Living Without Time Pressure

When I Saw The Manager in My Morning Routine

I wrote recently about discovering The Manager—that part of me that's been running my life with endless planning and worry and need for control in this post. After that ocean moment with my daughter, I started noticing her everywhere. But there was one place where she showed up with particular intensity: our morning routine.

There's a morning I'll never forget.

The Morning That Revealed Everything

We were trying to get out the door for preschool, and The Manager was in full control. Hell-bent on getting there by 8:45—even though it's perfectly fine to be late sometimes—she had me frantically gathering bags while my 4-year-old melted down and the baby started crying in response. I was boiling over with frustration, everyone was miserable, and for what?

Standing in that doorway with everyone in tears, I suddenly saw her so clearly. This was The Manager's specialty: manufacturing urgency where none needed to exist. Creating crisis and stress to maintain the illusion of control. She was so convinced that being on time equaled being a good mother, that keeping to the schedule meant keeping my family safe and approved of.

But all she was really doing was keeping us from actually living our mornings.

The Experiment

After that day, everything changed. We started getting up earlier—not so The Manager could orchestrate more efficiently, but so I could stop listening to her completely. I stopped looking at the clock at all during our morning routine.

The difference was immediate. Calm mornings. Connected moments. Everyone arriving at preschool happy instead of frazzled.

I began choosing differently in other moments too. "Am I hungry?" instead of "It's 5 o'clock so we're eating now." "Do we feel finished here?" rather than "We need to leave to stick to the schedule." If the planned park visit didn't feel right, we'd cancel it. When my baby fell asleep in the car, instead of The Manager panicking about the disrupted routine, I'd simply think: she must be tired.

When friends wanted to do something spontaneous, I started saying yes instead of letting The Manager grip tightly to predetermined plans.

There is so much flow now.

What I've Learned About Time

I still do some planning— but I see them as loose guidelines rather than The Manager's rigid schedules. I've discovered that there are surprisingly few things that actually require precise timing. On parental leave, it's pretty much just doctors' appointments and flights. Being late to meet a friend, missing one train when there are others, a flexible preschool drop-off—none of it is the crisis The Manager made it out to be.

I've noticed something beautiful: when I'm not rushing the children but following their natural pace, things often take only a couple minutes longer. But when The Manager pushes and hurries everyone, we get resistance and meltdowns that take far longer than those extra minutes ever would.

There's space now. Space to notice when we're genuinely tired or hungry. Space to follow curiosity down unexpected paths. Space for those unplanned moments that hold the most magic.

The Daily Choice

Every morning now, I have the same choice I wrote about before: Will I listen to The Manager with her calculations and concerns about timing? Or will I trust that this moment, this rhythm, might be exactly what we need?

Most days, I choose presence over The Manager's precision. She still whispers her warnings about being late, her worries about disrupted routines. But now I can hear her voice, thank her for trying to help us stay organized, and choose differently.

I choose to trust our natural rhythms. I choose to live our days instead of managing them according to arbitrary timelines.

The clock is still there, marking its steady beat. But my life—the real, felt experience of it—happens in the spaces between those measured moments. There's such freedom in recognizing that The Manager's time pressure was coming from inside me, not from life itself.

This isn't about becoming someone new. This is about continuing to choose the woman in the flowing dress over The Manager's need for control. About remembering that children have their own wisdom about timing, that the present moment often holds more richness than any schedule The Manager could devise.

How does The Manager show up in your daily routines? What would change if you could recognize her voice in those moments and choose differently?