🍅 The phrase that stops all time excuses [Day 1]

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Morning! 😃 ☕️ 

Last week, I called my friend Miguel out. He’d been saying "I don't have time" to practice Spanish for months.

I smiled and said this phrase. I felt it in my chest.

I wasn't attacking him—I was showing me the truth Spanish-speaking cultures have known forever: time isn't the problem.

This week, you're learning the phrase that Spanish speakers use when someone makes excuses about time. It's direct, it's honest, and it completely reframes how you think about your day.

In today's email...

• 📱 Day 1: Full phrase introduction + practical usage guide

• 🌟 The cultural moment when Spanish speakers deploy this phrase

• 🏃‍♂️ Three scenarios where you can use this today

📧 subscribe here \ yesterdays newsletter 📆

MEMORIZE 🧠

No es cuestión de tiempo, es cuestión de actitud. Puedes tener todo el día libre y no hacer nada importante. O puedes tener solo diez minutos y cambiar el rumbo de tu vida. El tiempo es lo que haces con él.

As always, the answer key and audio are at the bottom of this email.

CULTURAL MOMENT 🍅

Here's what makes this phrase powerful: Spanish speakers use it when they care about you enough to call out your excuses.

It's not harsh—it's honest.

You'll hear this from mentors, from family members who want you to succeed, from friends who see your potential. The moment someone says "no es cuestión de tiempo, es cuestión de actitud," they're telling you they believe you can do more.

The phrase works in three specific situations.

First, when someone says they don't have time for something important—learning a skill, starting a business, calling their parents.

Second, when someone complains about being busy but you can see they're wasting hours on things that don't matter.

Third, when you need to motivate yourself. Spanish speakers will literally say this phrase out loud to themselves when they're making excuses.

What happens when you use this correctly? You position yourself as someone who understands Spanish-speaking cultural values around personal responsibility. In many Spanish-speaking cultures, there's a deep respect for people who take action despite limited resources.

This phrase captures that entire worldview. When you use it with a Spanish-speaking colleague who's making excuses about a project, you're speaking their language at a cultural level, not just a linguistic one.

WORD SPOTLIGHT 🔍️ 

This week, we'll focus on three words that carry serious cultural weight: actitud, rumbo, and cuestión.

Actitud isn't just "attitude"—it's your entire approach to life. In Spanish-speaking cultures, your actitud determines your outcomes more than your circumstances.

When someone has "buena actitud," they're not just positive—they're someone who takes action despite obstacles. This is why the phrase hits so hard: it's saying your results come from your actitud, not your time.

Rumbo means direction or course, but it carries nautical weight. You're not just changing your path—you're changing where your entire ship is heading.

Spanish speakers use "cambiar el rumbo" for major life decisions: career changes, relationship commitments, moving to a new country. When this phrase says you can "cambiar el rumbo de tu vida" in ten minutes, it's saying one decision can redirect everything.

Cuestión is trickier than it looks. It means "question" or "matter," but in this phrase, it signals a fundamental truth. "Es cuestión de..." means "it's a matter of..." or "it comes down to..."

Spanish speakers use this construction to cut through complexity and identify the real issue. When someone says "no es cuestión de dinero," they're saying money isn't actually the problem—something else is.

HEAR THE SPANISH AUDIO 🍅

Pro tip: Listen three times.

Once for general meaning.

Once following along with the text.

Once with your eyes closed, focusing purely on pronunciation and rhythm.

ANSWER KEY ✅

Spanish: "No es cuestión de tiempo, es cuestión de actitud. Puedes tener todo el día libre y no hacer nada importante. O puedes tener solo diez minutos y cambiar el rumbo de tu vida. El tiempo es lo que haces con él."

English: "It's not a question of time, it's a question of attitude. You can have the whole day off and do nothing important. Or you can have just ten minutes and change the direction of your life. Time is what you make of it."

Today's disappeared words: None—full phrase visible on Day 1

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See you tomorrow! - 🍅 The Phrase Café Team