Time Management
The Hidden Cost of Time Management
How our attachment to clock time creates anxiety and reduces empathy.
Posted May 9, 2025 Reviewed by Kaja Perina
Key points
- Our obsession with clock time creates temporal anxiety that prevents heart opening and authentic connection.
- Time-checking fragments attention, keeping us focused on future/past rather than present experience.
- When time becomes our most precious resource, we evaluate relationships by efficiency rather than value.
- Mindfulness, nature exposure, and digital boundaries help create "time affluence" and open our hearts.
In our hyper-scheduled modern world, many of us have developed an unhealthy relationship with time. We have become so attached to the time on the clock or our watch that we experience what psychologists are beginning to recognize as "temporal anxiety" - a persistent unease about the passage of time. This attachment to clock time isn't merely a scheduling issue; it fundamentally alters our psychological state, emotional availability, and capacity for connection. Perhaps most significantly, it can prevent what many contemplative traditions call "heart opening" - which is the capacity to experience life in the present with compassion and even ecstasy.
Our Temporal Fixation
The average adult checks their phone 96 times daily – which averages out to approximately once every 10 minutes of our waking life. Many of these checks are time-related: How late is it? Can I make my next meeting? How many minutes until lunch? This constant time-checking behavior fragments our attention in a way such that we are never fully present, but always partly oriented toward the future or past.
Our relationship to time is largely culturally constructed rather than biologically determined. Societies with more rigid time orientations, like ours, typically report higher levels of stress and anxiety.
The psychological cost of our fixation on clock time manifests in several ways. For example, we experience persistent background anxiety as the feeling that time is running out creates stress. Also, our sensory awareness diminishes because when we are focused on time, our attention narrows, reducing our capacity to notice and appreciate our surroundings. We also suffer from reduced interpersonal connectedness, as focusing on time prevents us from listening deeply and attuning to the needs and emotions of others. Finally, we experience a loss of flow states and the experience of timelessness that characterizes them. To appreciate these changes, just think about how you feel on a busy workday when you are focused on the time of your next meeting or break, versus when you are on vacation relaxing at the beach or camping in the woods, when there is no expectation of having to be anywhere or do anything at a particular time.
The Closing of the Heart
The most profound consequence of temporal attachment may be what is termed "closing of the heart" - a defensive mechanism that protects us from vulnerability but also reduces compassion and empathy.
When time becomes our most precious resource, we begin to evaluate experiences based on their "return on investment." This mindset extends beyond work into our personal lives. We may ask: Is this conversation worth my time? Is this relationship efficient? It is nearly impossible to be present in the moment when we're constantly calculating the value of the time we’re spending, rather than enjoying the experience of being with another human being.
Attachment to time keeps us perpetually oriented toward what's next. When we're planning future activities or worried about upcoming deadlines, we’re not focused on the present. This reduces our capacity for compassion and emotional resonance.
Our attachment to time also feeds the illusion that we can control life through proper scheduling and time management. This illusion of control creates a false sense of safety while actually increasing anxiety. The need for certainty and control correlates with reduced empathy and compassion. The heart remains closed, partly as a defense against the unpredictability of life, when we cling to the false certainty that time management provides.
The Cost of Temporal Attachment
The psychological costs of temporal attachment extend into virtually every domain of well-being.
Research indicates that present-moment awareness correlates strongly with emotional resilience. In a landmark study, participants who scored higher on measures of mindfulness showed significantly greater adaptability during stress tests. Our attachment to clock time erodes this resilience by keeping us mentally distracted from the present moment.
When we're chronically time-conscious, we miss or dismiss opportunities to connect with others and the most reliable predictor of relationship dissolution is emotional unavailability.
Innovative thinking emerges during periods of unfocused attention. Our temporal fixation creates a constant pressure that inhibits the mental states that foster creative insight. This explains why our best ideas often come during activities when we lose track of time.
Across wisdom traditions, spiritual experience is described as "timeless" - a state of consciousness where clock time ceases to dominate awareness. Our attachment to chronological time creates a persistent barrier to experiences of unity that are associated with a profound sense of well-being and transcendent meaning.
Healing Our Relationship With Time
The good news is that our relationship with time is learned, and it can be unlearned. Several evidence-based approaches have shown promise in reducing temporal attachment and fostering greater heart openness.
Mindfulness meditation alters time perception, creating what researchers call "temporal expansiveness" - the subjective feeling that time is abundant rather than scarce. Even brief daily meditation reduces time urgency and increases interpersonal warmth and availability.
Also, certain settings - particularly natural environments - help reduce time pressure. Regular exposure to nature has been linked to increased generosity and prosocial behavior, suggesting a connection between temporal expansion and heart opening.
Creating and maintaining boundaries with technologies that support time-checking behaviors decreases anxiety and increases interpersonal connection. Studies of participants who take breaks from their digital devices report significant improvements in relationship satisfaction and emotional presence.
The term "time affluence" has been used to describe the subjective feeling that one has abundant time. Research indicates that practices like time journaling, where people track activities that create a sense of time affluence, significantly improve well-being and interpersonal connection.
Toward Heart Opening
When we loosen our attachment to clock time, remarkable shifts occur in our consciousness. Our heart opens naturally, resulting in a state of emotional availability and receptivity, increased empathy and compassion, greater capacity for joy and wonder, and a deepened sense of connection to others and the world.
These qualities emerge not through effort but through letting go of our attachment to time as something to be managed rather than experienced. We discover that the heart's natural condition is one of openness, and that the time we thought we were saving was actually the life we were missing all along.
References
Garland, E. L., Hanley, A. W., Baker, A. K., & Howard, M. O. (2017). Mindfulness broadens awareness and builds meaning at the attention-emotion interface. Current Opinion in Psychology, 18, 32-38.
Kabat-Zinn, J. (2021). Mindfulness for all: The wisdom to transform the world. Hachette.
Kaplan, S. (2023). The restorative benefits of nature: Toward an integrative framework. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 56, 1-11.
Kasser, T., & Sheldon, K. M. (2019). Time affluence as a path toward personal happiness and ethical business practice. Journal of Business Ethics, 168(2), 315-328.
