The Fallacy of “I Don’t Have Time”

I hear it all the time. “When things calm down, I’m going to write.” “Once the kids are older.” “Once work stops being insane.” “Once I have a real break.”

And I get it. I do. Life is relentless. There’s always something demanding your attention, always another crisis or obligation or just the exhausting weight of keeping everything together.

But here’s what I’ve learned working with writers: that statement isn’t actually about time. It’s about belief.

When you say “I don’t have time,” what you’re really saying is “I don’t believe my writing is worth the cost.” You’re not telling me about your calendar. You’re telling me about your priorities. And more importantly, you’re telling me what you believe about yourself.

Because let’s be clear; life will never slow down enough. It won’t. Perfect conditions don’t exist. You’re not waiting for time. You’re waiting for permission, and you’re giving that permission to everyone but yourself.

Meanwhile, you’re scrolling. Two, three hours a day, sometimes more. Social media. TikTok. Reels. The endless scroll that doesn’t feed you, doesn’t fulfill you, doesn’t move you toward anything you actually want. You’re there because it’s easy. Because it doesn’t require belief in yourself. Because it doesn’t ask anything of you except your time.

And you have plenty of time for that.

Here’s what a life coach needs to tell you: you’re not telling the truth. Not to me, and not to yourself.

You don’t lack time. You lack conviction. You lack the willingness to say that your story matters more than comfort. More than the scroll. More than the safety of “not yet.”

The writers I work with aren’t special. They don’t have secret time machines or mysteriously calm lives. What they have is a different relationship with the truth. They stopped lying about their priorities. They stopped pretending they’re victims of their own calendars. They looked at their day, really looked at it, and made a choice: my writing is worth this.

​Not someday. Today.

That choice costs something. It costs the mindless scrolling. It costs the Netflix episode. It costs the permission slip you were waiting for, because you’re finally giving it to yourself. It costs the story you tell yourself about why you can’t.

​But here’s what you get in return: you get to stop betraying yourself every single day.

You get to write.

The question isn’t “when will I have time?” The question is “what am I actually willing to believe about myself?” Because once you answer that, really answer it, the time shows up. It always does.

Keep writing, keep finding the time, keep pushing forward, because we only have today. Tomorrow is not certain. Tomorrow is a maybe. Your story deserves to be told today, not in a maybe.