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Time anxiety is the pressure to always be doing more, moving faster, and never falling behind. This article from Venturous Counselling in Vancouver and Port Moody challenges colonial, linear conceptions of time through the philosophy of John Mbiti and Mumbi Macharia, exploring how cyclical, event-based understandings of time can ease the grip of productivity culture and open space for identity, rest, and becoming. Venturous Counselling is a queer- and BIPOC-led therapy collective serving youth, adults, and relationships through anti-oppressive, justice-oriented counselling.
Before You Rush Ahead: Let 2025 Breathe
It’s that season again—vision boards, resolutions, and declarations that “2026 will be my year.” It’s tempting to treat the year we just lived as a prelude, something to move past quickly. But 2025 wasn’t a placeholder in your story. It was made up of genuine effort, subtle changes, and people who cared enough to show up.
Some years make noise; others speak softly, inviting us to notice the shifts that happen offstage. Maybe you stretched into new ideas, pushed through tough deadlines, or did work that never made it to a highlight reel—but still shaped you. Before you rewrite your whole entire identity for 2026, take a breath and honour all you carried, released, learned, or gently outgrew this year. If you’ve been feeling time anxiety—the pressure to always be doing more or moving faster—know that you’re not alone. Keep reading to learn about how changing your perception of time can change your whole relationship with yourself.
In This Guide:
- Before You Rush Ahead: Let 2025 Breathe
- Moving Beyond “Wasted” Years
- Understanding the Time Philosophy: Beyond the Clock
- The Mbiti Understanding: Time as Creation
- Temporal Disobedience & African Time
- If Time Is Created, What Would Shift for You?
- Honouring Time as Creation, Not Consumption
- How to Carry Forward What Matters: Reflection Invitations for the Year’s End
Moving Beyond “Wasted” Years
We’re constantly told to keep moving, to value only what’s new or productive. But not every year is about big achievements. Some are for rooting, remembering, healing, or simply holding space. 2025 might not have brought every answer you hoped for, but that doesn’t make it wasted. Sometimes the most important growth happens quietly, in the background, while we rest or support others. When time anxiety creeps in, remind yourself that your worth isn’t measured by constant progress. Perhaps shifting out of our colonial understanding of time can support you in leaning into a different way of relating to yourself, to your life, to your time.
Understanding Time Philosophy Beyond the Clock: Mbiti’s Cyclical View
Most of us have grown up with a Western, linear sense of time: time moves forward in a straight line, divided into hours, days, and years. There’s a past, a present, and a future. The future is always “ahead,” and we’re expected to move toward it, plan for it, and sometimes even race against it. This creates a lot of time anxiety—the fear of being left behind, running out of time, not achieving enough, or not using our time “productively enough. In this view, time is like money—something you can spend, waste, or run out of.
But not every culture sees time this way. Kenyan philosopher John Mbiti—one of the most influential voices in African philosophy—offers a radically different perspective. In his landmark work, African Religions and Philosophy, Mbiti explains that many African cultures experience time as cyclical and event-based, rather than linear and abstract.
Mbiti describes African time as fundamentally cyclical and event-based. Time isn’t something that exists on its own, moving forward with or without us. Time isn’t a strict schedule or a race to the future. Instead, time is created and made real by through events, relationships, and shared experiences. If nothing is happening, time isn’t “passing”—it’s simply not present yet. The future isn’t a fixed destination, but something that comes into being as we gather, celebrate, grieve, or create together.
Think of it like this:
- In Western time, you might say, “It’s 3pm, so we have to start the meeting.”
- In African time, you might say, “We’ll start the meeting when everyone arrives and we’re ready.” The event itself makes the time real—not the clock.
Key Concepts from Mbiti:
- No Anxiety About the Distant Future: Because the future only becomes real when it happens, there’s less obsession with planning, predicting, or controlling it. This can be profoundly healing for those struggling with time anxiety or the pressure to always be “ahead.”
- Sasa and Zamani: Mbiti uses the terms sasa (now/recent past/future just about to happen) and zamani (the deep past). Most of African time is lived in the sasa—the present and what has just happened. The future is almost non-existent until it becomes the present. Zamani is the timeless past, where ancestors and collective memory reside, always echoing into the now.
- Events Create Time: “Time is not what one reckons, but what one experiences.” For Mbiti, a wedding, a harvest, or a communal meal is what brings time into being. If there is no event, there is no time to “waste.”
Mbiti writes, “Time is not what one reckons, but what one experiences.” A wedding, a harvest, or a communal meal is what brings time into being. If there is no event, there is no time to “waste.” Because the future only becomes real when it happens, there’s less obsession with planning, predicting, or controlling it. This can be profoundly healing for those struggling with time anxiety or the pressure to always be “ahead.”
This cyclical, event-based view of time is echoed in the work of Mumbi Macharia, who describes “temporal disobedience”—refusing to let time be a strict ruler over our lives, and instead making time something we shape and experience together. Life moves in patterns and returns—like the seasons, or the way we revisit memories, traditions, and relationships.
Why does this matter? If time is created—not lost or wasted—can you let go of the pressure to always be “on schedule”? Can you rest, reflect, or change direction without feeling like you’re failing? Can you focus on what’s meaningful, not just what’s urgent? Could this philosophy can help ease time anxiety and open up new ways to relate to your identity and growth?
Mbiti’s work invites us to see time not as a race, but as a garden—something to be tended, experienced, and shared. When we stop measuring our worth by the clock, we open up space for healing, community, and authentic growth. Personal growth counselling, from this perspective, becomes less about “fixing” the future and more about honouring the cycles, rituals, and connections that give your life meaning.
Temporal Disobedience & African Time
What if the future isn’t a straight line, but a rhythm? Mumbi Macharia, drawing on Mbiti’s work, reminds us that in many African philosophies, time is not a rigid grid of hours and minutes—it’s a living rhythm of events. What matters isn’t the clock, but the happening: “We might say we’ll meet at sunrise, and whether the sun rises at 6am or 7am doesn’t matter; what matters is the event of the sun rising.”
This is a quiet form of temporal disobedience—a refusal to let time exist as an external authority, separate from lived experience. African time is not a lack, but a language: a relationship to being, community, nature, and memory that Western linearity cannot translate. Time moves in circles, spirals, and echoes; it pauses to listen, to remember, to breathe.
As Macharia shares (inspired by Mbiti):
“Time is made up of events. Time has to be experienced in order to be real… Events produce time, and people produce as much time as they need… Sitting under a tree is not wasting time, it’s either waiting for time or producing time.”
If Time Is Created, What Would Shift for You?
Drawing on John Mbiti’s philosophy and Mumbi Macharia’s reflections, let’s imagine: What if time isn’t something you spend, waste, or lose—but something you actively create through your choices, your presence, and your relationships?
If you truly believed that time is created—not counted and therefore cannot be wasted—how might your sense of identity shift? Would you offer yourself more patience and grace? Would you notice the small, meaningful moments that make up your life, even if they aren’t seen by others? Would you honour the slow changes, the pauses, the care you offered yourself and your community?
For those exploring personal growth counselling, this perspective can be liberating. It invites us to move away from anxiety about “falling behind” and toward a more compassionate relationship with our own growth. Your identity isn’t defined by productivity or comparison, but by the moments you choose to create, witness, and honour. This shift can be a powerful antidote to time anxiety.
Honouring Time as Creation, Not Consumption
When we let go of the idea that time is a resource to be spent or lost, we open ourselves to a more compassionate relationship with ourselves and our communities. As Macharia says, “Temporal disobedience isn’t just about rejecting clocks or calendars, it’s about reclaiming the right to experience time as living, as ours, as something that breathes through us, not over us.”
Ask yourself:
- What did I create this year, even if it wasn’t visible?
- What did I learn by witnessing, by pausing, by remembering?
- How did I show up for myself or others in ways that matter?
- How does my identity shape the way I experience and create time?
Time is not a commodity, but a canvas. We are not behind. We are not late. We are here, creating meaning as we go. This is how we begin to heal time anxiety and reclaim our stories.
How to Carry Forward What Matters: Reflection Invitations for the Year’s End
As you close out 2025, here are some questions to help you notice what you’ve created and who you’ve become:
- In what ways did you grow or adapt, even if those changes were quiet or unseen?
- What lessons came to you through difficulty or challenge?
- Who or what brought you genuine connection, joy, or energy this year?
- Where did you notice friction or misalignment, and what did it teach you about your values?
- What small victories or moments of relief deserve to be celebrated?
- How can you honour the parts of yourself that persisted or softened, without rushing to “fix” or “improve” them?
And some deeper invitations, inspired by Mbiti and Macharia:
- If time can’t be saved, wasted, or lost—if it has no end—what would that change for you in your experience? In your practice?
- How does the idea of producing time shift your relationship to rest, especially if you’re expected to always be “productive”?
- What are the real events and cycles that structure your life—seasons, relationships, grief, joy, rest? How often do you honour those in your schedule or your rituals?
- Ceremonies and rituals create time. They’re not decorative—they’re how communities produce shared reality. What rituals anchor your life? What does your culture or lineage share about the experience of time?
As we move into 2026, let’s resist the pressure to write off 2025 as “wasted.” Instead, let’s honour what was created:
- Reflect: What moments from 2025 do you want to carry with you?
- Consolidate: What lessons or connections deepened this year?
- Remember: Whose stories, whose care, whose laughter sustained you?
- Witness: Where did you see resilience, even in stillness?
Every year is worthy of remembrance. Every year is time created.
If you’re seeking support in making meaning of your year, or want to explore anti-oppressive, culturally responsive therapy and personal growth counselling in Vancouver, we’re here for you. Book a free consultation or explore our resource database to learn more about how therapy can help you honour your story—past, present, and future.
Your time is not wasted. It’s created, witnessed, and woven into the story of us all.
Sources:
Temporal Disobedience: Decolonizing the Future Through African Time – Mumbi Macharia
Instagram Reel by Mumbi Macharia
John Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy
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Frequently Asked Questions About Time Anxiety
What is time anxiety?
Time anxiety is the persistent feeling that you’re running out of time, falling behind, or not using your time productively enough. It’s often rooted in systems that tie your worth to output. Anxiety counselling and self-worth counselling can both help you untangle the pressure of productivity from your sense of value.
How is time anxiety connected to burnout?
Time anxiety and burnout share the same root: a system that demands constant production and punishes rest. The urgency to always be doing something feeds directly into burnout, especially when rest feels like something that has to be earned through productivity.
Can therapy help with the feeling that I’m always behind?
Yes. Personal growth counselling at Venturous works with the patterns underneath that feeling, including how your relationship with time has been shaped by culture, family expectations, and systems that weren’t designed for human rhythms. The goal is to build a relationship with time that centres experience rather than achievement.
What does therapy for time anxiety look like at Venturous?
Therapy might explore how your nervous system responds to perceived urgency, how cultural and colonial frameworks of time shape your internal pressure, and what it would look like to relate to time differently. Somatic therapy and nature-based therapy can be especially grounding for people whose bodies carry the weight of urgency culture.
Is time anxiety the same as regular anxiety?
Time anxiety is one expression of a broader anxious pattern, but it has specific characteristics tied to productivity, deadlines, aging, and the fear of wasting your life. Anxiety counselling at Venturous addresses both the broader nervous system patterns and the specific cultural pressures that fuel time-related distress.