When you ask someone how they’re doing — and they actually take a second to reply with more than the perfunctory, “well” or “fine” — two responses are all too common: “I’m so busy” and “I just don’t have enough time.”

The latter is usually followed up by a quick mention of the thing they’d like to be doing, or what they feel they should be doing, but never get around to accomplishing. Jack Groppel, Ph.D. and cofounder of the Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute, told Shape that many people use comments like these to “mentally dismiss troubling truths” about themselves, essentially acknowledging the shortcoming without ever doing anything about it.

Groppel has a simple trick to determine what’s really holding you back, or, as the magazine calls them, the “hidden barriers to success”: Write out why you’re struggling to tackle a specific goal, then rewrite it, starting by using the phrase, “The truth is….” For example, if your goal is to cook three healthy meals a week, you might write: “The truth is, I hate grocery shopping, so I put it off until that night, and by then it’s too late to cook anything, so I just get takeout.” It’s not so much that you don’t have time; in this case, it’s that you’re avoiding the nuisance, and it’s getting in the way of your success. In that case, maybe using a grocery delivery service, like Instacart, or scheduling shopping trips on Saturday mornings (when the grocery store is less crowded and you still have the whole weekend ahead of you to enjoy), would help you get back on track.

It may not work for everyone, but if you find yourself caught in a “not enough time” cycle, it may be worth a shot.

 

This post is part of Life Between Weekends’ Tuesday Takeaway series. Every Tuesday, we’ll share the most compelling insight we’ve gleaned from a book, movie, tour, documentary or article to inspire you during the workday. 

Photo: Ken Lawrence/Unsplash