You Wish You Had More Time - You Already Do
By Liz Schehl and David L. Zimmerman, MSc, CPC
Most people, when they say they don't have enough time, mean something more specific than that. They mean they don't have enough time for the things that matter most to them — the workout, writing that book, learning that new tool or technology, signing up for a class, the dinner that gets ordered instead of cooked, the relationships that get scheduled around rather than into. Author and time researcher Laura Vanderkam has spent years documenting this gap, and what she found is both simple and a little startling: those hours actually exist. The disconnect isn't the calendar — it's the story you are telling yourself in the background about what's available and what isn't, and that story shapes how every unscheduled hour gets used before any deliberate choice has a chance to be made. ¹
The math, when you actually run it, confirms this. We all start with 168 hours each week. There are basic commitments to account for — subtract 40 hours for work and 56 for sleep and 72 hours remain. And for those of you already thinking "I work more than 40 hours," fair enough: bump that to 60 hours of work and you're still left with 52. That number, written out, is almost always more than people believe they have. The point isn't the arithmetic. The point is what the arithmetic reveals — that the scarcity most people feel is real, but it isn't about the hours.
Where the Hours Actually Go
The hours don't disappear because commitment fades. They disappear because the conditions for using them were never built into the structure of the day in the first place. By mid-afternoon most professionals aren't choosing their calendar so much as reacting to it, and the things that required intentional design — the workout, the creative block, the meal that was going to be cooked at home — are exactly the things that get displaced when something more reactive fills the space first. And something more reactive always does, because unprotected time doesn't stay unprotected for long. It gets colonized by whatever is loudest, most urgent, or most immediately rewarding to the brain that has been running on stimulation all day and isn't naturally drawn toward the things that would actually restore it.
This is why the time problem and the dopamine problem are the same problem wearing different clothes. If you haven't read the first piece in this series, the short version is this: a brain that has spent the day on notifications, screens, and reactive tasks has recalibrated its baseline in a way that makes the restorative activities feel harder to start than they actually are. The gym feels like more than it is. Sitting down to write or think without immediate feedback feels almost impossible to justify. So, the restorative things keep not happening, and the next week looks a great deal like the last one — not because there wasn't time, but because the available time never got protected before the day had a chance to fill it.
What We Stopped Making Time For
Most people reading this already know what disappeared. It's not a mystery — it's the list they carry around in the back of their mind. These are the things that used to happen and gradually stopped as the calendar and life filled in around them. The point worth noting isn't the list itself but what the loss of those things actually costs, because the neuroscience is more specific on this than most people realize.
The brain requires genuine recovery to function at the level high performers demand of it. And not the passive kind that comes from scrolling through a screen, which keeps the nervous system engaged without actually restoring it, but real disengagement. This “think time” is what has been unintentionally eliminated in the name of productivity, while not realizing that the capacity they're protecting is exactly what they're spending down.[1]
In 2001, neurologist Marcus Raichle made a discovery that changed how neuroscience understood the resting brain.[2] While studying brain imaging data, his team found that certain regions — the medial prefrontal cortex, the posterior cingulate cortex — were more active during rest than during focused task performance, not less. They called this the default mode network. That network does some of the most important work the brain performs: consolidating memory, generating insight, forming the kind of connections that focused task-completion crowds out entirely. In plain terms, the breakthrough idea you’ve been trying to think your way to in a meeting is more likely to arrive on a walk. The clarity that has been elusive all week is more likely to surface in the shower. This is not a coincidence and it is not a mystery — it is the default mode network doing exactly what it is designed to do, in exactly the conditions it requires to do it. And when genuine rest disappears from the schedule, so does the thinking that depends on it.
The Case for Stopping on Purpose
What the brain needs at the point of overwhelm is not more structure layered onto an already overloaded system — it needs a fundamentally different kind of intervention, a deliberate stop, a moment of structured stillness that isn’t about getting more done but about recovering the capacity to think clearly about what actually needs doing. This is the idea behind what we call a SPARK day — not a retreat, not a reorganization, just a committed pause, a piece of paper, a pen, no devices, and enough unstructured time to let the mind do what it cannot do when it is always responding to something.
S — Stop the noise and distractions. Schedule time to stop “doing” and think.
P — Pause and reflect. Reflect on your priorities and where things are rather than moving through them at speed.
A — Assess what’s working and what isn’t. With honesty, and without the defensiveness that busyness tends to mask.
R — Reframe obstacles as opportunities. Identify alterative solutions to the same problem or goal. The path to get there feels less difficult when it is not viewed with negativity or overwhelm.
K — Kindle new ideas, insights, and actions. This is where the creative recovery the brain has been unable to access starts to come back online.
The reason this works connects directly to Raichle’s default mode network research — the insight and connection-making the brain needs most happen not during focused task completion but during rest and open-ended thinking, and you cannot think your way to a different future from inside the same pace that created the current one.
Starting With What You Actually Have
If the 168-hour equation still feels impossible, reduce the frame. Assume you have just 15 free hours in a week and ask yourself honestly how you would spend them. Most people can't answer that quickly — the demands have filled every space before any deliberate choice could be made. But that question matters, because if you don't know what you'd do with 15 free hours, that's worth paying attention to. It tells you more about where your energy is actually going than any time audit or calendar review ever will.
The commitment device applies here too. The hours that get protected in advance are the ones that actually get used — the workout on the calendar the night before happens at a different rate than the one on a mental list of intentions, and the creative block scheduled before the week begins survives at a different rate than the one waiting for a gap that never materializes. Abundance isn't a feeling that arrives on its own. It's a perspective that has to be chosen and then protected.
We Are All In This
The overwhelm described in this piece is not confined to any one role or stage or level of success. It lives in the people who by every external measure are doing extraordinarily well yet who privately feel they are falling short or behind. This stage in your business or career — that period of transition between what was working and what needs to work next — is uncomfortable by design, and the moment of greatest overwhelm is often precisely the moment that most calls for a pause rather than more acceleration.
Not because slowing down solves everything. Because the brain that built this practice is also the brain capable of designing the next version of it — but only when it has the space to actually think. That space doesn't appear on its own. It has to be chosen, protected, and treated like the priority it actually is.
About the Authors
David L. Zimmerman, MSc, CPC, is a co-founder of The Advisor Project and founder of AMAXXA with over 40 years of experience in financial services spanning roles from financial advisor to CEO of major broker-dealer and then head of wealth for a regional bank. Along the way, David was head of advanced financial advisor development for two different Wall Street wirehouses. He is the author of The Juncture Code: A Leader’s Playbook for Navigating Change and Growth.
Liz Schehl is a co-founder of The Advisor Project and founder of ESC Strategy, with more than 20 years of experience in financial services as a former financial advisor and wealth management executive. She has designed and led firm-wide strategic initiatives across training and development, practice management, business optimization, and executive coaching. Liz advises advisors and leadership teams navigating growth, change, and succession, and is the author of The Courage to Be Curious: Transforming Leadership from Within.
[1]Raichle, M.E., et al. (2001). A default mode of brain function. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(2), 676–682. See also: Raichle, M.E. (2015). The brain’s default mode network. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 38, 433–447.
[2]Lembke, A. (2021). Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence. Dutton.
