Time Scarcity vs Time Spaciousness: Why Leaders Need to Look Further Ahead

Sometimes creating space in the present starts with how we think about time.

I struggled as a leader to lift my eyes high enough to think about the future in terms of years.

The obstacles I was trying to overcome were so immediate and urgent that looking farther ahead felt almost impossible. Sales were down this quarter. Staff were feeling overworked right now. Clients were asking for shorter timelines and bigger discounts. And the board wanted to know what my plan was for the upcoming year.

Our organization offered strategic planning services, and I found myself quietly wondering if there was even a point anymore. The world seemed to be changing so quickly that it felt impossible to read enough to keep up, let alone apply anything I learned. The next disruption always felt just around the corner. By the time we implemented one strategy, it seemed like we were already preparing to pivot again.

And that constant pivoting worried me. Too much change can erode staff morale. It can confuse clients. It can even weaken the clarity of a brand.

In those months, it felt hopeless — like the walls were closing in and there were no real solutions.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was experiencing something called time scarcity.

---

When we focus our attention only on days, weeks, or even the next few months, feelings of pressure and overwhelm tend to increase. Our brains narrow their focus and we become intensely concerned with solving the problem directly in front of us.

Part of this comes from our limbic system — the ancient part of our brain responsible for detecting threats and keeping us safe. It is constantly scanning the environment for danger and tends to interpret urgency as something that must be resolved immediately.

When the limbic system activates, our thinking narrows and our timeline compresses. The brain begins sending messages like: “This problem must be solved right now.”

Now add something many of us experience daily: cognitive overload. Hundreds of unread emails, multiple inboxes to monitor, text messages and instant messages pinging throughout the day, and a constant stream of news that we feel obligated to keep up with. Then there are the decisions. Some days it feels like the real job title is Chief Decision Maker.

At the end of a long day, when a child innocently asks, “What’s for dinner?”, you may genuinely feel like you have no decision-making capacity left. Frozen pizza is a perfectly acceptable leadership response. So is Skip the Dishes. And occasionally, “Ask your father.”

When our brains are overloaded and our focus stays fixed on the immediate future, it is no surprise that many of us begin to experience time scarcity — the feeling that there is never enough time to solve everything in front of us. 

What surprised me most was learning that the remedy for time scarcity is not necessarily doing more. Sometimes the solution is simply looking further ahead.

When we extend our time horizon — imagining five, ten, or even twenty years into the future — something interesting happens. Pressure begins to ease. Creativity increases. Possibility reappears. This shift is sometimes described as time spaciousness — the feeling that the future holds room for imagination, change, and new solutions.

Think about something that felt overwhelming in the moment when you were younger. Perhaps your mother once asked, “Do you really think this will matter to you in five years?” At the time, the answer might have been, “Yes! I will absolutely still hate my sister for stealing my watermelon chap stick.” But most things that feel enormous in the moment shrink when viewed from a longer timeline. Distance changes perspective.

When we intentionally look further ahead, our brains begin to operate differently. Our imagination and creativity activate. Our perspective shifts from first-person urgency to something more reflective and strategic. Instead of reacting only to the immediate problem, we begin to see patterns, possibilities, and alternative futures.

This is one reason strategic thinking is so difficult when leaders are operating in constant crisis mode. Strategy requires space, and that space often comes from expanding the timeline.

As leaders, we owe it to ourselves — and to the organizations we serve — to practice creating that space.

Most leadership questions focus on the near future: what needs to get done this week, what problem must be fixed today, and how we will hit this quarter’s targets. These questions are necessary, but they shouldn’t be the only questions leaders ask.

Try carving out a few hours each quarter to step into a longer time horizon. Instead of focusing only on the present, ask questions like these: 

What assumptions about the future are we making that might be wrong?

Every strategy is built on assumptions — about what will remain constant and what might change. Yet many organizations rarely take the time to surface those assumptions, let alone challenge them.

Much of our education is rooted in the scientific method, which relies on isolating variables and testing them under conditions of assumed stability. But organizations operate within complex systems where outcomes emerge from the relationships between many interconnected elements. Systems thinking reminds us that focusing on a single variable at a time can obscure the role of the larger system shaping the result.

So ask yourselves: what assumptions are embedded in your strategy today? And how intentionally are you examining them?

What signals of change are we seeing that we might be ignoring?

Signals of change are everywhere around us. New laws and regulations are emerging across countries that affect trade, immigration, education, and taxation. Technological advancements and medical breakthroughs appear almost daily. Communication patterns and social norms continue to evolve. Even the climate and environment around us are shifting.

These signals may appear small or isolated today, but they can offer clues about possible futures. Leaders who practice futures thinking learn to collect and examine these signals. They ask: what might the world look like if this signal became widespread or normalized?

Is that a future you would welcome? One you fear? What actions could you take today to promote it — or prevent it?

And if we were designing this organization for the world of 2036, what would we do differently today?

What would you want to build? What might be possible?

Take time to imagine the future you would like to create. Document what it looks like, what it feels like, who is with you, who you serve, and how you help. That exercise alone can reveal insights about the choices you might begin making today.

These questions won’t predict the future. But they do something just as important: they give leaders permission to step out of urgency and back into imagination. And sometimes that shift in perspective is exactly what we need to move forward.

---

If you’d like to help your leadership team create more time spaciousness and build a habit of future thinking, we would love to support that work. Reach out to hello@elioscollective.ca and let's start a conversation about how we can help.