I have a friend here in Saigon who never came anywhere excited. Same movement as me. The same broken sidewalks, the same motorcycles, the same afternoon rain that turns the street into a river. He just doesn’t seem to be in a hurry, ever.
For a long time I thought he was born calm. He is not. He told me that he used to be the craziest person he knew, and that most of what changed wasn’t added to him. It was a bunch of things that he quietly stopped doing.
Here are eight that I keep noticing in people like him.
1. Say yes in the moment
Unhurried people almost never commit on the spot. Ask them to do something in three weeks and you get the “let me check and get back to you” option, even though you both know they’re probably free.
It used to feel a bit optional to me. Now I think that is the biggest difference between them and me. If you say yes right away, you are saying yes to a version of the future where you have infinite energy. Being you is not the right person. Future you is tired and has three things already packed that Thursday.
A day of respite before answering costs next to nothing and eliminates a surprising amount of the crazy feeling that comes later.
2. Viewing the full calendar as evidence that they are doing well
There’s a stretch of your life, usually in your late twenties and thirties, when a full journal seems like proof that you’re important. Someone asks what you’ve been up to, and the honest answer is “everything,” and some part of you enjoys it.
People who never seem to be in a hurry gave it up somewhere along the way. They stopped reading their own schedule as a scoreboard. My brother did this a few years ago and the changes were immediate. He didn’t do anything less important. He just didn’t collect any more things to deal with.
3. Booking things back to back
Related, but not the same. You can have an easy week and still feel like you’re being chased when things are stacked up so there’s no air between them.
Calm people leave gaps. Half an hour between the meeting and the school run. Buffer on both sides of the meeting. It looks inefficient on paper, which is why they walk in looking like normal people, not like they just ran up two flights of stairs.
Nothing ever takes exactly as long as it says. They stopped pretending otherwise.
4. Filling every free minute
I’m waiting for the kettle, so the phone goes out. Two minutes in the elevator, phone. Queue at the bank, telephone. You don’t want to rush because you are standing still, but the mind can never postpone anything.
I noticed this in myself on a walk by the river last year. I listened to podcasts on this walk every morning for about three years. I stopped, mostly out of curiosity, and within a week the whole day felt slower. Nothing else has changed.
People who appear to be in no hurry have resigned themselves to dead time. They will stand in line and just stand in it.
5. Do two things at once
Lunch at the laptop. Half-listening to her daughter, responding to amessage. Cooking with a video on the bench.
Each one feels like a small victory, and together they make it feel like you’re always a little behind because you’re never done with anything. You just leave a trail of half-finished moments in your wake for the entire day.
Unhurried people are noticeably lonely. When they eat, they eat. When they talk to you, they talk to you. This looks like a good tone. I think it’s mostly self-preservation.
6. The answer to everything in a second of arrival
This is a habit that people can actually break in real time.
Sometime in the last decade, many of us have decided that a message deserves a response within about ninety seconds. No one ever agreed to that. It just happened and then it became the water we all swim in and now the two hour delay seems rude.
They got out of it calmly. They respond appropriately, usually later, often as a group. At first you think they’re a bit sluggish. Then you realize that their attention is going where they choose to direct it, not who pinged last.
7. Talking about how flat they are
Listen to how someone responds to “how are you”. If the response is always some version of “take it easy mate, so busy”, it’s not just a description. It’s a habit, and it feeds itself.
I’ve been doing this for years without realizing it. Saying that out loud twelve times a week kept me in the person of a person chasing my own life. People who don’t seem to be in a hurry don’t get things done, even if they have a lot to do. They’ll say yes, have a nice week, and then ask about yours.
You can discard the comments before discarding the actual load. Ironically, workload often follows.
8. Trying to end the day on zero
This is the one that took me the most time.
There is a fantasy that if you just click today, you will get to the end of the list and then you can relax. This day never came for anyone I know. A list is not an empty container. This is a river.
People who seem to take their time have resigned themselves to stopping before things are over. They pick a spot, close the laptop, and leave what’s left for tomorrow. Not because they don’t care, but because they’ve figured out that the alternative is a slow chase with no finish line.
My friend said it well. He said he used to think being busy meant being needed. Now he thinks that it basically meant that he didn’t decide anything.
A thread runs through it all
None of this is a performance-enhancing trick. There are no apps, no morning routine to copy.
What they have in common is a willingness to disappoint someone a little, leave something unfinished, or look less spectacular for a while. Often we make haste rather than choice. It allows us to keep everyone reasonably happy and in constant motion, and the price is a life that always feels like it’s happening too fast.
I don’t understand this at all. I ditched the podcast on my morning walk and still check my phone in elevators. But I’ve noticed that on the days I drop at least one of them, the day itself doesn’t get any shorter. I just stop feeling like he’s chasing me.
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