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STEP THE F*CK UP

The Most Common Excuses, Hunted Down One by One

By Joshua S. Brogley · September 5, 2026

Part of the series Month One: 31 Days of Hunting Down Every Excuse You Have Ever Made

Excuses feel personal and turn out to be mass-produced: across thousands of readers, the same short catalog does almost all the work. Below is the field guide, each specimen with the one-line reply it is built to avoid hearing. The unsettling discovery of spending a whole month on these, one per day, is not that your excuses are wrong. It is that they are not even yours. Everyone runs the same dozen, which means none of them is evidence about you.

The time family

No time: you found time for everything you actually chose this week; the calendar is a record of decisions, not a cage. I'm too busy: busy is a rank, not a fact, and the thing keeps losing on rank. I'll start when things calm down: things have never once calmed down, and the archive of your own life proves it. The time excuses share one engine, the fantasy of a future with more room in it, and one reply: the mission was two minutes, and you scrolled for forty.

The readiness family

I'm not ready: readiness is a feeling that follows starting, roughly ten minutes behind it, and has never once arrived in advance. I need to research more: the eleventh article is not information, it is hiding with a browser open. The right time is coming: the right time is a lie, which is worth saying exactly that bluntly, because this family of excuses is the most respectable-looking and quietly cancels more lives than laziness ever has. Motion beats emotion; the feeling shows up after the feet do.

The history family

I've tried before: and? Trying once and quitting is not evidence the thing fails, it is evidence of where your pattern breaks, which is useful data wearing a costume of defeat. It's too late for me: too late is doing arithmetic without checking it; the years pass either way, and the only version of you with standing to judge is the one at the far end, whose verdict is on record and runs the other direction. That case is its own uncomfortable read.

The disguise family, and the point of the hunt

The sneakiest excuses do not look like excuses. Perfectionism is procrastination with better clothes. Waiting for motivation is outsourcing the decision to a chemical. This is dumb, arriving late in any real attempt, is the voice's last trick, not a review. Hunting the catalog one specimen per day for a month, in writing, in your own words, is Month One of a certain year for a reason: the excuses never fully die, but a named excuse loses its authority, and after thirty-one namings the silence where they used to be is where the year actually starts.

Step The F*ck Up

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What are the most common excuses people make?

A short mass-produced catalog: no time, not ready, tried before, too late, waiting for motivation, need more research, when things calm down. Nearly everyone runs the same dozen, which is itself the argument against trusting them.

How do I stop making excuses for myself?

Name them in writing, one at a time, in your own words. An excuse operates only while it passes as reasoning; named specimens lose authority. A month of daily naming clears most of the catalog.

written by the author, at the kitchen table, after work.