“WHY Don’t I Have the Time?”
“That, detective, is the right question.”(1)
Charu and I had a “provide alternatives” rule with our boys. When we were picking which activity we were going to do or which restaurant we were going to go eat at, anyone could throw an idea out, but you could not simply respond, “No.” Instead you had to respond with another suggestion, “Instead of Subway, how about Taco Time?” This rule keeps the conversation going, which generates more ideas for consideration. The generalization of this rule would be: favor conversation expanders over conversation enders.
When someone is asked to do something, a very relatable and understandable response would be, “I don’t have the time.” But that’s not much of a conversation expander. It fails to give important information to the requester, and were the requester to probe any further, it would most likely come across as pushy.
The conversation expands when you ask yourself, “Why don’t I have the time?” Here are seven alternatives, from easiest to most challenging
Suspension: “I will get to that in <ETA>.” - You’re telling the person that you are temporarily booked out, but you can schedule this for the given date. If that date works, then you’re all set.
Delegation: “You should ask <person>.” You’re telling the person that you’ve delegated this problem space to another person or team. Now they can forward their ask on to that owner.
Negotiation: “I can help with <part of ask>.” - This is a “meet me half way” response. You’re telling the person you can help with part of their need, but then they’ll either have to take on the rest themselves or find another owner for that part.
Prioritization: “I’m not prioritizing that.” - You’re telling the person where it ranks in your relative prioritization. This will get you into the discussion of importance, and perhaps uncover other motivations or benefits that move this ask up your priority list.
Optimization: “Let me figure out how to fit this in.” - You’re telling the person that you’re the right owner for this, but need to do some tuning to figure out how to work this into your sustainable rhythm.
Confession (Short-Term): “I’m behind on what I’m supposed to be doing, so I can’t even entertain an additional ask.” - You’re making it clear that you’re currently underwater, and focused right now on finding stability. This opens the door to a deeper conversation with the asker.
Confession (Long-Term): “I don’t think I have time. But, in all honesty, it’s not something that I know. Time is elusive to me.”
Or “I don’t regulate my time and therefore I don’t know what amount of time I would have.” - This is a conversation ender because most people wouldn’t know what to do with this response. But it’s captured here for completeness, and as the setup for the deeper dive below on confessions.
The first three of these are pretty straightforward in terms of the follow-up conversations they generate. Now I want to expand on the last four.
Prioritization
The prioritization response will spark the most elaborate and enlightening discussions. It is very common for two people to be operating on different relative prioritizations. The discussion that follows the “I’m not prioritizing that” statement is two people trying to understand each other’s priorities and, where possible, align. Teams have a collection of priorities that come from several sources (e.g. project planning, repo roadmaps, and team missions). And individuals have their own priorities that come from their career goals, personal agenda, and their team commitments.
With all of these inputs, it’s not surprising that the individualized priority ranking differs between people. Conversations on priority are some of the best at learning about different ways to rank importance and the benefit of being clear with yourself on the priority order you’re assigning to things.2
Optimization
The optimization response will initiate an internal dialogue. That dialogue can include reevaluating the first four alternative phrases. “Do I have an opening in my rhythm in the future where this work could be done?” “Do I need to delegate this work, or delegate some other work to take this on instead?” “Can I potentially own part of the solution?” “Should I revisit my priorities?”
After those alternatives have been explored, then it’s time to get creative, in the literal sense. You need to create the space. It’s not about taking time. It’s about making time. How can you tune your rhythm to allow for more space. Where and how can you up your efficiency? As Lord Chesterfield advised, “Take care of the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves.” There is always room for more tuning.
We’re all busy. We all have finite hours in our day. So we need to collectively be intentional and economical with our time. For most people I’ve worked with facing optimization challenges, optimizing their Triage Shield3 has given the biggest payoff.
Confession
Let me clear, I don’t expect that alternatives #6 and #7 are likely to be ones that you would ever verbalize. #6 maybe, but #7 would be highly unlikely. But if you internally think about either of these responses when the request is made, it’s worth a little more self-exploration. And if you haven’t thought of these responses, having them here as options is a way of checking your own self-awareness4. We’ve got really good defense mechanisms that can keep such thoughts out of our consciousness. Invite them in. Spark the internal dialogue.
“I’m behind on what I’m supposed to be doing, so I can’t even entertain an additional ask.”
This communicates stress to the requester. They realize that you are understandably in more of a survival mode given the feeling of being buried by your work. At the very least, they will back off of this ask. But, more importantly, this response creates an opening for them to extend help for some of your behind work. Requestor: “Oh, I didn’t realize that. Well, given how important this ask is for me, is there something in your current workload that I could take off your plate to free you up for this?”
Actually admitting that you’re behind can feel embarrassing to you. If it does, most likely that’s because you think you’re the only one who’s behind, or has ever been behind. Trust me, we’ve all been there. Professional work is all about individuals and teams pushing the envelope. Overstacking the work is a natural side effect of high ambition.
Rather than seeing your admission as a moment of shame, think of it as an invitation for empathy.
“I don’t think I have time. But, in all honesty, it’s not something that I know. Time is elusive to me.”
This is a much stronger confession, making it far less likely that you would ever actually say this out loud to someone else. It’s value is more as a potential statement to try out with yourself to see how it fits.
This is the last option on the list for a reason. This is the “none of the above” trailing option. If you’ve made it through responses #1 - #6 and still haven’t found a fit, then this response may be your reality. It may take a bit to be convinced, so try this out. Keep a tally over a month or so of how many times you’ve gone through this “alternatives” exercise, and what your response has been. Is there a trend a landing on this #7 “none of the above” response? Face that fact, and then take action.
If your time isn’t managed, then start with these two questions: (1) Do you believe your time is manageable? (2) Do you think time management will help you? You have to first believe it’s possible, and that it will be beneficial. If you answered “No” to either question, then you can stop here. The only path out of a defeated mindset is through belief that it’s in your power to change the situation for the better.
Try this out. Open excel and create a new spreadsheet List out all of your responsibilities big and small. Then next to each responsibility, write the number of hours you’d like to devote to that commitment each week. Don’t forget to create a sum cell at the bottom to make sure that everything is fitting in your target number of work hours. If you prefer, you can do all of this as percentages of the week’s time, and then build a formula to compute the hours for each item that the percentage translates to.
Share the resulting breakdown with your manager or mentor. Do they see any items to add or remove, or have any suggestions about the distribution? Once you’ve reached agreement, you’re ready to print this out and put it on your desk to make sure it gets the attention it needs from you as you work to adhere to it.
Then try my exercises in Timebox Everything5 and Finite Time6.
Michael Altshuler said it perfectly: “The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.” You are in the driver’s seat.7
Footnotes
That, detective, is the right question - I, Robot
The “In order to say ‘yes to this, what must you say ‘no’ to?” section of Fear of Overcommitment and the “Top-Down Meets Bottom-Up” section of Manage Project Tasks Responsibly