“I don’t have time” is the grown-up version of “The dog ate my homework”. It’s a BS excuse. Everyone has the same number of hours in each day. It’s all about priorities. Here’s a little pen and paper exercise for you: go through your day yesterday (for bonus points do this for multiple days) and write down how you spent each half hour. Sleeping, getting ready for work, working, eating, commuting… write each half hour down. Are there blocks where you don’t remember what you did? How much time was spent in front of a screen when you weren’t doing work?
This isn’t about abolishing fun, far from it. But many of us do have the time, we have just chosen to do other things with it. If that was a conscious choice, then there is absolutely nothing wrong with that! But far too often, we turn on our phone to check what the latest notification is, and 15 minutes later we’re still scrolling through a social media feed.
Maybe after doing the exercise above, you can honestly say that you know how you spent every minute of every day and none of it was wasted. Remember that it is a result of the choices you have made. And life is hard, I get that. A choice you may have made years ago might still be causing repercussions now. Choosing to go to college immediately after high school vs. waiting a year and working for a year first will put people in very different financial situations 5 years down the road. But you can’t go back and change the past. You can only make the most of TODAY.
Whether you choose to prioritize time with your family, your financial security, or your health, it is up to you. Just remember that instead of saying “I don’t have time”, what you really should be saying is “that’s not a priority for me right now.”