Self-Care Is Selfless
You don't have the time — you don't prioritize the time. Audit it and prove it.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 86%
O'Brady calls 'I don't have the time' the most common limiting belief he encounters. His counter is a blunt audit: you've watched 71 hours of Game of Thrones and you're telling me you don't have 12 hours? Your phone tracks your social media use — look at it. The reframe isn't that people are lazy; the busiest objectors are usually saying something with high integrity: my time goes to my family, my kids' soccer games, my job. But there's a catch-22 — you get worn down, you snap at your kid, you show up to the office uncreative. So he rewrites the cultural myth: self-care is not selfish, it's selfless. One day traded for a decade of being more present is a trivially good trade.
Origin
O'Brady kept hearing 'I don't have the time' as the number one objection to the 12-hour walk, and noticed it was the same objection people apply to everything else in their lives. He developed the Game of Thrones counter — 71 hours of television versus 12 hours for yourself — as a fast, disarming way to expose the objection as a prioritization choice rather than a constraint. His publisher hates the grammar of his phrasing: 'You don't have the time. You don't not have the time.'
Core principles
- 01'I don't have the time' is nearly always 'I'm not prioritizing my time.'
- 02Time is finite; we get to choose how to use it.
- 03Self-care is not selfish — it's selfless, because depleted people show up worse for everyone.
- 04One day invested now can pay a decade of being a more present parent or partner.
- 05Screen-time and streaming data expose the lie objectively.
How to run it
- 1
Run the honest time audit
Pull your phone's screen-time report and tally your streaming hours. Look at where the finite resource actually goes rather than where you believe it goes.
Pro tip The data is already collected. You just have to be willing to look at it.
- 2
Apply the Game of Thrones test
Compare the total to the thing you claim you can't afford. Seventy-one hours of television against twelve hours for your own mind settles the question.
Pro tip This isn't an anti-entertainment argument — O'Brady enjoys social media and wastes time too. It's about never using it as an excuse.
- 3
Restate the objection accurately
Replace 'I don't have the time' with 'I'm not prioritizing my time effectively.' The second sentence is actionable; the first is a wall.
Pro tip For parents, acknowledge the integrity in the objection first — their time genuinely goes to others.
- 4
Reframe self-care as selfless
Recognize the catch-22: skipping self-care makes you tired, short-tempered with your kids, and uncreative at work. Taking the day makes you better for everyone you're protecting the time for.
Pro tip Missing one soccer game is a short-run bummer; a decade of being a more present parent is the payoff.
Watch out Framing self-care as an indulgence guarantees it gets cut first, every time.
- 5
Book it and let it ripple
Invest some of the finite time in yourself. The return compounds exponentially across everything else you're trying to do.
In the wild
When someone tells O'Brady they don't have time for a 12-hour walk, he changes the subject and asks whether they've seen Game of Thrones. They light up, gush about it, complain about the last episode. Then he points out they've just watched 71 hours of television.
→ The objection collapses on the spot — it was never about available time, it was about prioritization.
Hala pointed out that everyone has the same 168 hours a week, and that she built a million-dollar business and her podcast specifically by cutting out television for four or five years.
→ The reclaimed hours were the entire unlock — no additional time was ever needed.
Common mistakes
Believing the objection is about time
Nobody who's watched 71 hours of a series lacks 12 hours. The constraint is priority ranking, and until it's named as such it can't be changed.
Treating self-care as selfish
The cultural myth means the busiest, most depleted people — the ones showing up for family and community with high integrity — are exactly the ones who never refill, then snap at their kids and stall at work.
Is it for you?
Best for
Busy parents and professionals whose calendar is genuinely full of admirable obligations to others.
Not ideal for
People in acute crisis or caregiving emergencies where the time constraint is real and non-negotiable.
From the transcript
“You have watched 71 hours of Game of Thrones and you're telling me you don't have the time?”
“It's not that I don't have the time. What it is is I'm not prioritizing my time effectively.”
“We have this myth in our culture that self care is somehow selfish. But I rewrite that in the book and I say, self care…”
From the episode
Colin O'Brady: Conquer Your Mind
Colin O'Brady