The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry summary

When someone asks you how you’re doing, how often do you reply that you’re “busy," or “stressed”? It has become so normal to rush from task to task constantly that often we don’t even notice that we’re doing it or consider that life could be different.

Being pathologically busy cuts across class lines and geographic locations. You may be a wealthy CEO in India or struggling single mom in Indiana, but chances are you’ll be rushed off your feet.

Imagine an age before clocks. The only way you could figure out the time was to look at the position of the sun in the sky. 

That changed as soon as the mechanical clock was invented by monks who wanted a reliable way to call people to prayer at set times. By 1370, the first public clock tower was erected in Cologne, Germany. Now any member of the public could find out exactly what time it was as they strolled across the church square. 

Have you ever thought that maybe all your problems would be solved if you just had more time? Imagine if we had ten extra hours every day!

You’re probably excitedly thinking about everything you could do with that extra time. Therein lies the problem. Having more time won’t necessarily make us less busy. It’ll just mean that we have more time to be busy. 

If you’ve ever been to a church service, you can probably rattle off the Ten Commandments by heart. But can you also remember what Jesus did in His day-to-day life? 

The Bible is not only a book of moral teachings. It’s also a biography, although we rarely think of it like that. It gives us a detailed account of what Jesus's life was like, day to day. What He did, and said, and how He practiced his faith. 

Our world has become noisier than ever. Social media means that even if we are physically alone, we are rarely alone with our thoughts.

In the past, moments for quiet contemplation were built into our lives. Waiting in line, staring out the window on a bus, we had time to hear ourselves think. That kind of solitude (which some may call boredom) has become all but extinct, as most of us spend these in-between moments checking our smartphone notifications. 

Just a few decades ago, Americans would wake up on Sunday to a very quiet world. All the shops were closed, as were the businesses. There was nothing to do.

Well, not nothing. You could spend time with your family and friends. Visit a local park or go to church. Have a snooze on the couch. Cook a meal. 

How many pairs of shoes do you have in your closet? And how many of those pairs have you worn recently?

If answering those two questions has led to any guilty feelings, don’t blame yourself. Our modern consumer culture has developed as a result of our move from a needs-based economy to a desires-based economy over the past century. Industrialization made it possible to mass-produce goods, and, pummeled by messages from a sophisticated advertising industry, we often believe we need to consume more to become complete.

We all know the feeling of standing in a supermarket line, bristling with irritation because the person in front of us forgot to weigh their fruit and then can’t locate their bankcard. Who has the time to wait?

Well, actually, you do. In our quest to do everything as quickly and efficiently as possible, we’ve lost sight of the fact that sometimes we’re hurrying just for the sake of hurrying.