I was speaking with someone recently who told me “You find time to do what is important to you” and it struck me. It speaks to all facets of life from family to business to hobbies. The list is specific to you. This statement should cause self-reflection for you. It does for me.
When someone I know tells me they “don’t have time” to do certain personal or business tasks, what they’re really saying is that those tasks aren’t priorities. It’s a hard truth I’ve learned through practicing law and life in general. A related truth is that we all have exactly the same twenty-four hours each day, and we allocate them according to what truly matters to us. I see this play out constantly.
If you “somehow” find time to attend every one of your daughter’s soccer games, you aren’t just lucky with your schedule. Instead, you’ve made a deliberate choice about what deserves your attention. This thread follows through on all decisions you make about your time in your professional and personal life.
This principle also cuts both ways in the business world. I’ve seen founders who claim they can’t find time for proper legal documentation but spend hours tweaking their logo. This makes a statement about priorities, not time constraints (and maybe about whether the new business has sufficient capital). I’ve watched companies implode because founders didn’t “have time” to create clear partnership agreements, only to later spend years and fortunes in litigation that could have been avoided with a few hours of preventative work. When you point this out to people, they often get defensive, but the mathematics of time allocation doesn’t lie. The universal truth is that we invest our limited hours in what we truly value.
All of us confront this reality repeatedly. I have had friends and colleagues who couldn’t find time for regular exercise until a doctor delivered some concerning news about their health. Suddenly, they “found” time to work out a few days a week. The time hadn’t magically appeared them on their calendar. They simply reprioritized. Maybe they shifted client calls, delegated certain tasks, or sacrificed some evenings. The time was always there. What changed was their recognition of what deserved their time, of what was important to them, and what they valued.
The most effective business leaders I represent understand this principle intuitively. They don’t try to “find time” for important tasks. They start by blocking time for what matters most and allow everything else to fill in around those priorities. One person I deal with maintains what he refers to as “sacred weekly blocks” for strategic thinking, team development, and family time. When urgent matters arise, he doesn’t sacrifice these priorities. Instead, he makes hard decisions about what lower-priority items can be delayed, delegated, or eliminated. He told me it was difficult to do this at first, but before long these blocks of time became non-negotiables that ride his calendar weekly.
So, the next time you catch yourself saying you “don’t have time” for something, whether it’s reviewing that contract, developing your team, or having dinner with your family, try replacing that phrase with the more honest “it’s not a priority for me right now.” This slight change in language will force you to reckon with your true values. If you’re uncomfortable with how that sentence sounds, that discomfort is valuable information. I challenge you to realign how you spend your hours with what you claim matters most to you. After all, your calendar doesn’t lie. It reveals what you truly value, regardless of what you say.
