I don’t have time for that!
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When was the last time you heard yourself, or someone else, say "I don't have time for that!" in response to a request for some kind of commitment?
Recently I sat with an extraordinary young woman. She's ambitious, warm, the kind of person who lights up a room, and I learned that she hasn't slept properly in about a decade. This past year she's mostly been getting her eight hours, and she still feels exhausted to the bone. She falls asleep in the middle of tasks. She fights to stay energized.
And here's the detail that stayed with me: as far back as she can remember, high school, college, and every year since, she has never once woken up without an alarm. By her own admission, she hits snooze five to ten times before she rises. The doctors have ruled out apnea and every other pathology.
From the outside, you'd never guess any of it. She holds down a high-powered job, climbs actual mountains, and gives generously to everyone around her.
Working with as many young adults as I do, and having lived my own version of that depletion in my youth, I made a suggestion. Take two weeks off. Let your body use its own wisdom to reset the circadian rhythm that lost its way a decade ago.
Her response, you already know it.
"I don't have time for that."
I've heard that sentence more often than I wish I had. And I've come to believe it's almost never true.
Here's how I know. God forbid a health crisis arrives, a diagnosis, an accident, a loved one in trouble. Or a partner sits us down and says something has to change. In those moments, we find the time instantly. We rearrange the whole calendar overnight. The time was there all along. We were simply spending it on other things, because those other things had our permission and this one did not.
So when we say "I don't have time," we are almost never talking about time. We're talking about permission. And underneath the permission is a quieter, harder thing: a private ranking of what deserves our time and what doesn't.
Look at what makes the cut. A work deadline. A sick child. A crisis. Anything that feels non-negotiable, urgent, handed to us from the outside.
Now look at what doesn't. Rest. Movement. Solitude. A morning practice. An unhurried hour with someone who needs our full attention. The things we love purely for the joy they bring. We call the first list responsibilities and the second list indulgences, and we quietly decide the indulgences can wait.
But notice what's actually on that second list. These aren't luxuries. This is the whole substance of a life well lived. And when we say we don't have time for any of it, what we are really saying, whether we hear it or not, is that we're not worth it.
I want to be gentle here, because this isn't a character flaw, and it isn't simple, even though the naming of it is. Almost every accomplished person I know carries some version of this. The reflex to earn our place by pouring out, and the guilt that rises the moment we try to pour in. It is one of the most human patterns there is. But naming it plainly matters, because you cannot change a thing you keep calling a scheduling problem.
Let me tell you about someone who changed it.
A CEO came to me wanting to become a more effective leader. I looked at his calendar and saw the problem right away: back-to-back meetings, no gaps, no air. No room to think, to reflect, to generate a single new idea. I told him one of my favorite lines, "space is where miracles happen," and said he needed to build some open space into his days.
He laughed at me. He had no time for that.
I told him that if he wanted to stop being a manager of tasks and become a leader of people, that empty space wasn't optional. It was the whole job. It didn't come naturally to him. At first the white blocks on his calendar frightened him, and I think they made him question whether hiring me had been a mistake. Empty time felt like failure.
But he stayed with it. And slowly those blocks became the most valuable hours of his week. He used them to think, to generate, to actually connect with his people instead of just processing them. He became the visionary he'd wanted to be. Not by adding more, but by protecting the space he'd sworn he couldn't spare.
The time was always there. What he'd been missing wasn't hours. It was the belief that he was allowed to use them on himself.
Which brings me back to the young woman who won't sleep. I understand her "I don't have time" better than she might think, because it isn't really about the two weeks. It's about what the two weeks would mean. That she matters enough to stop for. That her own body is worth listening to. That she is allowed to receive care, and not only give it.
So if you've said "I don't have time for that" about the very things that would restore you, I won't argue with you. I'll only ask you one question.
Why not you?
If something in you is craving a little more clarity—about where your life is working and where it's quietly asking for attention—I'd love for you to take the Life Audit.
It's free, it takes about ten minutes, and people are often surprised by what they discover.
Once you complete the audit, I'll share with you three handpicked reads from my journal (or you can listen to their audio versions)—chosen specifically for the area that needs your attention the most at this time.
