Your Daily Boost – Episode 654

Jonathan Jones
Dec 11, 2025
5 min read

When Life Is Moving Too Fast…and You Finally Notice

There’s a pace we all slip into without meaning to — a pace that feels productive, responsible, necessary, adult…right up until we realize we haven’t actually experienced anything in several days. It’s not burnout. It’s not crisis. It’s the quieter thing that happens long before burnout:

Life starts happening faster than we’re noticing it.

It sneaks up on you. You’re answering emails, handling tasks, planning a dozen small things, trying to stay ahead of whatever’s next — and somewhere in all of that motion, you stop being present. You’re living on autopilot, but with better posture and more calendar alerts.

And December is the perfect example of this. It speeds up whether you do or not. The world around you accelerates — expectations, schedules, obligations, invitations, logistics — and your internal pace tries to rise to meet it. But there’s always a gap between how fast life moves and how fast your mind can process it. That gap is where exhaustion grows. Not physical exhaustion — mental exhaustion. The kind where your brain is trying to write the story of your life at 1x speed while everything around you is playing at 3x.

I’ve been thinking about that because I left for New Orleans today. Not as a grand, cinematic, “it’s time to slow down and rediscover myself” moment. More as an accidental mirror. A reminder that life doesn’t pause while you catch your breath. It keeps going. It keeps moving. It keeps stacking itself on your calendar whether you’re ready or not. There is something humbling about seeing a trip appear on the horizon and realizing you haven’t even mentally arrived at today. It’s like the future is already halfway across the room, waving at you, while you’re still trying to tie your shoes.

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Life Moves Even When You Don’t

One of adulthood’s first lessons — and one we relearn constantly — is that life doesn’t wait for the moment when you feel caught up. There is no “pause” button. Things continue unfolding whether we’re ready to acknowledge them or not. Emails keep arriving. Weeks keep advancing. Seasons shift. People evolve. Opportunities appear and disappear. Kids grow. Deadlines move. And suddenly you’re in a month you didn’t mentally transition into yet.

Slowing down has very little to do with speed. It has everything to do with attention. You can move quickly and still be present. You can slow down and still be distracted. Presence is not measured in minutes — it’s measured in awareness.

But awareness is slippery. You don’t always realize you’ve lost it until something forces you to notice how long you’ve been operating without it.

For me, this trip to New Orleans is that reminder. Not because traveling is inherently reflective, but because travel disrupts your rhythm. It interrupts your autopilot. It breaks the constant loop of reacting to the next demand. Suddenly you’re aware — again — that life is happening. Not a theory. Not a checklist. Not a vague sense of progression. An actual lived experience happening in real time. Funny how sometimes it takes leaving home to fully arrive in your own head.

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The Speed We Ignore Until We Can’t

There’s a speed we tolerate without question. It becomes normal because everyone else seems to be moving at that speed too. We assume the heaviness is our fault instead of noticing that the pace itself might be unreasonable. You see it in small things:

When conversations feel shorter, not because people are rushed but because we are mentally elsewhere.
When the week disappears without leaving any emotional footprints behind.
When time becomes a measurement instead of an experience.
When you’re so busy planning the next thing that you forget to actually live the current thing.

Modern life encourages acceleration. Productivity reinforces it. Expectations depend on it. And slowly — without realizing when the shift occurred — you start living as the manager of your life instead of the participant in it. There’s a difference.

Managers optimize, coordinate, forecast.

Participants notice, absorb, feel, remember.

Both roles matter — but when management consumes participation, life becomes something you oversee instead of something you inhabit. And that’s when slowing down becomes less of a luxury and more of a necessary recalibration.

We treat slowing down as if it’s indulgent. Something you earn after being productive, responsible, efficient, high-functioning. Something you get to do at the end of everything else — when the work is done, when the schedule clears, when the chaos quiets. But here’s the uncomfortable, grown-up truth:

Slowing down is not the reward. It’s the maintenance.

It’s how you recalibrate your internal compass. It’s how you remind yourself where you are and what matters. It’s how you stay human instead of becoming a self-managed project. The world will always move faster than we naturally do. That’s not a failure. It’s physics. Life expands. Responsibilities expand. Technology speeds things up whether we want it to or not. And if we don’t intentionally slow down, the pace will carry us like a river we never consciously stepped into. Slowing down is the moment you step onto the riverbank and realize how fast the water has been moving. It doesn’t require silence or meditation or a retreat into the mountains. Slowing down might look like something as simple as:

Finishing one task before starting the next
Eating without multitasking
Walking without rushing
Listening long enough for someone to finish their thought
Letting a moment last long enough to be remembered

It’s not about effort. It’s about reconciliation — bringing your awareness back to your actual life.

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Presence Isn’t a Mood…It’s a Habit

Here’s where adulthood gets interesting:

Presence is not a feeling that arrives when things get calm. Presence is a habit you practice even when things are not.

You can sit by a quiet river and still be mentally frenzied. You can stand in the middle of Bourbon Street and still feel grounded. The environment doesn’t create presence. Attention does. Presence is noticing instead of anticipating. Receiving instead of reacting. Experiencing instead of analyzing. Being in the moment rather than preparing for the next five.

It’s not glamorous. It’s not profound. It doesn’t post well on Instagram. It’s simply choosing to live your life while you’re living it. Slowing down isn’t about stopping. It’s about not sprinting past the parts of your life that actually matter.

This may be the hardest truth to accept:

You don’t owe productivity to be allowed presence.

You don’t have to finish everything before you’re allowed to experience your life. You don’t have to hit every goal before you’re allowed to breathe. You don’t have to prove your worth through output before you’re allowed stillness.

Stillness is internal. It’s available anytime. It’s the one thing that doesn’t require permission.

You can slow down for five minutes and still return to a full schedule afterwards. You can pause mentally without pausing your responsibilities. You can give yourself presence without shutting down your life. Slowing down is not a performance. It’s a decision. A very small decision that creates a very real shift.

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