The strongest signal for “this book is telling me something I really need to learn” is kind of like when your pet poops somewhere they’re not supposed to. I literally feel like the book is taking my nose and rubbing it in my shame, saying “No Matthew! Bad Matthew! Stop making self-destructive decisions on the carpet!”

Before you laugh at me, check out the lesson that made me feel this way most recently. I was reading “168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think” by Laura Vanderkam and it said to make a list of my top 3 priorities in life. That’s easy, it looked like this:

1. Family/friends
2. Health
3. Writing

Part 2 of the exercise was to log where I spent my minutes for the next week. Real “Time Accounting,” down to the 5-minute intervals. Uh oh. As you can guess, my time was something like 30% work, 20% Reddit, 10% chores, 2% friends/family, and health/writing got almost negligible amounts. Of course I felt ashamed. The stuff I said was important got almost none of my time. No wonder my goals weren’t moving forward. Trees don’t grow if you don’t water them.

There are a lot of good lessons in that book, but my favorite was that we have to very carefully select what we say yes to. Time is finite and saying yes to one thing means saying no to something else. And if you absentmindedly say yes to too much then suddenly the things you said were important to you slip to the back burner…and they usually stay there.

What is most important to you? How much of your time do those things get this week? What about last week? Sorry if you feel like your nose is getting rubbed in poop right now, believe me I know it’s not fun. But we can’t make progress on this without being honest with ourselves.

Luckily there are some pretty simple guard rails that can help us out here. 

1. Decide what your top priority is, and block off time for it non-negotiably.
2. Think critically about each new thing that asks for your time. Ask yourself what you’ll have to say “no” to if this gets a “yes.”
3. Reassess your priorities periodically, it’s okay if they change but it should be intentional.

For me, this meant having morning workouts and writing sessions that happened no matter what. Morning time is the easiest to defend, and even if you can’t carve out a lot of time it makes a difference to take small steps consistently. You can’t wait for convenient times to work on your goals. You have to be very intentional about what you say yes to, because there are always going to be a lot of people asking you for your time.

Of course, work and sleep and chores and stuff like that will always get more of our time than we want. That’s unavoidable. But that also means it’s even more important for us to make the most of the time that remains. And if you have some big time sucks like I did (cough REDDIT), you should think critically about what you are getting in return for your time. Honestly, I love scrolling through memes and snarky comments and I couldn’t give it up completely…but if you design your schedule so the top priority stuff get’s the first dibs on your time, then it’s okay for Netflix or Instagram to get the leftovers. It just can’t be the other way around, because those dopamine black holes will take all the time you have. 

Sorry if I rubbed your nose in time-management poop. I wasn’t trying to be mean. But our time is much more valuable than our carpets; we should protect it too.