I’m sure you have heard many variations of time management lie in your lifetime.

Things like ‘I have time to do everything’ and the classic one, ‘This will take a minute’.

Out of many lies we’ve been telling ourselves, this one takes the biggest cake when it comes to the time management lie we always tell ourselves.

And that is drumroll please, ‘Being busy equals being productive’.

Okay, let’s unpack these lies one by one.

To be honest, I don’t see anything wrong with telling yourself that you have the time to do everything.

With the right planning, you can manage to tick every single thing on your to-do list. But it certainly won’t take you a minute to do those things, though.

If anything, I will say that those two things we tell ourselves are indeed a complete lie.

Think these are the only lies we tell ourselves?

Well, guess what? We do have another contender.

And that is the ‘I don’t have time to [insert whatever activity you want to do]’ excuse.

Don’t worry if that’s what you’ve been saying to yourself and everyone all this time.

Even I’m also guilty of telling the same lie to myself and everyone else.

What is wrong with saying this time management lie to ourselves?

Yes, some of us are indeed a busy bee. And we mean it when we say we’re busy and have no time to fool around.

We even say it to other people to stop them from adding more piles to our plates.

It’s a good excuse to use too when you want to buzz these people off from telling you to do the things you don’t want to do, which I always do all the time.

And I have no qualms about using it again if I have to.

But the problem with telling ourselves this lie is that it also prevents us from doing the things that we want or are important to us.

Sounds familiar?

Perhaps you keep telling yourself that you don’t have the time to exercise despite knowing how important it is for your health and well-being.

Or perhaps you keep telling yourself that you don’t have the time to pursue your hobbies because you have an ongoing project that will take a long time to complete.

See where I’m going with this?

While it may be a perfect excuse to buzz people off from adding more things to your plate, it can also work as a double-edged sword.

The same excuse that you’ve been telling yourself and others can also prevent you from doing things that matter to you the most.

What causes us to utter the same lie over and over again?

Believe it or not, what causes us to utter the same lie over and over again is a lot simpler than we thought.

It’s easy to condition ourselves that we have no time for anything and everything when we don’t have a clear idea of all the things we need to do daily, weekly, and monthly.

That seems preposterous, of course, since you have a set of schedules that tell you the specific things you need to do each day.

But I bet you keep all those daily, weekly, and monthly tasks in your head, right?

It’s wonderful that you rely on your intuitive nature and habits to execute those tasks without fail.

But it can still be hard to see all those tasks if you leave them in your head no matter how you do those tasks like clockwork.

So, how can you see all those tasks to get a rough idea of how busy you are?

Well, you need to write them down, of course.

The power of written words

If you’re into journaling, then I’m sure you already know how powerful it is when you dump everything you have in your head on paper.

Not only that you feel good after the session. But you also gain clarity since you get to see everything in a visual format.

It’s easier to keep track of everything you do and have yet to do too now that you get to see them lying bare to you on paper.

So, what’s the connection between the ‘I don’t have time’ excuses with dumping your thoughts on paper, you ask?

It’s easier to plan your week when you can see everything on paper.

Write down all the tasks you have to do in one week.

List everything down from the daily tasks you need to do in your business to mundane stuff such as taking out the trash.

And don’t forget to write the things you want to do that week as well.

When you do this exercise, not only that it gives you a snapshot of all the things you have to do during that week.

But it can also give you the possibility to sneak in the activities that matter to you.

This is what I do in my bullet journal where I have a weekly log to list everything I need to do weekly. You can read about it right here to learn more about it.

I no longer say this thing to myself anymore

To be honest, I’ve never imagined that listing everything I need to do on that week can be such a game-changer.

Not only that I get to do all the things that I need to do on that week. But I get to do the things that I didn’t have the time to do before too.

Yes, scheduling your day based on the tasks you want to do that week may seem rigid to most of us.

But I’m fine with it if it helps me to become more productive with my time every single day.

Having a weekly log somehow gives me the satisfaction feeling of how much I accomplish every single day.

I find it to be more rewarding too every time I see the wins that I have every week as opposed to seeing my daily and monthly wins.

Does it mean I should get rid of the daily and monthly log from my bullet journal?

Not at all, they’re still essential in organizing my life.

But if there’s one thing I have to credit for my productivity, I will say it’s adding the weekly log to my bullet journal.

It’s thanks to the weekly log that I no longer say to myself that I don’t have the time to do things that matter to me the most.

Don’t stretch yourself way too thin

Yes, this exercise is helpful to banish the ‘I don’t have time’ excuse once and for all if you do it diligently.

But it’s still important to exercise caution not to put way too many things in your weekly log unless you’re sure that those tasks won’t take you that long to complete.

For one, you end up going back to square one.

And you also end up adding ‘I have the time to do everything’ lie into the list.

Like I said before, you do have the time to do everything when you have the right planning in place.

But it won’t help you at all if you have a hundred tasks to complete. And you want to get them done by the end of the week.

If there’s another definition of insanity, you can add this one to the list as well.