Time anxiety is ruining your life. It doesn’t have to

Chris Guillebeau spent years racing against time, visiting all 193 countries before he turned 35, hosting annual gatherings of thousands, and writing bestsellers like The $100 Startup. But his latest book, Time Anxiety, tackles something different: our collective panic about never having enough hours in the day.

The book challenges productivity culture’s relentless optimization, offering counterintuitive solutions like embracing “granny hobbies” and creating “reverse bucket lists.” For Guillebeau, who admits he’s “very forward-minded” and constantly asking “What’s next?” these insights emerged from his own struggles with time pressure.

Fast Company spoke with Guillebeau about why excellence isn’t always the goal, what he learned from visiting every country, and how to find meaning when you can’t control your legacy.

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You introduce this concept of the “reverse bucket list.” Why is looking backward as important as looking forward?

I am a very forward-minded person. I’m always like, What’s next? It’s like, Oh, the book is out. What’s the next book? And it’s like, well, I just spent two years writing this book. Maybe I should live in that zone for a little bit.

The reverse bucket list is just like it sounds—what have I done that is interesting or notable, whether to other people or not? I think it’s helpful to just celebrate or even observe some of those things. You can do it as a big picture, like a life bucket list, or you can just be like, what’s your list of things that you’ve gotten done today?

For those of us who tend to be thinking more about the future, perhaps reflecting on what we’ve been able to do thus far can actually bring us to a centering point.

You visited every country in the world before age 35. What surprised you about that experience?

I first got into that idea because I’m kind of compulsive, and I am a list maker. I was an aid worker in West Africa in my early twenties, and I’d been to maybe 70 countries. I was like, how many are there, and what would it take to do that?

Some of my favorite discoveries were the Baltics and the Balkans. Places like Lithuania and Montenegro ended up being really peaceful spots where I had great experiences and met interesting people. I definitely wouldn’t have gone to either of those places if it wasn’t for having this objective. There was something about combining a love of travel with a love of goal setting and list making that made it really work for me.

The book mentions someone who flew to different European cities every Wednesday, only to fly right back without visiting. What’s the lesson there?

This Dutch guy would go to Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam every Wednesday for 20 years and fly somewhere within Europe—Stockholm or Barcelona—spend a couple of hours in the terminal, then fly back. That was his happy place, his Zen.

A lot of people are gonna say, “Oh, that’s so dumb. He’s doing all this travel without ever traveling anywhere.” But the point is, that’s something that made him feel alive. It gave him a little milestone to anchor the rest of his life with. There’s some weird thing like that for everybody. The whole point is to figure out what that looks like to you.

You advocate for “granny hobbies” and tactile breaks. Why are these important in our digital age?

There’s actually research behind having a hobby that’s hands-on but “thumbs-down”—meaning not digital, not scrolling. It could be knitting, baking, gardening. These are things that are really easy to pick up, and you can leave them for a while and come back.

The research shows this actually can reduce anxiety and contribute to peace of mind. And it’s low pressure. If your knitting project goes awry, oh well. It’s not like you forgot to use BCC and emailed a hundred people by mistake. These hobbies get us operating on a different time schedule—you’re not racing against a digital deadline, but working more slowly to hand-make something.

Your “three-quarter-ass rule” seems to challenge conventional wisdom about aiming for consistent excellence. Why do we need permission to not do our best?

I used to run an event series, and the team would spend forever talking about tiny details. Someone finally said, “We don’t want to half-ass it, but do we really need to put our full ass behind this thing? Can we just three-quarter-ass it?”

You can’t actually do your best at everything. It’s not possible. Life is about choice and selection. You want to maybe pick a couple of things to be excellent at, and for everything else, there are ways of not doing things or doing them adequately. Excellence is not always the standard. Sometimes done is better than perfect, especially for those of us who get stuck because we want things to be perfect and don’t even know where to begin.

How has writing this book changed your own relationship with time?

I used to think a lot about legacy: What do we leave behind? But I’ve distanced myself from that because legacy is something we can’t really control. Most things we do are forgotten. People who leave legacies aren’t on some 60-year strategic plan. They’re just doing things that ultimately have a positive impact.

So I’ve shifted to focusing more on living well. What does it mean to live well? Hopefully that involves contribution and service. I want to make some part of the world a little better, and that’s achievable. It’s measurable for those who want to measure it, and even if you don’t, it’s intuitively knowable.

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