I write books about how to live an unconventional life — and what gets in the way of doing it. Time Anxiety is my ninth.
For the past two decades, I've been thinking and writing about the gap between the life people want and the life they end up with. Early on, that meant entrepreneurship and unconventional careers (The $100 Startup, Side Hustle, Born for This). It also meant travel — I spent about a decade visiting every country in the world (193 of them), partly because I wanted to see what was out there, and partly because the trip itself was a long conversation about how to use time.
I founded the World Domination Summit, an annual gathering of people building lives that don't quite fit the usual template. I host Side Hustle School, a daily podcast that's been running since 2017. And I write at chrisguillebeau.com, where I've been publishing on and off for nearly twenty years.
Why this book
For most of my career, I wrote about what to do with your time. Time Anxiety is the book about how to live with the fact that you only have so much of it — and that knowing that doesn't have to ruin every day.
The idea started with a question I kept hearing in different forms: "Why does it feel like I'm running out of time, even when nothing is wrong?" People described a 2 a.m. arithmetic about how many summers they had left. A Sunday-afternoon dread that had nothing to do with Monday. Birthdays that felt heavier than they should. The feeling didn't have a name. So I went looking for one — and the responses I got when I started writing about it convinced me there was a whole hidden language for how time actually feels.
That's what this book is about. Not how to be more productive. Not how to find your perfect routine. How to look honestly at the countdown and decide what to do with what remains — without panicking, and without pretending the countdown isn't there.
What you'll find here
If you're new, here's the short tour:
- What Is Time Anxiety? — the definitive guide, if you want a definition you can use
- 12 Signs of Time Anxiety — diagnostic, in case you're not sure whether this is your thing
- Why Time Feels So Fast — the science behind one of the most universal complaints I hear
- The Glossary — every term in the book, with definitions
- The Time Anxiety Test — a 2-minute self-assessment
Or pick up the book wherever books are sold. Either way, I'm glad you're here.
