Time Scarcity, There's Never Enough

In my therapy office I hear from professionals, parents, spouses, athletes and most everyone that there isn't enough time. The intense feeling of "lack of" is literally driving up anxiety and stress. There is an ever present feeling of being overwhelmed, never completing your to do list, people are waiting on you or you go to bed feeling defeated. Often the outlook about time is that "I am not enough, I should be able to get it all done," when in fact a new way of thinking about it is, "I know there are 24 hours in the day so how do I want to use them." I want to encourage you to shift your mindset from scarcity to agency. The truth is every minute of the day you are making a choice about how to spend your time, even if you believe that you don't have control over it.

Step One: Reclaim Your Time

You actually do have a say in how you spend your time—even when your day includes obligations you didn’t choose. Attending a meeting you’d rather skip, answering an urgent email, caring for a sick child, or handling the unexpected doesn’t mean your time isn’t yours. Yet many people move through these moments feeling strained and compressed, telling themselves a familiar story: My time is not my own. I’m out of control. Too many people want too much from me. That belief, more than the demands themselves, is often what creates the deepest stress.

Reclaiming your time begins with a mindset shift. Instead of I have no choice, try: I have 16 waking hours today—how do I want to use them? Even when certain tasks are non-negotiable, you still get to decide how you prioritize, pace, and respond. This includes acknowledging that you can have boundaries and that you do not have to give every minute away. You can also be honest and compassionate with yourself about what won’t get done, choosing what truly matters rather than blaming time itself.

It can be surprisingly grounding to look closely at where your time actually goes. Are you overworked? Spending long hours in traffic? Scrolling longer than you intend? Or intentionally choosing to care for yourself by going to the gym or resting? Each of these reflects a choice. How does it feel to approach your day with the perspective: I am deciding how to spend my time because I have agency? That awareness alone can begin to loosen the grip of overwhelm and return a sense of steadiness to your day.

Step Two: Make Choices for Yourself

This is the moment where you shift from feeling put upon by the world to actively choosing what matters to you. Making choices for yourself means deciding what you will prioritize, while accepting that other things—by necessity—will receive less time and attention. Take a deep breath here, because this is often where the inner critic and cynic show up: Are you sure this is the right choice? You should feel guilty for not spending the afternoon with your kids? Your partner will be upset if you cancel again. Work will suffer if this isn’t finished tonight. These voices thrive on the belief that you are letting someone down no matter what you choose.

Pause. The sooner you accept what you are prioritizing and why, the sooner your stress begins to ease. Stress often comes not from the choice itself, but from resisting the reality that a choice must be made at all. When you own your decisions—rather than experiencing them as demands imposed on you—you move out of resentment and into agency.

This step often requires making genuinely hard choices and learning to tolerate the discomfort that comes with them:

• Work or family time

• Date night or late-night emails

• Gym or laptop

• Family dinner or takeout at the office

• Therapy or one more hour of work

• Weekend brunch with friends or weekend emails

  
  

There is no perfect option—only intentional ones. When you choose for yourself, even when it’s uncomfortable, you reclaim your power and hopefully reduce the feeling that life is simply happening to you.

Step Three: Live With Your Priorities

If you truly want to reclaim your time—and you are making intentional decisions about how to spend it—then the next step is learning to live with those choices. This is where many people get stuck. Even when a choice feels right, it’s often followed by guilt, second-guessing, or fear of judgment. But when you believe how you’re spending your time aligns with what matters to you, the work is to own it and allow yourself to experience the benefit of that choice, rather than carrying it as a burden.

Living with your priorities requires acceptance. That doesn’t mean the choice will always feel easy, but it does mean being willing to explore why you made it. Get curious. Do your choices reflect your values, your limits, and reflect what's going on at this moment? When you can answer yes, you create a steadier internal foundation—one that isn’t constantly swayed by external pressure.

Making a choice always means saying no to something else. Instead of avoiding that reality, you might gently ask yourself:

• Do I agree with this choice, and why?

• Knowing I made this decision, how can I get more comfortable with it?

• What comes up for me when I say no to the other options?

• When—or if—can I return to what I didn’t choose this time?

• If I feel conflicted, how can I communicate thoughtfully with those impacted?

  
  

Discomfort is often part of prioritizing what matters. Others may be disappointed, question your commitment, or feel the impact of not being chosen. Your children may miss you on a work trip. A colleague may be frustrated. Someone may judge your decision without understanding it. While these reactions are real, the first person you must answer to is yourself. Learning to tolerate others’ disappointment or opinions—without taking responsibility for their feelings—can be deeply freeing.

We are all affected by one another’s choices. Practicing respect and understanding for someone else’s decisions, even when they inconvenience us, becomes powerful modeling for how you hope others will respond to yours. When you live in alignment with your priorities and allow them to be enough, time stops feeling like something you’re losing—and becomes something you are consciously living.

Step Four: Don’t Deny the Real Demands on Your Time

This approach isn’t meant to be naïve or dismissive of real life. For many people, the demands on their time genuinely exceed the hours in the day, and carrying that weight can feel exhausting and relentless. Getting it all done is hard. Being honest about that reality—rather than pushing through it or blaming yourself—is an essential part of reclaiming your time. Acknowledging that you may be overbooked, overextended, under-resourced, or spending energy on things that don’t truly matter is not failure; it’s clarity.

As you decide how you want to spend your time, pause and take a clear-eyed look at your actual circumstances. Validate how tight, constrained, or pressured things feel. Meet yourself with compassion instead of criticism. Even small moments of decompression—resting, breathing, moving your body, or simply doing nothing—are not indulgences; they are necessary. Giving until you are depleted and then demanding more from yourself is not sustainable. Pushing yourself to the point of burnout often brings everything to a halt anyway, whether through physical illness, emotional collapse, or sheer exhaustion.

Treat yourself with kindness and respect. You are not a machine, and you are navigating multiple, competing demands every day. You are one person doing what you can with what you have. Allow room for mistakes. Offer yourself forgiveness when things don’t go as planned. When you face the reality of your life with honesty and self-compassion, one truth remains steady: your time does not belong to everyone else. Even within real constraints, you still have choice—and that choice is yours to make.

Step Five: Understanding the Emotional Impact of Scarcity

Scarcity is not just about actually lacking something—it’s a mindset that convinces you there is never enough. When applied to time, scarcity can quietly hijack the brain, narrowing your focus and pushing you toward urgency, rumination, and short-term survival rather than long-term well-being. Over time, this way of relating to time creates hypervigilance and emotional exhaustion, making even neutral moments feel pressured or insufficient.

If you live with a constant sense of time scarcity, it’s worth pausing to notice what thoughts show up for you. Do you replay them on a loop? Do they leave you feeling anxious, inadequate, or defeated? Without awareness and tools, it’s easy to get stuck in this mental cycle—one that reinforces stress rather than resolving it.

A scarcity mindset also tends to shape how you see yourself. When time never feels like enough, it’s common to internalize the belief that you are the problem. Comparisons creep in, self-doubt grows, and confidence erodes. The message becomes: I should be doing more. I should be handling this better. This isn’t a motivation strategy—it’s an emotional drain.

Shifting your relationship with time begins by challenging scarcity and making room for gratitude. This doesn’t mean ignoring reality or pretending demands don’t exist; it means changing how you interpret and relate to the time you do have.

Ways to soften a scarcity mindset around time include:

• Set boundaries with intention. Protect your time and energy by saying no to what doesn’t align with your priorities. Boundaries are not about restriction—they are about respect for what matters most to you.

• Accept that time is finite. Time cannot be stretched or controlled, and everyone works with the same 24 hours. Comparing your life, pace, or priorities to others only deepens scarcity. What you choose matters because it reflects your values, not someone else’s.

• Challenge limiting beliefs. Notice thoughts that equate worth with productivity or availability. Question them. Explore perspectives that honor your values limits, and inherent worth.

• Reframe time as opportunity. Time can work with you rather than against you. Are you disappointed that you “only” have a few hours with your family—or grateful that you have those hours at all? The meaning you assign to time powerfully shapes how it feels to live inside it.

When your time is spent in alignment with your priorities, you are living your values in real time. And if you notice a disconnect—if your days don’t reflect what matters most—that awareness isn’t a failure. It’s an invitation. An opportunity to relate to time differently, move out of scarcity, and experience more gratitude for the life you are actively choosing to live.