The Scarcity Trap: Why Leaders Who "Don't Have Time" Get Worse at Leading

Don't get me wrong.

As a leader, you should be strict about your time.

Ruthless, even.

Your calendar is one of your most strategic assets, and protecting it matters. Boundaries matter. Saying no matters.

And yet.

Some of the worst leadership decisions I see are made by people who are constantly telling people they "don't have time."

Not because they're lazy. Not because they're careless. But because they're operating from a place of deep psychological scarcity.

The Time-Rich, Time-Poor Paradox

The Economist identified something economists call the "yuppie kvetch" — a paradox where high-income individuals, despite having more financial resources to theoretically save time, feel more rushed and overworked than anyone else.

This is time famine.

While wealth increases, time remains finite. So the wealthy cram more activities — more high-value work, more networking, more "productive" leisure — into the same 24 hours everyone else has.

Being busy can make you rich. But being rich makes you feel busier still.

The "Importance" Delusion

One of my business school professors once gave a talk that shifted my entire perspective on "busyness." He challenged a room full of frazzled executives with a simple challenge:

Why are you all so f---ing busy all the time? 

The President has 24 hours. 

The billionaire running a global empire has 24 hours. 

The Nobel laureate, the Olympic athlete, the single parent working two jobs — they all have the exact same 24 hours.

Time is the ultimate equalizer.

So why do we treat "not having time" as a badge of honor?

The professor pointed out that we often use "time-poor" as a synonym for "important." 

We've created a corporate culture where being unavailable is a status symbol.

But in reality, the people who are truly time-rich aren't less busy — they just refuse to let their importance be measured by the chaos of their inbox.

That is why: 

Your team starts to lose trust in you not because you’re demanding, but because you’re unavailable in ways that feel dismissive. 

Your relationships stall because people experience you as rushed, distracted, or perpetually half-present. 

You make others feel like an interruption rather than a priority. 

You turn conversations into transactions because you’re “short on time.”

And over time, people stop bringing you the things that actually matter.

Because you’ve taught them that you don’t have the time.

The "time-poor" person is often just a person who has lost control of their attention.

And when you lose control of your attention, you lose your ability to connect.

Scarcity Shrinks Your Brain

In their work on Scarcity Mindset, Eldar Shafir and Sendhil Mullainathan explain that when we perceive a resource (like time) to be scarce, our brain "tunnels." We focus exclusively on the immediate, urgent fire in front of us, at the expense of everything else.

When we feel chronically short on time, our world gets smaller. Perspective narrows. Noise increases. Judgment gets clouded.

Cognitive Load Theory explains why this is a death sentence for good leadership. Our working memory has limited capacity. When we're overloaded by "back-to-back" culture, our mental bandwidth is consumed by the logistics of survival.

We stop being strategic because our brains literally don't have the RAM to process complex, long-term ideas.

We default to shortcuts. We react instead of responding. We micromanage because we don't have the "time" to empower.

The Time Game (and How Leadership Quietly Erodes)

In my early twenties, when I was a management consultant, I got swept up in the theater of importance.

Sleek, expensive suits. 

Airports every week. 

Late nights that felt heroic. 

Client dinners at Michelin-star restaurants where the wine flowed and the conversations sounded consequential.

I started to believe that this was what significance looked like.

I was making good money for my age and stage. 

I just had no time — or space — to actually enjoy it.

I was addicted to work. 

Addicted to being needed. 

Addicted to the idea that exhaustion meant relevance.

If I’m honest, there was arrogance in it. 

I confused busyness with impact. 

Visibility with value.

And when I look back now, much of it wasn’t even meaningful work. 

It was paper pushing. Deck polishing. Meetings about meetings dressed up as strategy.

Years later, that same pattern showed up again — just with better intentions and higher stakes.

There was a period when I was “winning” at being busy. My calendar was a Tetris masterpiece. 

A high-stakes workshop. A coaching session. A school run. Back to a proposal deadline.

I felt important. I felt in demand.

Until a close collaborator stopped me mid-conversation while we were working on something that required real creative thought.

“Merve,” she said, “you’re not actually here. You’re just waiting for me to finish so you can check this off your list.”

She was right.

I wasn’t curious. I was transactional. I was being efficient at the expense of presence.

And that’s how connection erodes.

Not in a dramatic collapse. But in small, almost invisible moments.

When you’re too time-poor to listen properly. 

Too busy to ask a second question. 

Too important to slow down.

That’s when leadership quietly turns into throughput. 

The Four Freedoms Worth Fighting For

Financial freedom isn't the only kind of freedom.

There's also:

→ Time freedom: control over when, where, and how you work

→ Cognitive freedom: mental space to think, create, and rest

→ Values freedom: doing work that doesn't violate who you are

All of them matter.

But I would argue time freedom is the foundation for the other three.

Without time freedom, you can't protect your cognitive space.

Without cognitive space, you can't make values-aligned decisions.

Without values alignment, financial freedom just becomes golden handcuffs.

Research shows that highly educated, well-paid professionals now work longer hours than their less-educated peers — the opposite of what was true 30 years ago. These workers put in more than 50 hours a week, stay connected to work for 13.5+ hours a day via smartphones, and have less leisure time than they did in 1965.

Meanwhile, measuring poverty solely by income misses the "time poverty" aspect entirely.

Some people may have lower income but are "time-rich." They have autonomy, space, presence.

Others earn seven figures and feel like they're drowning.

Which one sounds like freedom to you?

Time-Rich is a Choice, Not a Luxury

The most effective and 'self-actualized' people I know aren't sitting around with empty calendars.

They are "time-rich" because they treat their attention as a finite, precious resource.

They invest in context: They spend an hour today explaining the "why" so they don't have to spend ten hours next week fixing the "what."

They value reflection: They understand that 30 minutes of "staring at the wall" thinking time is more productive than three hours of reactive emailing.

They practice "The Ted Lasso Way": Recently, I was recommended the show Ted Lasso by a few different people in different contexts and I finally watched a few episodes this last weekend. Ted often spends "inefficient" amounts of time on personal connections and small gestures. On a spreadsheet, it looks like a waste of time. In reality, it builds a foundation of trust that makes the entire team move faster and more autonomously later.

They understand the leisure paradox: Well-educated parents now spend significantly more time on childcare than less-educated parents, even when they work full-time. Because they find parenting more meaningful than most other activities, including paid work. They've made a conscious choice about where their time creates the most value.

Time-rich people make similar choices about their work.

They don't confuse hours logged with impact created.

They don't mistake busyness for importance.

They don't let the "long-hours premium" seduce them into sacrificing presence for performance theater.

They don't dismiss their loved ones because "they need to time-box this"

The Real Questions

So, the next time you find yourself thinking "I don't have time (for this / for you)," here are some questions to ask: 

What am I feeding with my urgency, and what am I starving with my neglect?

Am I being strict with my time, or just cluttered with my attention?

Am I "time-poor" because I'm important, or am I just overloaded because I'm afraid to let go?

Am I trading time for money in a way that makes me wealthier but less free?

As Seneca observed nearly 2,000 years ago in On the Shortness of Life (perhaps the first time-management self-help book): "People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy."

Time on Earth may be uncertain and fleeting, but nearly everyone has enough of it to take some deep breaths, think deep thoughts, and make intentional choices about what (and who) matters.

Being strict with your time is leadership.

Being intentional with your attention is wisdom.

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Hi, I'm Merve. I work with senior leaders, founders, and leadership teams who want clarity, alignment, and momentum — especially in complex, hybrid, or fast-growing environments.

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