We Always Say “We Don’t Have Time”

RToledoDev
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“I’ll do it later.” “Next sprint.” “When things calm down.”

These are the mantras of modern life—both at work and at home. But postponement isn’t neutral. It’s a silent debt that accrues interest in complexity, frustration, and lost connection.

At Work: The Cost of Technical Debt

It starts innocently.

A small bug ticket gets triaged to “low priority.” A code refactor is postponed “until after the release.” A legacy system runs “just fine” for now.

Weeks turn into months. The original context fades. The developer who knew the workaround moves to another team (or another company).

Suddenly, a 30-minute fix becomes a 3-day investigation. A simple endpoint turns into a tangled web of undocumented side effects. An aging monolithic app—written in a language no new hire has touched since college—powers 80% of your revenue.

New engineers arrive fluent in Rust, React, and serverless. They stare at COBOL scripts like archaeologists deciphering hieroglyphs.

No one budgeted for the migration. No one planned for the knowledge drain. And now? The system is too critical to touch and too broken to ignore.

Postponement doesn’t save time. It borrows it—at compound interest.

In Life: The Erosion of Presence

The same pattern plays out beyond the office.

We say:

“I don’t have time to talk.” “I’ll call you back.” “Let’s catch up soon.”

But do we really lack five minutes to ask, “How are you—really?” Or ten minutes to sit at the table without a screen glowing between us?

I recently read A Experiência da Mesa (The Experience of the Table), and one idea has stayed with me:

A shared meal is communion. It’s not just food—it’s preparation, presence, and storytelling. It’s where we see each other, hear each other, help each other.

Yet today, the table has become a battlefield of distractions.

Instead of eye contact, we scroll through feeds. Instead of a real question, we answer a Slack ping. Instead of a shared laugh, we jot down a grocery list. Instead of a moment of silence, we check email “quickly.”

The one thing we’re supposed to do—connect—gets indefinitely backlogged.

Time Isn’t the Problem. Priorities Are.

We do have time. We spend it—every day—on things we claim matter less.

We refresh X (Twitter) 47 times a day. We binge three episodes “just to unwind.” We say yes to another meeting that could’ve been an email.

But when was the last time you treated a conversation like a production hotfix? Or a family dinner like a non-negotiable deadline?

A Challenge: Reclaim One Moment This Week

Pick one thing you’ve been postponing.

Ship that small refactor before it becomes a monster. Call the friend you keep saying “we should catch up.” Clear the table—no phones, no laptops—just people.