How do you think about time?

[Remben]

I'm trying to say that if someone is trying to create a side business and the progress is not that fast, it's easy to give up and hide behind "I don't have enough of time, that's why it doesn't work for me", instead of a hard look in a mirror and look at the possible truth that it's not about the time, but about a priority that the side business currently has.

Yes. I think this is true for many things.

Also the social reasons for saying "I don't have time" versus the reasons for saying to yourself "I don't have time" are different. "I don't have time" is a polite way of saying "I'm not interested and I don't want to discuss it further".

I do think it's valuable to be able to break down the "I don't have time" that you say to yourself. In our case, one example is the cleanliness of our house. It's not that we don't have time to clean. It's not because of the kids taking up too much of our time. It was just as bad before we had kids. Basically, we don't care enough about it to spend the time it would take. I am all right with that.

When my 4 year old sees some trinket that she wants but will forget about in 20 minutes if I don't buy it for her, I often use the phrase "That's not what I want to spend my money on", which I think is more accurate than "I don't have the money for that", and helps introduce her to the idea of prioritizing what you want since you can't have it all. The same applies to time. We can find the time to do what is really important to us, but deciding that a certain thing is not a priority to spend our limited time on is okay. But it's important to be honest with ourselves about the fact that we are doing so.

Excellent! This is the difference I was trying to look for and you made it easy for me.

How does your daughter respond to you in that situation?

[Zikoris]

If they don't know me very well, they're usually surprised because it definitely comes across as blunt. I usually also briefly mention WHY I'm not interested, such as "Thanks, but I'm really not interested in going to [alcohol-oriented event] because I don't drink" or "Thanks, but as a vegan I feel kind of uncomfortable going to steakhouses and they very rarely have anything I can eat". It makes it a lot harder for people to be offended or upset if there's a simple, logical reason you're saying no.

Absolutely loving it!

Could you please clarify what blunt means in this context? I'd like to make sure I get it right.

Blunt as in short, direct to the point, and no niceties or pussyfooting to soften the "no". No, this is why, the end. I don't consider it impolite, but it can come across as pretty blunt and direct to people used to the societal norm of being more delicate.

[Kris]

It can be an excuse for not getting off your butt. It can be a self-protective social fiction--"I don't have time to cook" can mean "I hate cooking, but I know cooking is a way to save money that is socially approved of, and I don't want to appear thriftless or lazy because I don't do it." It can also mean "I don't want to do it" (at all, or enough to do the work involved). It can even mean, "I care about this, but I have even higher priorities, so as much as I'd like to do this, I won't right now."

I think that's interesting.  "I don't have time" can be a way of deflecting other people's desires for you... But also, a way of lying to yourself.

For some reason, this reminds me of a line from Phoebe in Friends:  "I'd love to help, but I don't want to."

[AZDude]

My wife uses the "I dont have time" excuse often, but she has been conditioned by my endless rebuttals that at this point in our marriage, if she does say "I dont have time", she will then correct herself by saying "OK, I have time but I chose to do something else first".

[Remben]

Blunt as in short, direct to the point, and no niceties or pussyfooting to soften the "no". No, this is why, the end. I don't consider it impolite, but it can come across as pretty blunt and direct to people used to the societal norm of being more delicate.

Oh my god, pussyfooting made my day :)

I don't consider your behavior impolite as well and believe if people feel offended, then it's their problem and they're the ones who have to deal with it.

Thanks for sharing!

[Remben]

I work six days a week, over 60 hours a week, and I have no servants, so, yeah, I don't have time for a lot of stuff.

That's fine. As long as you have time for stuff that are important to you and/or make sense at this stage of your life.

[Remben]

My wife uses the "I dont have time" excuse often, but she has been conditioned by my endless rebuttals that at this point in our marriage, if she does say "I dont have time", she will then correct herself by saying "OK, I have time but I chose to do something else first".

Nice! Does she see a value in the correct wording? I mean, does she still do it to avoid your correction, or does she do it for herself to make her aware of what's really going on?

[MrsStubble]

I used to use "I don't have the time" as a polite way of saying "nope, not interested and i think you will badger me if to do something i don't want to do if i respond differently."    but now I mostly say "No, thank you."   This works 99% of the time for people and "No" doesn't require an explanation. 

For the other 1% unfortunately, when pushed, they get the response from me i am generally trying to avoid saying like "Because I don't care enough about X to spend my time doing that.  Thanks for forcing the situation."   That typically does not go so well, admittedly, but it does get the point across.   Honestly, in those rare 1% cases, i find that people are so rude these days pushing their own agenda that they don't bother to think that others may not want to participate or may not share the same values/opinions as themselves.  (I'm talking to you nameless person who tried to make me picket the home-made salami shop in town because your vegan.  It's F-ing delicious!)

[Kris]

^^^ Agreed.  For me, training myself not to feel the need to give an excuse to accompany the word "no" has been one of the hardest and most valuable lessons of my life.

[Emilyngh]

I have tons of time.   And while right now is a very slow time for me, very rarely am I so very super busy, and even then, I could usually make time if I valued something.   Since I am fully aware of this, I don't think I often (if ever?) say that I don't have time for something.

However, I am often asked to do lots of things that I just don't value enough to priortize, which I often turn down.   I usually respond with something along the lines of how important X is for Y reasons (assuming I can come up with some that I genuinely believe), but unfortunately I am just not able to commit to it right now.  Sometimes I may mention other things that I'm doing if I believe that I am really already fulfilling my obligations doing related things (so if asked to serve on X committee, I might say that I'm not able to b/c I'm on Y and Z committees).

So, my responses may imply that I don't have time, but I don't often say this directly, b/c frankly, I don't feel honest in doing so.   I try to walk the line between telling the truth but not volunteering info that's not someone else's business.   And if I feel like I'm fulfilling an obligation of my job (eg, already serving on enough committees), then I don't feel obligated to do more just b/c I "have time," and will use what I'm already doing as part of the reason I'm saying "no," although it might imply to others a lack of time.

What I find interesting are all the people I know who have the same job that I do, do a much worse job at it (eg., get way less done in very tangible ways), but are always complaining about how little time they have.   While I think that perhaps sometimes they are trying to nicely blow something often, I really get the impression that they believe it.   And frankly, I can't figure out if they are just super-duper inefficient, delusional, or some combination of both.

[ChrisLansing]

I used to use "I don't have the time" as a polite way of saying "nope, not interested and i think you will badger me if to do something i don't want to do if i respond differently."    but now I mostly say "No, thank you." This works 99% of the time for people and "No" doesn't require an explanation. 

I find if I say "no, thank you" often people will continue to coax me to do/go/see whatever it is.     I've borrowed from the MASH character Charles Emerson Winchester III by saying "Thank you, no."    It's a bit off-putting so you have to be careful of the social relationship/situation.    Ending with no seems to finalize it.   

[Remben]

I used to use "I don't have the time" as a polite way of saying "nope, not interested and i think you will badger me if to do something i don't want to do if i respond differently."    but now I mostly say "No, thank you."   This works 99% of the time for people and "No" doesn't require an explanation. 

For the other 1% unfortunately, when pushed, they get the response from me i am generally trying to avoid saying like "Because I don't care enough about X to spend my time doing that.  Thanks for forcing the situation."   That typically does not go so well, admittedly, but it does get the point across.   Honestly, in those rare 1% cases, i find that people are so rude these days pushing their own agenda that they don't bother to think that others may not want to participate or may not share the same values/opinions as themselves.  (I'm talking to you nameless person who tried to make me picket the home-made salami shop in town because your vegan.  It's F-ing delicious!)

Agreed. Simple "No, thank you" should be enough, respecting your own decision.

And when people force you to say what you're trying to avoid, because you don't want to hurt them, well, then it's their fault and they need to be able to deal with the consequences. I write "need to", but I realize not many people see it that way. Unfortunately :(

Thanks for sharing!

[Remben]

^^^ Agreed.  For me, training myself not to feel the need to give an excuse to accompany the word "no" has been one of the hardest and most valuable lessons of my life.

Don't you feel that if people try to explain themselves too much it looks suspicious? :) As if they're covering something. I have that feeling very often.

[Remben]

I have tons of time.   And while right now is a very slow time for me, very rarely am I so very super busy, and even then, I could usually make time if I valued something.   Since I am fully aware of this, I don't think I often (if ever?) say that I don't have time for something.

However, I am often asked to do lots of things that I just don't value enough to priortize, which I often turn down.   I usually respond with something along the lines of how important X is for Y reasons (assuming I can come up with some that I genuinely believe), but unfortunately I am just not able to commit to it right now.  Sometimes I may mention other things that I'm doing if I believe that I am really already fulfilling my obligations doing related things (so if asked to serve on X committee, I might say that I'm not able to b/c I'm on Y and Z committees).

So, my responses may imply that I don't have time, but I don't often say this directly, b/c frankly, I don't feel honest in doing so.   I try to walk the line between telling the truth but not volunteering info that's not someone else's business.   And if I feel like I'm fulfilling an obligation of my job (eg, already serving on enough committees), then I don't feel obligated to do more just b/c I "have time," and will use what I'm already doing as part of the reason I'm saying "no," although it might imply to others a lack of time.

What I find interesting are all the people I know who have the same job that I do, do a much worse job at it (eg., get way less done in very tangible ways), but are always complaining about how little time they have.   While I think that perhaps sometimes they are trying to nicely blow something often, I really get the impression that they believe it.   And frankly, I can't figure out if they are just super-duper inefficient, delusional, or some combination of both.

Spot on, same here! I see this behavior as a combination of inefficiency/incompetency and laziness. They can't work efficiently and on top of that they soon or later realized that if they seem to be busy, they will need to do less work (while the salary stays the same with more efficient people). Sad :(

[Remben]

I used to use "I don't have the time" as a polite way of saying "nope, not interested and i think you will badger me if to do something i don't want to do if i respond differently."    but now I mostly say "No, thank you." This works 99% of the time for people and "No" doesn't require an explanation. 

I find if I say "no, thank you" often people will continue to coax me to do/go/see whatever it is.     I've borrowed from the MASH character Charles Emerson Winchester III by saying "Thank you, no."    It's a bit off-putting so you have to be careful of the social relationship/situation.    Ending with no seems to finalize it.

What a terrific concept - just to reverse the order :) It definitely feels different, more grounding. I'm looking forward to use this on people that don't listen on "No, thank you".

[Merrie]

I'm trying to say that if someone is trying to create a side business and the progress is not that fast, it's easy to give up and hide behind "I don't have enough of time, that's why it doesn't work for me", instead of a hard look in a mirror and look at the possible truth that it's not about the time, but about a priority that the side business currently has.

Yes. I think this is true for many things.

Also the social reasons for saying "I don't have time" versus the reasons for saying to yourself "I don't have time" are different. "I don't have time" is a polite way of saying "I'm not interested and I don't want to discuss it further".

I do think it's valuable to be able to break down the "I don't have time" that you say to yourself. In our case, one example is the cleanliness of our house. It's not that we don't have time to clean. It's not because of the kids taking up too much of our time. It was just as bad before we had kids. Basically, we don't care enough about it to spend the time it would take. I am all right with that.

When my 4 year old sees some trinket that she wants but will forget about in 20 minutes if I don't buy it for her, I often use the phrase "That's not what I want to spend my money on", which I think is more accurate than "I don't have the money for that", and helps introduce her to the idea of prioritizing what you want since you can't have it all. The same applies to time. We can find the time to do what is really important to us, but deciding that a certain thing is not a priority to spend our limited time on is okay. But it's important to be honest with ourselves about the fact that we are doing so.

Excellent! This is the difference I was trying to look for and you made it easy for me.

How does your daughter respond to you in that situation?

She pretty much continues to whine. But then again, she's 4. I'm thinking that if I consistently tell her this over the years, it'll both cut down on the whining over time (if Mommy never caves, after a while she'll probably ask less) and also feed into the various lessons on money I want to teach her.

[Blany]

What a waste of time this was.

Who cares what you say.  I dont have time. = it's not a priority. = I have other things to do. 

Everyone knows what it means.  Its polite and it's honest. 

When I invite someone to do something and they tell me any of the above related lines I understand that it is not somethign they are interested in and I don't take offence to that.   Likely I wont waste anyones time in the future and not ask them to do that type of activity.  I don't invite certain people camping any more, I don't invite certain people over to brew beer.  Certain people stopped asking me to play hockey because I told them no, I am to busy or dont have enough time, enough times so they stopped asking.

I like that.

[sisca]

At work I tell people I don't have the time a lot. It is just an easy way to get rid of a task/meeting etc. People very often include to many in a lot of jobs, and mostly it is people with less work to do who tries to include everyone in what they are doing.

I have become really strict with how I spend my work hours, as most people spend most of their time on work on stuff that makes no difference to the goal being pursued. I'd rather spend all my time at what really matters.

In my own time I have changed the way I perceive time a lot over the years. I figured out compoundig interest would make me rich a long time ago, but again, it takes time. So increasing savings rate, and really questioning how I spend both my time and my money helped. In general, there are not many things worth the money (or more importantly worth the time it takes to make that money) for me, as the joy of a new product quickly fades, but the hit to your stash is eternal.

We all have a given timeframe to live our life, and every hours spent on something means an hour less on something else. Where do you want to spend your hours is the important question. We all have to make this choice, some people just gives less thought as to how they spend it.