We define time management as a personal issue in our culture. Stressed out? Incredibly busy? Take care of it. Or don’t. Just be sure to pay your bills and show up for work on time.

Life is full of “urgent” matters that really don’t make any difference in the long or short run. Yes, you’re five minutes late for that internal meeting. Technology has increased our sense of urgency and with the proliferation of continuous “must-have” innovation, it will only become harder to resist that instant gratification of receiving information.

But, then, how can we prioritize our time when everything is urgent? The answer is relatively simple: Unless we take mindful control of our decision making, we’ll react to the urgent, even if it’s relatively unimportant, and shun the important, unless it also carries a sense of urgency.

One way to think of it is to create a time budget. You’d do it for your money, which is another precious resource. So is your time.

Remind yourself that your time budget is not your enemy. It’s nothing more than a set of guidelines for your time “spending and saving” habits.

Asking the “Want To/Have To” Question
Start simple. Ask yourself: “Is this what I want or need to be doing right now?”

• If the answer to this question is “yes,” go back to what you were doing. You will have affirmed your choice of activities and made your decision consciously, the key ingredient in time management.
• If you want or need to do it but not right now, put it off and do something with a higher degree of time sensitivity. That way, you’ll avoid getting caught in deadline pressure later.
• And if you neither want nor need to be doing it, now or ever, it’s up to you to stop doing it.

A regular and creative use of the to-do list can help here. If you want to exercise three times a week, if you need to do some long-range career and financial planning, if you care enough about another human being to want to nurture your relationship, you will schedule time for these things. Otherwise, you may not “get to them,” and even if you do, you’ll give them only your leftover time, when energy and focus are at their lowest.

You can make time for the important things in life by reducing time spent on the items in the last category, the “neither important nor urgent but just a lot of fun” area. But you shouldn’t wipe this area out completely (even if you could) lest life become one long boring appointment.

Time only needs “managing” because we don’t seem to have enough time to do everything we want and need to do. Stop looking. You’ll never find time. It isn’t lost. You have to consciously decide to live it in certain ways and not others. You have to make time by taking it away from one activity and giving it to another.