don't have time

Once in a while something will come up. Perhaps a code review you need someone to do, or something like that. Now sometimes you'll find there's a snag that the person doesn't have time for it.

So I got thinking about that a bit "I don't have time". First of all the statement is obviously false. You have plenty of time. There's eight full hours available each working day and the task would take less than one hour. What the person is really saying is "I don't have priority" - this isn't important enough to bump some other task.

It might seem unimportant to make this distinction, but it is valuable to describe the situation accurately. Because by describing the problem properly then it can be a start toward some resolution. After all saying "don't have time" is absolute, final, intractable, unrecoverable. After all it's not possible to create time.

Now "don't have priority" is much more manageable. For example it could be possible to de-prioritize some other task. But more likely it allows an honest conversation. If your task isn't important to the other person, then great. Eliminate the dependency, get someone else to do the code review or whatever, and move on. Accept that roles have changed and someone has bigger fish to fry now. Realize that an error in your area is less catastrophic than an error in some other area, thus we assume the lower risk to focus resources on more critical things. In any case by breaking the dependency on your priority isn't my priority it allows everyone to move ahead.