"We don't build the lives we want by saving time. We build the lives we want, and then time saves itself."

—Laura Vanderkam

As we round the corner on completing Q1, I’m hearing the same thing from clients and other people in my world: “I’m so busy, I just can’t find more time.”

I get it. As a single mom and full-time business owner, I come up against a full capacity a lot.

And it’s a very serious matter, which is why I’m speaking to it.

In fact, a friend of mine was just hospitalized for several days last week with a stomach condition due to time-stress and overcommitting. She’s about to take a leave of absence from her work to get back to health. One of my other friend’s I haven’t seen since January even though we committed to seeing each other once a month for coffee, and she’s dealt with severe stress with time in a new job, a new home, a new dog, and more.

No doubt, Q1 seems to have been inordinately full for a lot of people.

And… this is not something new for a lot of us. I find that when I do visioning sessions with people about what they want most it ultimately more TIME.

They say things like:

“Once I hit $__ income, then I can take a full month off to travel.”

“Once I finish ___ project, then I can have more time with my kids.”

“Once this conference is done, I’ll take an actually weekend off.”

We all play the When-Then Game. We imagine that once some marker is hit, we’ll suddenly have the time and space and freedom that we desperately want.

However, my experience is that if we don’t actually live our lives using our time the way we want, we will suffer in a variety of ways. It can lead to loss of friendships/marriages, loss of joy and fulfillment, loss of money, loss of quality of life, and it can even lead to death (according to a documentary on Japanese work culture, Salaryman).

If we don’t prioritize our down time and time off, we will be stuck in a cycle of When-Then.

A quote by Laura Vanderkam in her amazing TED talk about time, she says: “We don't build the lives we want by saving time. We build the lives we want, and then time saves itself.”

Are you ready to start taking ownership of your hours, your life - your life? Are you willing to start experimenting with how you relate to your schedule and seeing what might shift?

If yes, I offer these questions to you:

1. What if you felt fully in control of every hour of your day? How would that change the way you feel/ act/ engage?

2. What is in the way of you feeling in control of your time? And how is the fullness of your time affecting you - mentally, emotionally, physically? (Get specific.)

3. What do you wish you had more time for?

A client once told me that his idea of real wealth is being able to do what he wants, when he wants.

Isn’t that true for many of us?