Questions & Answers about В этой спешке я никуда не успевал.
What exactly does успевал mean here?
The verb успевать (imperfective) and its perfective pair успеть mean "to have enough time to do something" or "to make it somewhere on time." While English uses phrases like "make it" or "have time," Russian has this dedicated, single verb for the concept. Here, никуда не успевал translates smoothly as "was not making it anywhere on time."
Why is the imperfective verb успевал used here instead of the perfective успел?
The perfective успел would mean a single, completed failure to be on time (e.g., "I didn't make it to the train"). The imperfective успевал ("was not making it") shows that this was an ongoing situation or happened repeatedly—during this whole rush, the speaker was continuously failing to be on time to various places.
Why use никуда (direction) instead of нигде (location)?
The verb успевать implies reaching a destination (making it to somewhere). Because there's an implied movement or direction to get to a place on time, Russian requires the directional никуда (to nowhere) rather than the static location word нигде (at nowhere).
Why are both никуда and не used? Doesn't that make a double negative?