How To Actively Take Control of Your Time and Your Life

Orange Clock

I had lunch with Lorenz Sell recently, and he put up a video of our discussion on his latest project, FindMeFit.

One of the topics Lorenz and I touched on is how I have been trying to more actively take control of my time.

For new readers, I should point out that I think about time a lot. For example, my favorite personality test I’ve found so far is the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZPTI) – a personality test which showed me that I was an extremely future oriented person, and opened my eyes to the fact that not everyone thinks about time (and especially the future) in the same ways I do. You can find more details about that in my article about the best free online personality tests.

Passive And Active Time Wasting

I have been thinking lately about actively wasting versus passively wasting life. Briefly, I don’t think I actively waste my time – I don’t plan to waste away a week or two of my life without getting something out of it. To me, as long as I get some long term benefit my time is well spent. Work is productive because I learn and earn money to spend on activities I enjoy. At the other extreme, vacations are productive as they provide me time with my friends and family, cultural experiences and once in a lifetime trips.

However, I do often feel like time leaks away from me, and I passively waste it away in small increments throughout the day. Some of the areas where time slowly trickles out are:

My Procrastination Thumbscrews. In my opinion, this is the worst form of time wasting. Not only am I wasting away my time with activities that are not productive, but I am actively stifling my own progress. This includes everything from cleaning my room to doing excessive amounts of metawork to avoid actually getting to the task at hand.
Wasting Time Online. Perhaps the worst offender first thing in the morning or last thing at night. I always seem to have “just one more thing” I want to check on.
Watching TV. Just like wasting time online, sitting down to watch TV just because it’s there is a huge passive drain on my time.

Ways To Actively Take Charge Of Your Time – And Your Life

Stop Using “Default” Activities. One of the biggest reasons I waste time online is because sitting down at my computer when I have a few moments is a default activity of mine. TV watching fills a similar role. Rather than defaulting to doing these things because they are easy ways to pass the time, I try to actively consider what is on my todo list, and actively choose what I want to do with each moment. As Ali Hale says – choose your life, choose your own adventure:

“Rather than opting for the easiest choice, or the one which you think you “should” do, ask yourself which is going to be the most interesting, or the most exciting, or even the most scary. These options are likely to be the ones that lead you down a whole new avenue – rather than the ones that see you repeating the same chapter of your life over and over and over again.”
Imagine Time As A Tube Of Toothpaste. This is the analogy I brought up in my discussion with Lorenz when we met for lunch. Very often in the past I have thought of time as a sand falling through an hourglass, or a stream running. In each of these cases, each moment only comes once and passes us by. If I think of time as a tube of toothpaste however, it changes my perspective to a more active role. Unlike a stream running or sand falling in an hourglass, toothpaste does not simply come out of a tube on its own – we force it out and use it up. Similarly, we are not spectators in our own lives with our days, weeks and months passing us by. Each day we make a decision what to do and what not to do. Every moment is our opportunity, but it’s a moment that we must choose to use up. Time does not fly by - rather, we push minutes, hours and days out of our finite toothpaste tube of life. When I view my life this way, it forces me to take responsibility for each moment.
Every Day, Do One Thing Towards A Long Range Goal. Many of my goals (physical health, financial security, etc) are items that cannot be completed in a single day, and perhaps are items I will work on for the rest of my life. I have a journal beside my bed, and often if I am feeling especially frustrated with my day, I will write down things I did that are going to help me accomplish some of these multi-year and life goals. As long as I am making steady progress towards them, I know that I am actively taking control of my life – rather than letting the days pass me by. As my friend mrJWells writes, make your life significant.
Take Back What Is Yours – Your Time, Your Attention. I often feel as if I am racing against the clock – I’m running late, I’m rushing through one thing to get to the next thing, or I need to get somewhere by a certain time. I’ve been trying to take a step back and rather than doing everything, trying to do just a few things well. To that end I’m cutting back on my commitments. When I am driven by outside commitments, I no longer have control of my own time.
Give The Day Permission To Begin. Similar to viewing time as a tube of toothpaste, giving the day permission to begin is a trick I use to change my perspective towards time and my day. I imagine that each day when I fall asleep, time moves for much more than 8 hours, and when I wake up and turn off my alarm clock it’s not that it is now 6 a.m. – I imagine that I have been asleep for a very long time, and that it has been at 6 a.m. for days or weeks. I tell myself that today is my day, time moves when I say it moves – and as I pushing the button to turn off my alarm, I am now letting the world go forward, and allowing time to move on to 6:01, 6:02 and beyond.
Do The Tasks That Matter Most To You First. I advocate paying yourself first with your time. One thing that I have started doing is asking myself what matters most to me – and working on those tasks first. In Zen To Done, Leo calls these items “Most Important Tasks (MITS)”.

“Each morning, decide what your Most Important Tasks are for that day.[...] Block out time for them early in the day if possible — if you put them later in the day, other things pop up that will get in the way.”