If I Only Had More Time
“If I only had more time” or “one day” are phrases that we have all uttered. They are usually said in response to something we say we would like to do, but never seem to fit into our busy schedules. Things like working out, perfecting a second language, calling an old friend from high school, or finally writing that book keep getting overridden by more pressing needs.
Scenarios like this come up all the time in coaching and it has caused me to think about what causes humans to put things off indefinitely, even when we say it is important.
Time
It is tempting to make time “the bad guy.” It is true that sleeping, feeding and caring for ourselves, taking care of our homes, our kids, and going to work take a tremendous amount of time. But almost everyone acknowledges that it doesn’t take all our time. So how much time is left over?
Every year the Bureau of Labor Statistics runs a study on how Americans over the age of 15 spend their time. It turns out that 95% of Americans spend somewhere between 5 - 6 hours of leisure a day. About three hours of this time is spent watching TV, the rest includes activities like playing video games, socializing, surfing the internet, and hobbies.
Looked at objectively, Americans have a pretty high standard of living with 20% of our time being highly discretionary.
Procrastination
Okay, so time isn’t the only culprit getting in our way. We need to turn our attention to understanding why humans have a tendency to procrastinate. There is something you say you would like to or should do, but somehow Candy Crush is more pressing right now. We have all experienced this, and probably don’t understand why.
It turns out that procrastination is a natural brain response to stress. Stress can be caused by anything that is new or challenges you in some way. When our bodies register stress, even if the cause is something that is actually good for us, our brains are wired for stress avoidance. Fuchsia Sirois, a UK psychologist who studies procrastination, explains it this way, “We say at the core, procrastination is about mood regulation. So a task may elicit feelings of incompetence, insecurity, fear of failure, or anxiety. You put that task aside and you’ve just regulated your mood. Now you feel better. It’s like, ah, great. I don’t have to think about it anymore.”
So procrastination is a self-protective mechanism that you have learned over time makes you temporarily feel better. You’re basically exchanging the opportunity to feel a little better now (playing Candy Crush) for feeling slightly worse later (I never learned to speak Spanish).
Habits
So the real culprit isn’t time, it’s our brains. You may be thinking, good luck with changing hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. Fear not, there is a way to hack your brain.
When you understand what tends to cause procrastination, you put yourself in a position of being able to consciously decide that there is another response you can choose. Once you recognize that procrastination is a habit you have formed to make yourself feel better, you can choose to displace it with a new habit. With enough repetition, eventually your brain will begin to recognize the new behavior as “normal.”
We all know how hard it is to change. One of the best books I’ve come across on how to create new habits is Atomic Habits, by James Clear.
Priorities
Maybe you’ve sincerely tried changing your habits in a certain area and it just isn’t sticking. This may be where you really need to invest in some self-reflection. When you are not clear on what matters most to you, you are much more likely to get distracted by other things. Let’s face it, the world is filled with endless possibilities. Sure, it would be awesome to learn to sing like Billie Eilish or play the violin like Yo-Yo Ma. But you have to stop and ask yourself “is that just something you admire or is it REALLY important to you?” Once you’re clear on WHY you want to do something, it will be much easier to put in the effort to change your habits.
It is natural to want to put the time we have to its best use. Time is a precious, limited, commodity. The final reflection here is that it is important to remember that using time wisely doesn’t mean being 100% productive, 100% of the time. Down time is still essential for our well-being and creativity. When productivity is the only variable we are solving for, inspiration will rarely find its way into the equation.
Liz Dadanian