society as a whole and the individual people involved. That is, although hurrying aims for increasing business output, it often comes with hidden financial costs due to mistakes being made (leading to lower quality), health declines of employees, and poor overall decision-making. Of course, no wonder that it wears people out, leads to exhaustion, and finally to burnout.
However, it’s not only at the workplace we’re expected to be hyper-productive. Society as a whole generally equates a person with their “functional output and busyness.” Therefore, doing nothing, little, or taking your time doing things, is seen as an unwanted characteristic, so people tend to hurry because they feel guilt or anxiety when they’re not “maxxing” every single minute of the day. It’s a phenomenon already starting at a young age, when we begin our “career” at primary school.
In addition, hurrying is highly contagious; if everybody around you is rushing, busy, and frantically multi-tasking, you tend to be drawn into that flow even if you don’t want it. You join the rat race, perhaps because you feel guilty, or because you think that it’s expected of you to be accepted or successful, or simply because you think it’s needed to not lose your job.
