The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry

The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry Plot Summary

Introduction

I was stuck in evening traffic, my fingers tapping the steering wheel as I glanced anxiously at the time. A familiar knot formed in my stomach—I was late again. My phone buzzed with messages from people waiting for me, and the to-do list in my head grew longer by the minute. Something had to give. In that moment, I realized I couldn't remember the last time I felt truly at peace. Hurry had become my constant companion, stealing my joy and leaving me perpetually exhausted. Many of us live in this state of chronic rush—moving too fast through our days, checking our phones hundreds of times, multi-tasking our way through conversations, and feeling constantly behind. We sense there must be another way to live, but the current of modern life pulls so strongly that swimming against it seems impossible. What if the solution isn't more productivity apps or life hacks, but rather a radical reimagining of how we move through our days? This is the journey we'll explore together—how to ruthlessly eliminate hurry and rediscover a way of life that nurtures our souls rather than depletes them, finding peace and presence in a world that never seems to slow down.

Chapter 1: The Autobiography of an Epidemic: My Journey with Hurry

It's a Sunday night, 10 p.m. I'm in an Uber, my head pressed against the window, too tired to even sit up straight. I've taught six times today—yes, six. The church I pastor just added another gathering. When we first went to six, I called a megachurch pastor in California who'd been doing six for a while and asked, "How do you do it?" His response was simple: "Easy. It's just like running a marathon once a week." I take up long-distance running. He has an affair and drops out of church. That does not bode well for my future. Home now, late dinner. Can't sleep; that dead-tired-but-wired feeling. I'm watching an obscure kung fu movie nobody's ever heard of. I feel like a ghost—half alive, half dead. More numb than anything else. Emotionally, I live with an undercurrent of nonstop anxiety and a tinge of sadness, but mostly I just feel empty. My life is so fast. And I like fast. I'm type A. Driven. A get-crap-done kind of guy. But we're well past that now. I work six days a week, early to late, and it's still not enough time to get it all done. I have this terrifying thought lurking at the back of my mind, a nagging question of conscience that won't go away: Who am I becoming? I stop. Breathe. Envision myself at forty. Fifty. Sixty. It's not pretty. I see a man who is "successful," but by all the wrong metrics. In spite of all my talk about Jesus, I see a man who is emotionally unhealthy and spiritually shallow. I'm still in my marriage, but it's duty, not delight. My kids want nothing to do with the church; she was the mistress of choice for Dad. Fast-forward three months: flying home from London. The night before we left, a guy named Ken prayed for me and had a word about coming to a fork in the road. One road was paved and led to a city with lights. Another was a dirt road into a forest; it led into the dark, into the unknown. I'm to take the unpaved road. Sitting in aisle seat 21C, a thought comes to the surface of my mind: What if I changed my life? Three months later, I resign from leading our multi-site church. Not resign per se—more like demote myself. I want to lead one church at a time. I want to slow down, simplify my life around abiding. Walk to work. I want to reset the metrics for success. I want to focus more on who I am becoming. My family and I take a sabbatical. I come back to a much smaller church. We move into the city; I walk to work. I start therapy. Work fewer hours. Date my wife. Play with my kids. Practice Sabbath. In time, I detox. There are no fireworks in the sky. Change is slow, gradual, and intermittent; three steps forward, a step or two back. But for the first time in years, I'm moving toward maturity, one inch at a time.

Chapter 2: The History of Speed: How We Got Here

As far back as approximately 200 BC, people were complaining about what new technology was doing to society. The Roman playwright Plautus turned anger into poetry: "The gods confound the man who first found out how to distinguish hours! Confound him, too, who in this place set up a sun-dial to cut and hack my days so wretchedly into small portions!" Next time you're running late, just quote a little Plautus. The gods confound the man! Fast-forward to the monks, our well-meaning spiritual ancestors who played a key role in the acceleration of Western society. In the sixth century Saint Benedict organized the monastery around seven times of prayer each day. By the twelfth century the monks had invented the mechanical clock to rally the monastery to prayer. But most historians point to 1370 as the turning point in the West's relationship to time. That year the first public clock tower was erected in Cologne, Germany. Before that, time was natural. It was linked to the rotation of the earth and the four seasons. Life was "dominated by agrarian rhythms, free of haste, careless of exactitude, unconcerned by productivity." Then in 1879 you had Edison and the light bulb, which made it possible to stay up past sunset. Before Edison the average person slept eleven hours a night. Now, at least in America, we're down to about seven hours per night. That's two and a half hours less sleep than just a century ago. Is it any wonder we're exhausted all the time? About a century ago technology started to change our relationship to time yet again, this time with so-called labor-saving devices. Yet in spite of our smartphones and programmable coffeepots and dishwashers and laundry machines, most of us feel like we have less time, not more. All of this reached a climax in 2007. When the history books are written, they will point to '07 as an inflection point on par with 1440, when Gutenberg invented the printing press. And 2007? The year Steve Jobs released the iPhone into the wild. A recent study found that the average iPhone user touches his or her phone 2,617 times a day. Each user is on his or her phone for two and a half hours over seventy-six sessions. And that's for all smartphone users. Another study on millennials put the number at twice that. In every study, most people surveyed had no clue how much time they actually lost to their phones. A Silicon Valley insider named Tristan Harris points out that slot machines make more money than the film industry and baseball combined, even though they take only a few quarters at a time. Because the slot machine is addictive. And those small amounts of money feel inconsequential in the moment. In the same way, the phone is addictive. And small moments—a text here, a scroll through Instagram there, a quick email scan—it all adds up to an extraordinary amount of time. There are literally thousands of apps and devices intentionally engineered to steal your attention. And with it your money.

Chapter 3: The Symptoms of Hurry: What It's Doing to Our Souls

The story goes like this: It's the height of British colonialism. An English traveler lands in Africa, intent on a rapid journey into the jungle. He charters some local porters to carry his supplies. After an exhausting day of travel, all on foot, and a fitful night's sleep, he gets up to continue the journey. But the porters refuse. Exasperated, he begins to cajole, bribe, plead, but nothing works. They will not move an inch. Naturally, he asks why. Answer? They are waiting "for their souls to catch up with their bodies." More and more experts are weighing in on our life speed being out of control and dangerous. Psychologists and mental health professionals are now talking about an epidemic of the modern world: "hurry sickness." As in, they label it a disease. Meyer Friedman—the cardiologist who rose to fame for theorizing that type A people who are chronically angry and in a hurry are more prone to heart attacks—defined it as "a continuous struggle and unremitting attempt to accomplish or achieve more and more things or participate in more and more events in less and less time." Here are my ten symptoms of hurry sickness: Irritability—You get mad, frustrated, or just annoyed way too easily. Little, normal things irk you. Hypersensitivity—All it takes is a minor comment to hurt your feelings or throw you into an emotional funk. Restlessness—When you actually do try to slow down and rest, you can't relax. Workaholism—You just don't know when to stop. Or worse, you can't stop. Emotional numbness—You just don't have the capacity to feel another's pain. Or your own pain for that matter. Out-of-order priorities—You feel disconnected from your identity and calling. Lack of care for your body—You don't have time for the basics: sleep, exercise, healthy food. Escapist behaviors—When tired, you turn to your distraction of choice: overeating, overdrinking, binge-watching Netflix, browsing social media. Slippage of spiritual disciplines—The things that are truly life giving for your soul are the first to go. Isolation—You feel disconnected from God, others, and your own soul. In his moving book on the Sabbath, Wayne Muller observed: "A 'successful' life has become a violent enterprise. We make war on our own bodies, pushing them beyond their limits; war on our children, because we cannot find enough time to be with them when they are hurt and afraid; war on our spirit, because we are too preoccupied to listen to the quiet voices that seek to nourish and refresh us; war on our communities, because we are fearfully protecting what we have, and do not feel safe enough to be kind and generous." What you give your attention to is the person you become. Put another way: the mind is the portal to the soul, and what you fill your mind with will shape the trajectory of your character. In the end, your life is no more than the sum of what you gave your attention to. That bodes well for those who give the bulk of their attention to what is good, beautiful, and true. But not for those who give their attention to the 24-7 news cycle of outrage and anxiety and emotion-charged drama. We become what we give our attention to, for better or worse.

Chapter 4: Silence and Solitude: Creating Space for Presence

I'm just old enough to remember this thing from the late '90s we called "boredom." You digital natives have no clue what I'm talking about. There was a time when you'd be flying across the country, somewhere over, say, Minnesota, and you'd finish your book earlier than expected and just stare out the window. With nothing to do. Or you'd be waiting in line at your coffee shop, five people ahead of you, and you'd have to just stand there. The extroverts in line would all strike up a conversation. We introverts would smile and nod, secretly thinking, Why, dear God, is this total stranger talking to me? Now all those little moments are gone, swallowed up by the digital carnivore. The second we feel even a hint of boredom coming on, we reach for our smartphones: check our news feeds, answer an email, read a tweet about Donald Trump's tweet about who-knows-what before we tweet about who-knows-what. A survey from Microsoft found that 77 percent of young adults answered "yes" when asked, "When nothing is occupying my attention, the first thing I do is reach for my phone." Pretty much the only place we can be alone with our thoughts anymore is in the shower, and it's only a matter of time until our devices are waterproof. This new normal of hurried digital distraction is robbing us of the ability to be present. Present to God. Present to other people. Present to all that is good, beautiful, and true in our world. Even present to our own souls. So is there a practice from the way of Jesus that could help with this? Yes. Absolutely. It's called silence and solitude. At the end of Matthew 3, there's a fascinating story about Jesus' baptism. When he came up out of the water, there was literally a voice from heaven saying, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." But in the very next line, we read, "Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil." The first thing Jesus did after his baptism was head straight into the desert, a quiet place. For years this story made no sense to me because I thought of the wilderness as the place of weakness. But then I realized I had it backward. The wilderness isn't the place of weakness; it's the place of strength. It was only after a month and a half of prayer and fasting in the quiet place that Jesus had the capacity to take on the devil himself and walk away unscathed. Through the years this practice of Jesus has come to be called "silence and solitude." There are two dimensions of silence—external and internal. External silence is pretty self-explanatory: no noise. But internal noise? That's a whole other animal. A wild beast in desperate need of taming. There's no off switch for the mental chatter that just never shuts up, the running commentary in our heads on everything. By solitude I don't mean isolation. Solitude is engagement; isolation is escape. Solitude is safety; isolation is danger. Solitude is how you open yourself up to God; isolation is painting a target on your back for the tempter. Henri Nouwen said it bluntly, yet eloquently: "Without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life...We do not take the spiritual life seriously if we do not set aside some time to be with God and listen to him." When we don't practice this Jesus soul habit, we reap the consequences: We feel distant from God. We feel distant from ourselves. We feel an undercurrent of anxiety that rarely goes away. Then we get exhausted and turn to our escapes of choice. We become easy prey for the tempter. Then emotional unhealth sets in. On the flip side, when we find our quiet places, we slow down, breathe, come back to the present, start to feel, face what's in our hearts, and hear God speak his love over us.

Chapter 5: Sabbath: Embracing Sacred Rest in a Restless World

I got out of bed this morning because I wanted something. Quite a few things, actually. I wanted to watch the sunrise over a cup of coffee. I wanted to spend time alone with God. I wanted to make my writing deadline for this book, to make a living, to put food on the table for my family. My point is, I woke up with all sorts of desires, and those desires are what got me out of bed on a cold and dark winter's day. Desire is a great motivator. It's the engine of our lives. But if at any point desire is no longer under our control and is instead driving our lives, we're in trouble. Because when you take a closer look at the dynamics of desire, you realize desire is one of those things that is never, ever satisfied. As far back as 1000 BC, the Qoheleth of Ecclesiastes said: "The eye is not satisfied with seeing." A more recent poet simply said: "I can't get no satisfaction." What these poets and prophets and preachers are all tapping into is the reality that desire is infinite. It has no limit. No point at which it's ever satisfied. The problem is, we are finite; we have all sorts of limits. So the result is restlessness. Or in the language of math: infinite desire – finite soul = restlessness. We live with chronically unsatisfied desires. Like an itch that no matter how many times you scratch doesn't go away. No matter how much we see, do, buy, sell, eat, drink, experience, visit, etc., we always want more. So what do we do with all this pent-up, unsatisfied desire? This restlessness? The Jesus tradition would offer this: human desire is infinite because we were made to live with God forever in his world and nothing less will ever satisfy us, so our only hope is to put desire back in its proper place on God. And to put all our other desires in their proper place below God. One of the most famous lines of the way of Jesus post-New Testament is from Saint Augustine: "You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." Is there a practice from the life and teachings of Jesus to mitigate against the chronic restlessness of our condition and culture and to tap into Jesus' rest for our souls? Yes. Many, but at the top of the list is Sabbath. The word Sabbath comes to us from the Hebrew Shabbat. The word literally means "to stop." The Sabbath is simply a day to stop: stop working, stop wanting, stop worrying, just stop. Think of the images that come to us through lifestyle advertising—in our social media feeds or that trendy magazine on the coffee table. The couple lounging in a king-size bed over breakfast and coffee; the photo-perfect picnic at the beach with wine and cheese; a twentysomething playing guitar on the couch while watching the rain fall. Whether they are selling a new bathrobe, a down comforter, or a piece of furniture, almost all of them are images of Sabbath. Of stopping. The marketing wing knows that you ache for this kind of a stopping-rich life, but you don't have it. And they are tapping into your restlessness, hoping to cash in. The irony is, to get this feeling, you don't need to pay for a terry cloth bathrobe. You just need to Sabbath, to stop. In the Genesis story, after six days of hard work to get the universe up and running, we read: "By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work." Did you catch that? God rested. And in doing so, he built a rhythm into the DNA of creation. A tempo, a syncopated beat. God worked for six, rested for one. When we fight this work-six-days, Sabbath-one-day rhythm, we go against the grain of the universe. And to quote the philosopher H. H. Farmer, "If you go against the grain of the universe, you get splinters." My family and I do this every week. Just before sunset on Friday, we finish up all our to-do lists and homework and grocery shopping and responsibilities, power down all our devices, and gather around the table as a family. We open a bottle of wine, light some candles, read a psalm, pray. Then we feast, and we basically don't stop feasting for the next twenty-four hours. We sleep in Saturday morning. Drink coffee. Read our Bibles. Pray more. Spend time together. Talk. Laugh. In summer, walk to the park. In winter, make a fire. Get lost in good novels on the couch. Cuddle. Nap. Something happens about halfway through the day, something hard to put language to. It's like my soul catches up to my body. I feel free.

Chapter 6: Simplicity: Cutting Through the Noise of Materialism

Let's start out with a few sayings of Jesus that, if we're honest, most of us disagree with or at least dislike: "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions." Or how about this one? "Sell your possessions and give to the poor." Wait, what about saving for retirement? Or: "Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?...Seek first God's kingdom." Okay, you lost me; that's exactly what I worry about. If these sayings of Jesus sound crazy to you, well, you're not alone. They do to most of us in the West. When I first started to take Jesus seriously as a teacher (not just as a savior), it was his vision of the role of wealth in the good life that was most jarring to me. Honestly, it took me years to even agree with him. If you're not on board with Jesus' view of money, it could be that you, like many Christians in the West, don't actually believe the gospel of the kingdom—the good news that the life you've always wanted is fully available to you right where you are through Jesus. It could be that you believe another gospel. Another vision of what the good life is and how you obtain it. Let's call it "the gospel of America." This gospel makes the exact opposite claim. In a nutshell: the more you have, the happier you will be. Get that new dress or pair of shoes, and naturally you'll be happier. Trade your car in for the new model. Nab the bigger, better home, and make sure you furnish it with the latest design trend. Work your way up the ladder, and get the promotion, the raise, the bonus. If and when you do, you'll be happier. Duh. Everybody knows that. The French sociologist Jean Baudrillard has made the point that in the Western world, materialism has become the new, dominant system of meaning. He argues atheism hasn't replaced cultural Christianity; shopping has. We now get our meaning in life from what we consume. We even get our identity from the things we buy (or sell). Most of us would never admit it, but a lot of us believe the saying "I am what I buy." Or more realistically, "I am what I wear." Shopping is now the number one leisure activity in America, usurping the place previously held by religion. Amazon.com is the new temple. The Visa statement is the new altar. Money is the new god. It hasn't always been this way, even in America. Only a century ago, 90 percent of Americans were farmers. Life was hard, yes, but simpler too. We mostly lived off the land and traded with our neighbors for anything else we needed. Money was rarely even used. And most of the things we owned fell into the category of needs, not wants. Today only 2 percent of Americans work in agriculture. The last century has radically reshaped the American economy. One Wall Street banker said this: "We must shift America from a needs to a desires culture.... People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality. Man's desires must overshadow his needs." Is there a way off this merry-go-round? A practice from the life and teachings of Jesus to break free of the soul-draining habits of Western materialism? That's a leading question. Of course there is. This practice is called simplicity, but it goes by a few other names: simple living, frugality, minimalism. For this chapter, I'll use simplicity and minimalism interchangeably. What is minimalism? Here are a few definitions: "The intentional promotion of the things we most value and the removal of everything that distracts us from them." Or: "Simplicity is an inward reality that can be seen in an outward lifestyle of choosing to leverage time, money, talents and possessions toward what matters most." To practice minimalism, we need a few guiding principles: Before you buy something, ask yourself, What is the true cost of this item? Think about what it will cost to clean, repair, maintain, insure, finance, etc. the item. How much time will it cost me to own this? By buying this, am I oppressing the poor or harming the earth? Never impulse buy. When you do buy, opt for fewer, better things. When you can, share. Get into the habit of giving things away. Live by a budget. Learn to enjoy things without owning them. Cultivate a deep appreciation for creation and for the simple pleasures. Recognize advertising for what it is—propaganda. Call out the lie. In closing, let's be fair: simplicity isn't "the answer" to the hurry of our modern world. But it is an answer. Even an easy one. Just get rid of the crap you don't need. But it's not a cheap answer. Ironically, it will cost you. Yes, it will cost you to follow Jesus and live his way of simplicity. But it will cost you far more not to. It will cost you money and time and a life of justice and the gift of a clean conscience and time for prayer and an unrushed soul and, above all, the "life that is truly life."

Chapter 7: Slowing: Practical Rules for an Unhurried Life

I like rules. There, I said it. Why is everybody so down on rules? What did rules ever do to them? Rules make me feel safe. When I know the rules, I breathe easy. You're thinking, Oh brother... Judgers gonna judge, but I'm a high J on the Myers-Briggs. And, well, I like to have a plan. For everything. I literally sit down before my day off and plan it out by the hour. Mock me all you want, but I normally have a really good day off. I've started to notice that anti-rule people are often anti-schedule people; and anti-schedule people frequently live in a way that is reactive, not proactive. As more passenger than driver, consumer than creator. Life happens to them, more than through them. Again, the truism: we achieve inner peace when our schedules are aligned with our values. To translate to our apprenticeships to Jesus: if our values are life with Jesus and growing in maturity toward love, joy, and peace, then our schedules and the set of practices that make up our days and weeks are the ways we achieve inner peace. So, gameful person that I now am, I'm always on the hunt for little games to play—fun, creative, flexible "rules" to slow down the overall pace of my one-click-below-hurried life. Here are a few: Drive the speed limit. Get into the slow lane. Come to a full stop at stop signs. Don't text and drive. Show up ten minutes early for an appointment, sans phone. Get in the longest checkout line at the grocery store. Turn your smartphone into a dumbphone. Get a flip phone. Or ditch your cell phone all together. Parent your phone; put it to bed before you and make it sleep in. Keep your phone off until after your morning quiet time. The stats are ominous: 75 percent of people sleep next to their phones, and 90 percent of us check our phones immediately upon waking. I can't think of a worse way to start my day than a text from my work, a glance at email, a quick scroll through social media, and a news alert about that day's outrage. That is a surefire recipe for anger, not love. Misery, not joy. And definitely not peace. Listen: do not let your phone set your emotional equilibrium and your news feed set your view of the world. Let prayer set your emotional equilibrium and Scripture set your view of the world. Begin your day in the spirit of God's presence and the truth of his Scriptures. Set times for email. Set a time and a time limit for social media (or just get off it). Kill your TV. Single-task. Walk slower. Take a regular day alone for silence and solitude. Take up journaling. Experiment with mindfulness and meditation. If you can, take long vacations. Cook your own food. And eat in. We eat in a lot. Tammy and I have a weekly date night, but we rarely eat out as a family. I pack a lunch for work. Most nights we're home. The anchor point for our family's life is the table. We tell stories from the day, highs, lows. After dinner I usually read a chapter from the Bible as we sit around the table. This chapter was so fun to write, but please don't misread the tone. I'm smiling right now, not glaring. None of this is coming from a high-strung, uptight, religious-guilt-trip kind of heart posture. I promise. Every single rule here is life giving for me. Even fun. These are just ideas. They might not be for you. That's cool. Come up with your own list. But come up with a list. Then do it. There's more to life than an increase in speed. Life is right under our noses, waiting to be enjoyed. We must ruthlessly eliminate hurry, and that's best done gamefully.

Summary

Five years after quitting my job and getting off the hurry-train, I've reorganized my life around three very simple goals: slow down, simplify my life around the practices of Jesus, and live from a center of abiding. When I slip back into hurry, I have a little mantra I repeat: "Slow down. Breathe. Come back to the moment. Receive the good as gift. Accept the hard as a pathway to peace. Abide." It's my way to begin again. Life isn't "out there" in the next dopamine hit, the next task, the next experience; it's right here, now. The practices we've explored—silence and solitude, Sabbath, simplicity, and slowing—have helped me tremendously to move toward abiding as my baseline. But to say it yet again, all four of them are a means to an end. The end isn't silence and solitude; it's to come back to God and our true selves. It isn't Sabbath; it's a restful, grateful life of ease, appreciation, wonder, and worship. It isn't simplicity; it's freedom and focus on what matters most. It isn't even slowing; it's to be present, to God, to people, to the moment. The invitation remains: Will you remember there's another road, another way? Will you off-ramp onto the narrow path? Will you radically alter the pace of your life to take up the easy yoke of Jesus? And when you fail, begin again. This time: slowly. The hard reality is that the fight isn't optional. The question is simply: What are you fighting for? Survival of the fittest? Some perversion of the American dream? Or something better? Should you enlist in the war on hurry, remember what's at stake. You're not just fighting for a good life but for a good soul. Here's to the easy yoke.

About Author

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John Mark Comer

John Mark Comer is the New York Times bestselling author of Practicing the Way, Live No Lies, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, God Has a Name, and three more. His podcasts, John Mark Comer Teachings and Rule of Life, have been ranked on top religion and spirituality podcast charts in the U.S. and U.K.He's also the founder of Practicing the Way, a simple, beautiful way to integrate spiritual formation into your church or small group. After serving as the pastor for teaching and vision at Bridgetown Church in Portland, Oregon, for nearly two decades, John Mark and his family now reside in California, where he serves as a teacher in residence at Vintage Church LA.

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