Episode #362 – Why You Feel Like You Never Have Enough Time

This is episode 362 of the Brilliant Balance podcast: Why You Feel Like You Never Have Enough Time.

Hello, and welcome to the Brilliant Balance Show. If you are a new listener—and it seems to me that we have some new listeners lately—I’m so glad you’re here. I am genuinely delighted that you have found your way to this show. This is one of my very favorite things that I get to do inside the Brilliant Balance Company.

Sharing the messages that we share in this podcast is just so fun, especially when there are new people to share them with. Since I started by saying this is episode 362, I want to remind you that there are many, many episodes in the archives that you may find valuable. I just want to share a little inside trick if you haven’t discovered this yet. Depending on how you found your way to the show, this may or may not be something that you have stumbled upon.

At the Brilliant Balance website—brilliant-balance.com (you have to put that dash in the middle)—there is a podcast page. You can navigate there right from the top navigation bar. The current episode is always right at the top of the page, which makes it really easy to find. But if you scroll to the bottom of that page, there’s a section called the Podcast Prescription.

We built this little widget so that if you’re struggling with something specific and want to find an episode that covers that topic, you can put in a keyword of your choosing, and we will try to direct you to episodes that are about that particular subject. There are also some starter searches you can use, like common searches that include productivity or health and well-being. These are great places to start. But if you have a specific keyword like, say, perfectionism, you can put that into the search, and you’ll find episodes that cover that topic.

For example, when I dropped the word “perfectionism” into the search, I got episodes like my interview with Catherine Morgan Schaffler, who’s the author of a fantastic book called The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control. There’s also an episode called Everything Looks Messy in the Middle that talks about progress curves, and an interview with Greg McKeown, the author of Essentialism. Additionally, there are episodes on starting an entrepreneurial revolution with Jessica Herron, the founder of Stella and Dot, and several others—all from that one keyword.

So, whether you’re looking for topics like negotiation, perfectionism, time management, or finding your purpose, let your creativity—or really your needs—guide you. Put in a particular word to see if there’s an episode on that topic.

Now, it’s not perfect. For instance, if you type “perfectionist,” an episode with “perfectionism” in the title might not come up. You might have to tweak your search terms a little bit. But this Podcast Prescription tool is pretty clever, and it lives at the bottom of the podcast page on the website. So if you’re not keen on scrolling through the archives and want to get straight to a relevant episode, this could be the way to do it.

Okay, let’s get into today’s subject: Why you might feel like you never have enough time. This is something that’s so prevalent, particularly for women at a stage of life where we’re managing a lot of complexity, with substantial career responsibilities as well as big, robust lives outside of work.

In my case, I have three teenage children and a husband. I have two parents who, blessedly, are still with me and live relatively nearby, so we’re very involved in their lives. I have both of my in-laws still living, plus a sister-in-law, a brother-in-law, and their children, not to mention friends. There’s a level of complexity we’re managing at this stage of life that can make our time feel really stretched. It can feel like there’s a lot to do but not enough of us to go around.

It would be easy to just buy into the current cultural narrative—the accepted story that “it is what it is” and that we’re just going to be super busy. We could just collectively lament this condition. But I actually think there are a few underlying reasons we exacerbate this situation. If we can get clear about what those reasons are, we might be able to find some freedom from this pattern.

So today, I want to unpack four behaviors that you might recognize in yourself. I certainly see myself in each of these when I look back over the last 10 or 20 years of my life. Certain ones tend to rear their heads at different times; I get them under control, and maybe another one surfaces. If you’re experiencing any of these habits, you’re not doing it wrong, and it’s not a tragedy. But there are things you can do to create more time freedom if that’s something you want.

The first pattern that can make you feel like you never have enough time is doing too much. If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, we’ve talked a lot about this tendency to take on too much and have difficulty making choices. When we do too much, we’re telling ourselves that we can’t possibly disappoint someone, or we can’t say no because someone else—or even we ourselves—might suffer.

We get into a loop of saying yes to everything that comes our way. We don’t want to miss an opportunity or disappoint anyone, and before we know it, our calendars are overloaded. We look at our schedules and think, “I don’t even know when I’ll have time to go to the bathroom this week.” Have you ever done that? You look at your week and realize it’s just back-to-back meetings, overlapping evening commitments, and picking up work after hours. It’s just never-ending.

So, when we have these big, full lives, we tend to take on a lot without knowing where to draw the line. This pattern of doing too much means we need to get comfortable—or at least build the skill—of saying no. I’ve done episodes on how to say no gracefully and clearly, without sounding weak or overly apologetic. But if we haven’t learned that skill yet, we can become “yes people.” And if you identify as a people pleaser, which many of the women I coach do, this pattern will likely resonate with you.

The second pattern is doing everything yourself. Now, this might sound similar to the first one, but it’s not. The first pattern is about the quantity of things you’re doing—taking on too many things. The second is about how you handle them. When you’re doing everything yourself, it’s often about a high need for control. I regularly tell the women in the BOLD community that I like control a whole lot. Just ask my husband and children; they’ll tell you it’s true.

However, that desire for control and the safety it creates can drown our schedules. For instance, at home, if you keep doing everything yourself because you don’t think anyone else will do it right, the sheer amount of tasks can become overwhelming. It can also stem from a need not to inconvenience anyone—two sides of the same coin. We might hold onto tasks tightly or avoid delegating because we don’t want to inconvenience or upset someone. Either way, it leads to doing everything ourselves, adding up quickly.

The third pattern is overdoing things, and I’m putting “overdo” in quotes here. This is the perfectionistic tendency to go the extra mile. If you grew up hearing “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right” or “A stitch in time saves nine,” these sayings might have instilled a belief that you have to do everything perfectly. You might have been the kid who needed the A+, the shiny gold star, or who always did the extra credit. Or maybe a parent encouraged you to always do a little bit better.

These patterns can blur the line of what’s good enough, so we keep tweaking, perfecting, and refining until it’s midnight, 2 a.m., or the weekend. This often gets labeled as perfectionism, and rightfully so. Catherine Morgan Schaffler’s concept of adaptive versus maladaptive perfectionism helps us see this. Overdoing things is a form of maladaptive perfectionism—where a skill that was once an asset becomes an impediment.

Your ability to do things well is undoubtedly a strength, but when it crosses the line into overdoing, it starts to eat up your time. This is often rooted in a low tolerance for risk; we’re so worried it won’t be just right that we don’t stop. Practicing simplification and setting artificial time limits, like timeboxing, can help us draw a line and move on, creating space in our lives.

The fourth pattern might feel less obvious. While you’ve probably been told you’re doing too much or not delegating enough, this one is sneakier: not taking time to think. When we don’t pause to assess or reflect, we sustain unhelpful patterns long past their usefulness. We miss out on innovation, creativity, and optimization because we’re too busy just keeping our heads down and grinding away.

For years, I’ve emphasized that when something isn’t working in your life, press pause. Double-click on that area and ask, “What’s going on here? If I pulled this process apart, could I re-engineer it to be more effective or efficient?” You’d be surprised how many things can be simplified when you take the time to consider other ways of doing them. This pause-and-pivot approach, even on a micro level, can help smooth out your daily routine.

When you recognize which of these behaviors are at play—whether you’re doing too much, doing everything yourself, overdoing things, or not taking time to think—you can begin to break those patterns. This can reduce the pressure on your time, freeing up hours for things you love that you’re not currently getting to.

I hope you’ve recognized something in yourself in these patterns and that this helps you find a new way forward. If we can support you, please check out what’s happening inside Brilliant Balance and the BOLD community. We are accepting applications, so if you hear yourself in these topics, let’s have a conversation. You can go to brilliant-balance.com/bold for more information, to apply, or to ask any questions.

Thank you for tuning in today. That’s all I have for you in this episode. Until next time, let’s be brilliant.