Feeling Too Busy? Try Asking Yourself This Question First

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If you’re like most people, you probably feel too busy. But what if you actually have more time than you think?

Feeling busy isn’t just about the number of tasks we have in our day; it’s also about our perception of time. And while we can’t change the number of hours in a day, our perception of time is malleable.

Part of what makes us feel like we never have time for things is that we’re constantly telling ourselves (and others) that we don’t have time for things. And while it’s sometimes true that we don’t have enough time to do something, we also tend to use being “too busy” as our default excuse for not doing things we don’t want to do. And the more we repeat the problem, the bigger the problem feels.

But what if we could stop magnifying the problem by changing how often we think about it?

Make value-driven rather than time-driven decisions

Here’s a simple reframe to help bring the busyness problem down to size: When deciding whether to do something, instead of starting with the question “Do I have time for this?” start with this question: “Do I want to do this?” Does it fit with my desires, goals, and ambitions? Is it something I enjoy? Is it in sync with who I want to be and how I want to show up for myself and for others?

This simple change in timing gives us two important benefits:

Increase sense of autonomy. By starting with our internal values instead of our external circumstances, we can increase our sense of autonomy by making more intentional decisions. Our desires, goals, and ambitions serve as criteria for decision-making; they give us reasons for doing things (and for not doing things). Time is not a criterion; it’s a constraint. It doesn’t give us a reason to do things; it only gives us a reason not to do them.

Reduce feelings of time poverty. The second benefit of starting with our values rather than with our time constraints is that it can reduce our feelings of time poverty. By filtering our decisions through our desires, goals, and ambitions first, we can reduce how often we need to consider external constraints. If we decide that we don’t have a reason to do something, we don’t need to bother asking whether we have time for it. We’ll spend more time thinking about purpose and less time thinking about time.

Of course, this won’t entirely solve our busyness problem. We’ll still have a lot of things to do and not a lot of time to do them. However, it can at least help us avoid giving busyness more power over our decisions than it deserves. If we use busyness as a scapegoat for too many things, it will feel like a more pervasive and intractable problem than it actually is. When we put time in its proper place and stop using it as our primary constraint, it will stop feeling quite so constraining.

We might not be able to add more hours to our day, but by shifting from time-driven to value-driven decisions, we can at least reduce some of the mental buzz of busyness by not letting it chirp quite so often.

© Jen Zamzow, Ph.D., 2024