Being Super Productive Vs Choosing Peace
A reflection on the tension between urgency and stillness — and how turning 50 can be the moment you finally stop running and start choosing.
In this episode, Joe explores the anxiety so many of us carry as the years pick up speed — that quiet panic that time is slipping away and every moment needs to count. Drawing on the hourglass metaphor, he traces how our upbringing and our culture wired us to measure worth through productivity, and how that conditioning turns rest into guilt and leisure into stress. But somewhere around 50, something shifts. You become acutely aware that time is finite, yet paradoxically, you've never felt less rushed. Joe shares the simple question he now asks before starting anything — Am I choosing this? — and how it has transformed his relationship with work, rest, and the sand falling through the glass. This one is for anyone who has ever watched a movie while mentally drafting a to-do list, and wondered if there's a better way to live.
Chapters
- 0:00 — The Hourglass — Why every possibility lives in the top of the glass
- 0:59 — The Productivity Trap — When being "always on" becomes a source of misery
- 2:51 — The Shift at 50 — The epiphany: more aware time is finite, yet more at peace than ever
- 3:34 — Nothing Is Required — What Tibetan monks can teach us about letting go of autopilot
- 4:23 — Rest Without Guilt — The two-hour movie, the worst trade, and learning to be fully present
- 5:24 — The One Question — "Am I choosing this?" A simple framework for every decision
- 6:08 — Protecting the Sand — Saying no more often, and why it doesn't feel selfish anymore
And trust me when I say I know what it's like to make your own life difficult. Does your life feel like Groundhog Day on repeat? Welcome to the Eye of the Hurricane Podcast. If you have four to five minutes, I'm going to talk about a perspective change that for me has completely transformed the way I live my life. And hopefully you'll find great value in it. But earlier this week, I made a YouTube short using this hourglass. And I talked about time, obviously, but I talked about the top of the hourglass and how it contains everything that we still get to do in our lives. So every decision we haven't made, every chance we may or may not take, every possibility lives in the top of the hourglass. The bottom really represents the life we've already lived. So the decisions we made, the memories we've had, the things that we can't change anymore. And the message of the short was simple: it was stop putting off the thing that someday you're going to kick yourself for because you never took a chance on it. So I still believe every word of what I said, but I did want to add something because as I thought about it, the version I presented left one little piece that creates a lot of misery for some people. And that is, I want you to take a second and think about everyone you know. Is there someone who fits this specific mold? And that is every minute has to count. They absolutely can't sit still. Everything they do has to produce a result. Um, most of the time, something that they can measure. They're always on. If you think in terms of leisure time or vacations, it's almost always a hassle because they're not going to be productive enough. They end up working through the entire trip, and the vacation itself becomes more stressful than not going. So, in their world, anything that could be deemed as unproductive is really viewed as a waste of time. And with that comes a big helping of guilt. So if nobody, nobody comes to mind when you think of your Rolodex of people, sometimes that person is the one that's in the mirror. And I say that with zero judgment because I understand how people get there. Some of us panic, I think, as we get 50 and older about time running out. So the days, when we say the days move faster, if you're 50 plus, the days fly, right? The world changes in ways that we're not always happy about. And I think sometimes to calm our anxiety, we really grab for control, or at least the illusion of control, through productivity. So if you think of how some of us were raised, I think we get that productivity trap there too, because some of us we couldn't take naps as kids. There was no way you could sleep past 7:30 on a Saturday. Um, achievement for a lot of our parents is how they measured what your worth was. So over time, we end up assessing our own worth based on how productive we are or what we accomplish. So here's what I figured out as I've gotten to 50 years old. And it took me a long time to see it. And that is, I've never been more tuned in to the fact that my time is running out. And at the same time, I've never felt less rushed or more at peace when it comes to striving for things that I want. Now, what's interesting is those sound like opposites. So it doesn't seem like both of those can be true, but I believe that they are. So one thing for sure, the sand's falling, right? That's a fact. Time is going, life is passing us by. But at the same time, nothing actually has to be done today. So your email inbox, it can wait. The garage or the home project, whatever you have set up, it can wait. We don't have to take steps towards that lifelong goal today if we're not feeling it. So there's nothing really required of us. I often think about the Eastern Tibetan monks who sit in silence and they do nothing that anybody in the West would ever call productive, yet they're completely at peace. So what's different at 50 for me personally is I'm not on autopilot anymore. I don't have time passing me by and don't realize it. There's something very powerful knowing your time is finite, and then being able to pick things and go after them hard just because you chose to. And usually the reasons why we go after things now are far different than they were 20 years ago. And that's actually very liberating and freeing. So the cool thing is the next day after you go after something, you can choose to do absolutely nothing and have no guilt. You know exactly what you're doing. So you're you're kind of trading in some of the sand in the hourglass simply to rest and recoup, right? It's one of the reasons and one of the ways that we actually keep our sanity is by doing that. So for me, I can sit down on a Saturday and I can watch a two-hour movie that has no redeeming value to it whatsoever, right? And I'm trading two hours of productivity to be completely mindless and checkout. And I'm aware I'm doing it and I don't feel guilty about it. But I didn't used to be able to do that. I'd half be watching the movie and I'd half be thinking about everything I should be doing instead. So I really didn't get to enjoy the movie and I didn't get any work done. So what did I do? I spent two hours feeling guilty. And to me, that's kind of the worst trade that there is because you're never present in anything that you're doing. So the epiphany for me was that I can be fully present whether I'm chasing a lifelong dream or if I'm taking a nap in the middle of the week. So here's what I try to do now. Before I start something, I ask myself one question. And the question's simple Am I choosing this? If the answer is yes, I enjoy it all the way with no exceptions. So sometimes it's the most productive thing I'll do all week. And sometimes it's the total opposite, where it's not productive in the least. And if I ask that question and the answer is no, I see if I can opt out of it. Sometimes you can't. You know, sometimes you're supporting your spouse. There's something that's important to them. Sometimes you have an event that you simply have to be at. In those cases, I make the best of it. But I've found that if I show up willingly, it far outweighs showing up resentful every time. So that's probably the main thing that I've changed is I say no a lot more often than I used to. If it's not something I want to do and I don't have to do it, I don't. And that used to feel selfish, but now it just feels and sounds cliche, but it feels like I'm protecting the sand. You know, the sand's gonna fall either way, no matter what I do. I just prefer to decide, you know, what it actually falls on. So my ask is if you're 50 and older, I'd love to hear in the comments which one of those you feel is more accurate. Do you feel urgency because time is running out? Or do you feel like there's no hurry because there is an endless amount of time? Maybe it can be both. But with that said, it's made a big difference in the way that I live my life. And I hope you found value. And thanks for being here.