You Don’t Have a Time Problem

Let me challenge something you’ve probably said recently.
“I don’t have time.”
I’ve said it too. And for a long time, I believed it. I thought the gap between where I was and where I wanted to be was hours. If I could just find more hours, I could get there.
I was wrong. And once I saw the truth clearly, I couldn’t unsee it.
“I don’t have time” almost never means what it sounds like. What it almost always means is: I haven’t decided this is important enough.
Time doesn’t get managed. Decisions do.
Every high-performing person I’ve observed closely has essentially the same number of hours as everyone else. What they have that most people don’t is radical clarity about what those hours are for — and equal clarity about what they’re not for. They’re not more disciplined in the conventional sense. They’ve just made decisions that most people haven’t made yet.
When you say “I don’t have time to exercise,” what you mean is: I’ve decided other things come first. When you say “I don’t have time to build that skill,” what you mean is: I haven’t yet committed to it being a priority. When you say “I don’t have time to work on the business,” what you mean is: I’m still spending my hours on things I haven’t had the hard conversation about stopping.
None of that is a time problem. It’s a decision problem.
Here’s something I’d ask you to do this week. List three things you keep saying you don’t have time for. Now ask honestly — not defensively, but honestly — what decision would eliminate the friction between you and those things? What would you have to stop? What would you have to say no to?
The hours are probably already there. They’re just waiting for a decision to free them.
Until Next Time. Stay Certain.