Control Your Time; Don’t Let It Control You

Some days go by quickly, while others drag on, but the amount of time in each day remains the same. The typical workday is eight hours long, yet the average worker spends less than half of that time actively working. People still look and feel busy, but they aren’t focusing their efforts on the kinds of things that produce results. And when they don’t accomplish their goals, they think, “There’s not enough time in the day.” In reality, the problem is that they are letting time control them, and they have not yet learned how to properly control their own time.

When I was going through my undergraduate degree, I had a professor that assigned us to track every single thing we did and how long it took us to complete each task in a 48-hour window. During that time, I felt so busy with schoolwork, but I was embarrassed to find out how much time I was wasting during the day. I would check social media multiple times and get lost scrolling through posts, I got distracted by texting and calling friends, and I spent a lot of time thinking about what I needed to get done instead of just doing it.

There were several times in college where I had to pull all-nighters because I didn’t accomplish what I needed to do during the day. I blamed the amount of assignments I had instead of realizing that I wasn’t utilizing my time wisely. Once I was able to shift my perspective on this, I started working on homework as soon as I was assigned it. I quickly noticed how much extra free time I had in the evenings when I did this. I wish I could say that I kept that up consistently, but there were definitely times that I fell back into a pattern of procrastination and doom scrolling.

And in case you didn’t know, being a procrastinator and a perfectionist is not exactly a healthy combination. I was wearing myself down, and it was my own fault. Fast forward to today, and I still have to actively choose to control my time instead of letting it control me. That’s not always an easy decision, but I feel significantly better when I make it. Sometimes when I feel myself drifting off mentally, I have to get up from my desk and walk around. This allows my mind to reset, and I can come back to the task I was working on with renewed energy.

Henry David Thoreau once said, “It’s not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?” It’s important to invest your time wisely and use it to advance yourself. Don’t let it control you. We all have the same 24 hours in a day, so how will you choose to spend it?

-Meghan Slaughter