Why You Always Feel Behind

Hey there,

Last Tuesday, I realized I had been brushing my teeth for way too long.

Not “great dental hygiene” long, more like “does this man need help?” long.

I checked the clock. Four minutes had passed.

And in those four minutes, I had:

1. Answered three imaginary emails.

2. Remembered a friend I forgot to text back.

3. Panicked about a deadline I invented.

4. And somehow managed to feel behind on a day that hadn’t even started.

There I was, foaming like a stressed-out cappuccino, overwhelmed before sunrise.

And the sad part? This wasn’t a one-off moment. This was my life.

I brush my teeth fast so I can rush to get dressed, so I can rush to sit down at my desk, so I can rush through my tasks, meetings, dinner, getting my daughter dressed for bed, and my own bedtime routine, just to wake up and rush again.

I’m basically living on 2x speed, and not in the cool “I’m efficient” way, but in the “I’m skipping over my actual life” way.

What finally hit me was that I don’t always feel behind because of how much I have to do.

I feel behind because I’m leaving the moment before I even arrive in it.

And even after putting the toothbrush down, part of my brain was still on those fake emails.

Psychologists call this ‘attention residue’, when a tiny part of your focus stays stuck on whatever you were just thinking about.

Your brain doesn’t switch with you. It’s still buffering.

Once your morning shatters like that, the rest of your day follows.

Your time becomes time confetti, little paper scraps of half-focus and half-tasks that never add up to anything meaningful.

You feel busy, but nothing feels done.

Every micro-distraction resets your mental progress.

Each one gives your brain a tiny dopamine hit for starting something new, not finishing what you already started.

By noon, you have lived seven miniature “days” inside one actual day, switched contexts a hundred times, and have the emotional stability of a toddler who missed a nap.

The more fragmented your attention becomes, the more your sense of time distorts.

The day moves fast, but you feel slow, like you’re running underwater.

You feel behind because your brain never gets the closure it needs to feel caught up.

A few months ago, I had one of those days where nothing was wrong, but everything felt off.

I would sit down to work, then remember my water bottle which I misplaced for the 14th time that day.

Open my laptop, then remember a message I forgot to send.

Start writing a script, then suddenly I’d be reorganizing my studio like Netflix was coming over to film a documentary.

By the end of the day, I had done a lot but finished nothing.

And that night, I felt behind on work, chores, being a good dad, being a good husband, behind on sleep, and behind on goals I made up in the first place.

It was like chasing a bus I was already on.

Feeling behind is an emotion, not a measurement.

It happens when your brain is constantly halfway into the next moment without ever closing the loop on the current one.

Somewhere along the line, our brains stopped doing one thing at a time.

Not because we’re bad people, but because everything in our lives encourages fragmentation.

Phones, notifications, Slack pings, ads, reminders, alerts, and the voice in your head telling you you’re behind again.

Technology has outpaced the part of our brain that regulates attention.

We were not built for 400 micro-distractions a day.

Our nervous system hears all of them as tiny emergencies, so your brain starts sprinting even when you’re standing still, even when you’re just brushing your teeth.

Eventually, the sprint becomes the default.

You stop feeling like you’re living and start feeling like you’re catching up.

To what? You never get close enough to see it.

I wish I could say I solved this with a seven-step morning routine and an aesthetic planner.

But no. I tried that.

I have the abandoned Notion templates to prove it.

What actually helped were small, subtle shifts.

Not hacks, not systems, just re-learning how to arrive in the moment I’m in:

• Pausing between tasks, even for five seconds.

• Finishing one thing completely before touching the next. (Your brain loves closure.)

• Putting my phone in another room during work blocks so I’m not trying to do deep work with a digital toddler screaming for attention in my pocket.

• Letting boring moments stay boring so my brain relearns how to exist without stimulation.

• Doing less, but actually completing what I choose to do.

Slowly, I stopped feeling like life was sprinting away from me.

After reducing distractions, something strange happened…

Even without my phone, my brain still acted like it was scrolling.

One night, my daughter was giggling on the living room floor with a stuffed animal that looked like it survived a mild house fire.

She was fully present, laughing, rolling, living her best toddler life.

And I was thinking about emails.

She was in front of me doing the cutest thing any human has ever done, and I was mentally reorganizing my inbox like some deranged productivity accountant.

I realized I wasn’t behind on work. I was behind on life.

When I finally slowed down, even for a few breaths, I started noticing things I hadn’t in years:

The way her nose crinkles when she laughs.

The hum of the fridge at night.

How the morning light changes the color of my office wall.

Nothing dramatic, but those tiny details made my days feel whole again.

Now, whenever I catch myself rushing, brushing my teeth, or getting my daughter dressed for bed, I pause.

Not to be ‘mindful’ or ‘enlightened’.

Just to remind myself:

I’m right here. Not behind. Not late.

Here.

You’re not always behind, you’re just scattered.

Your attention is stretched like pizza dough, thin and fragile.

But the moment you stop slicing your day into a thousand micro-moments, your mind stops glitching like a browser with too many tabs open.

You start remembering things.

Finishing things. Enjoying things. Arriving in things.

You stop running ahead of your own life and start moving with it.

Slowing down doesn’t make you less productive.

It just makes you feel less like you’re sprinting through your day with your shoelaces tied together.

And that quiet sense of “Oh, I’m okay” is what it feels like to be caught up.

Not because the world slowed down, but because you did.

If you made it to this point without checking your phone, your email, the fridge, or Googling something unrelated, you are already less behind than you think.

You’re just here long enough to notice.

– Scott

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