Who Is in Charge?

Just as companies must dissolve their boundaries and erase their hierarchies, so must you, the individual, reinvent yourself to meet the knowledge era’s changing demands. What this means is that you’re your own chief executive officer. Start thinking of yourself as a service company with a single employee. You’re a small company—very small, but that doesn’t matter—that puts your services to work for a larger company. Tomorrow, you may sell those services to a different organization, but that doesn’t mean you’re any less loyal to your current employer.

The first step is to resolve the issue of not suffering the fate of those who lost their jobs and found their skills obsolete. The second is to begin immediately the process of protecting yourself against that possibility—by becoming proactive instead of reactive. Ask yourself how vulnerable you are and what you can do about it. “What trends must I watch? What information must I gain? What knowledge do I lack?” Again, think of yourself as a company—for this purpose, a research and development company—and establish your own strategic planning department. Set up a training department and make sure your top employee is updating his or her skills. Start your own investment plan knowing that you are responsible for your own financial security.

You’re your own CEO who must have the vision to set your goals and allocate your resources. Since your primary concern is ensuring your viability in the marketplace, you must think strategically in every decision. This mindset of being responsible for your own future used to be crucial only to the self-employed, but it has become essential for us all. Today’s typical workers are no longer one-career people. Most will have several separate careers in their lifetimes. But although you must become your own life’s CEO and always act as if you were a company of one, being a team leader is equally important for your future. It’s no longer possible to achieve alone in our world of accelerating change, where the new global village has become the local neighborhood. Rather than become dependent on others, however, we should become interdependent, treating everyone we meet as a potential customer, someone with whom we may develop a strategic alliance in the future.

Although many things in life are beyond anyone’s control, you do have a great deal of control—more than most of us are willing to acknowledge—over many circumstances and conditions. Here are what I refer to as the Seven C’s of Control that I consider most important:

1. You can control what you do with most of your free time during the day and the evening.

2. You can control your concepts and imagination and channel what you think about.

3. You can control who you choose as role models and who you’ll seek out for mentoring counsel and inspiration. You can control who you spend your leisure time with—and, to a great degree, with whom you communicate.

4. You can control your tongue; you can choose to remain silent or choose to speak. If you choose to speak, you can choose your words and your tone of voice.

5. You can control the causes to which you give your time and goals. This is what we call the purpose behind the purpose.

6. You can control your commitments, the things you absolutely promise yourself and others that you’ll do.

7. You can control your concerns and worries—and whether you’ll choose to take action about them, as well as your response to difficult times and people.

As I approach the winter of my life, I choose my battles carefully and spend my precious time planting shade trees for future generations, under which I, myself, will never sit. Time has become my most precious resource. I am devoted to living life as if every moment were part of Prime Time.

Primetime, to most people, is that period between 6 and 10 p.m., during which most of the general public watches television. Commercials in prime time are the most expensive, approaching much more than a million dollars per minute. My real success in life took a quantum leap when I stopped watching other people making money in their professions—performing in prime time—and started living my own dreams and goals in prime time. Of all the wisdom I have gained over my 50-plus-year career, the knowledge that time and health are taken for granted until they are depleted has caused me to reorder my daily priorities. As with health, time is the raw material of life. We can bide our time, but we can’t save it for another day. We can waste and kill time, but we are also mortally wounding our opportunities.

Time is the ultimate equal-opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly 168 hours a week to spend. Think about it! Scientists can’t invent more minutes. Superrich people can’t buy more hours. Queen Elizabeth the First of England - the richest, most powerful woman on earth of her era - whispered these final words on her deathbed: “All of my possessions for another moment of time!”

We worry about things we want to do but can’t do instead of doing the things we can do but don’t. It is not the experience of today that causes us the greatest stress. It is the regret for something we did or didn’t do yesterday and the apprehension of what tomorrow may bring. Time never stops to rest, never hesitates, never looks forward or backward. Life’s raw material spends itself in the now, this moment, which is why how you spend your time is far more important than all the material possessions you may own or positions you may obtain. Positions change, possessions come and go, and you can earn more money. You can renew your supply of many things, but like good health, that another most precious resource, time spent, is gone forever.

Each yesterday, and all of them together, are beyond your control. Literally, all the money in the world can’t undo or redo a single act you performed. You cannot erase a single word you said, can’t add an “I love you,” “I’m sorry,” or “I forgive you,” not even a “thank you” you forgot to say.

Consider this: Most of your daytime hours are spent helping other people solve their problems. The little time you have in the evenings and on weekends is all you have to spend on yourself, on your own dreams and goals, and on personal development. To me, that’s why I prefer to live in Prime Time rather than watch TV in Prime Time.

Have dinner with your loved ones at least two to three times per week. It’s the best time for casual conversation to listen to what those close to you feel is important in their lives. Mealtime is a time to dialogue. Record the shows that interfere with supper together. Make dinner time, family, and significant others’ intimate networking time.

A television set is an appliance. It should be used, at most, for two hours at a time. It should be off unless specific programs of interest are selected. It should not be used as a one-eyed babysitter. For the most part, TV exposes us to negative role models and serves as a tension-relieving rather than a goal-achieving tool. The same is true with computers, tablets, and smartphones. They, also, are wonderful tools. But they are appliances. They can become a virtual world in which we live, keeping us from exploring the natural world in person.

Instead of watching television, why not read a good fiction or non-fiction book, engage in a hobby or craft, spend time with loved ones, visit a friend or someone in need of encouragement, go out to an ethnic restaurant, a home show, an entrepreneurial show, a musical recital, a play, a fitness class, or cultural event. Take an art or photography class.

Use prime time to live the kind of life others put on layaway. As for me, I’m tired of watching life go by as a spectator doing the wave in the stands. In turning off the TV, I’m able to turn on to actual experiences I can touch, feel, and smell, and in which I can engage all my senses. Instead of virtual reality, I want the real thing. An action step that fits into the concept of living in “prime time” is to balance your workload with a generous number of what I call mini vacations for maximum productivity.

By re-energizing and renewing yourself frequently, you will avoid burnout and become much more motivated and productive. Don’t keep your nose to the grindstone for years and wait for retirement to travel. In an uncertain global economy, retirement may be delayed or not considered at all. You may even want to come out of retirement and “retry” yourself in another profession or home business. Balance and consistency are the keys. Enjoy the process, not just the result. Don’t fight the passing of time. Don’t fear it, chase it, squander it, or try to hide from it under a superficial cosmetic veil of fads and indulgences. Life and time go together.

It’s not in the image of our big dreams that we run the risk of losing our focus and motivation. It’s the drudgery and routine of our daily lives that present the greatest danger to our hopes for achievement. Good time management means that you maximize the daily return on the energy and mental effort you expend. Here are some ways to maximize your time: Write down in one place all the important contacts you have and all of your goals and priorities. Make a backup copy, preferably on a cloud platform. Write down every commitment you make at the time you make it.

Stop wasting the first hour of your workday. Having the chat and first cup of coffee, reading the paper, texting, tweeting, and socializing are costly opening exercises that lower productivity. Do one thing well at a time. It takes time to start and stop work on each activity. Stay with a task until it is completed. Don’t open unimportant mail. More than a fourth of the mail you receive can be tossed before you open or read it, and that includes e-mail.

Spend twenty minutes at the beginning of each week and ten minutes at the beginning of each day planning your to-do list. Set aside personal relaxation time during the day. Don’t work during lunch. It’s neither noble nor nutritional to skip important energy input and stress-relieving time. Throughout the day, ask yourself, “What’s the best use of my time right now?” As the day grows short, focus on projects you can least afford to leave undone.

And take vacations often, mini vacations of two or three days, and leave your work at home. The harder you work, the more you need to balance your exercise and leisure time. Make the time of your life Prime Time!

Question: What do you control, and what is out of your control in your daily life?

Action: For the next week, resist watching TV in prime time, which is when all the reality shows, docudramas, and sitcoms are playing each evening. Instead of watching actors and icons making money and having fun in their professions, do something active that improves your life. Family, reading, art, music, writing, recreation, service, playing games. Anything that is “doing” instead of “viewing.”

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