Help! I don’t have enough time!

I have children aged 2 and 1, hardly any childcare and I’m trying to start a business during nap times and evenings. I’ve never been so short of time.

I bet you know that feeling well?

Last week I reached the point where I was obsessed by not having enough time. The mantra “I don’t have enough time I don’t have enough time I don’t have enough time” went through my mind. I multi-tasked like crazy, often dropping things because I wasn’t paying enough attention to what I was doing.

If only I had more time!

Then it hit me. I’ve never had enough time. When I was at college, there was never enough time to study as much as I felt I should. When I worked full-time the weekends weren’t long enough.

All my life there have been 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, 52 weeks in a year. And it’s never been enough.

So my expectations of what I can do in that time that are my problem. (Although plain old lack of focus has haunted me too.)

We can’t manage time itself, all we can control is how we fill it. All the time management techniques in the world won’t work if we’re trying to cram too much activity into too little time.

Prioritising can be helpful, but it doesn’t buy you more time – it just re-orders what you do within the time you’ve got. And the things that fall off the bottom of your priority list can come back to bite you later on (housework, anyone?).

So will I drop my expectations to fit the time I’ve got instead of the time I should have? Probably not. I’m too impatient and there’s too much exciting stuff out there that I want to try!

Maybe you know that feeling too?

Sorry, got to go now because I’m a bit pushed for time…

Photo credit: unanoslucror

2 Replies to “Help! I don’t have enough time!”

  1. well you know you are not alone, as i was just writing about this very same thing a couple of weeks ago. (i never did find a word for how you feel when you have way too much to do and not enough time to do it and you start to feel a bit panicky!)

    the thing i tell myself every time i start to feel that feeling is: “everything will get done. it always does”. in uni when there was too much studying to do and not enough time… when i was a teacher and there was too much marking to do and not enough time… and now as a little biz builder, too much photo editing, too much marketing work, too many calls to make. it never ends! but, you know, it all eventually gets done.

    nothing else to do but take a deep breath, and get back to work.

  2. Karen, your post is what inspired me to write this one! Thanks for reminding me that it all gets done eventually. And the stuff that drops of the bottom of the to do list often needed to be dropped anyway.

    Sometimes it helps me to remember that I have some choice over how I spend my time. That makes me feel more in control!

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