Time is now the ultimate commodity. The wealthiest people in the world are the ones who have control over how (and where) they spend their time. If you’re making money but working your ass off year in/year out, then the system still owns you. Of course, there are those who hate their jobs but are intentionally saving more than they can spend. That’s probably pretty close to how most folks define retirement planning.

I tip my hat to people who save more than they can spend, but if it takes 80 hours a week to do it, it’s a heck of a gamble. Whenever you sacrifice too much for the demands of workaday living, money in the bank is little consolation. Time – not in the future but in the present – is the true badge of success.

When your time is spent on the people and projects that are most important to you, and when you work only because you find that work compelling, then you have achieved a rare and important freedom. This is an impressive accomplishment because it involves more than revenues – it involves self-mastery on almost every level, including emotional self-mastery, victory over expensive vices, and financial competence. Protecting your time and spending it wisely requires a much broader commitment than does a narrow focus on financial benchmarks.

In the last chapter, we talked about the importance of creating space physically and psychologically for new projects. Unfortunately, that’s the easy part. The next step involves actual implementation of the new idea, and that’s where we falter. Wishing we had more time is easier than finding a way. There’s no simple way forward, but mastering several concepts related to time will make a huge difference.

For the rest of our lives, we can count on a scarcity of time. At no point is this scarcity more dangerous than when we are stuck in a rut we are desperate to get out of. Wondering how we will find the time to plot a new course can actually make us more desperate. How are we ever going to pull it off?

“I’m a pessimist,” one friend told me, before he downed another drink. As someone who has lost a lot of years to “comfortably numb,” I know how he feels. But a belief in your own limitations is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you don’t believe that you can alter the outcome, why bother? That’s why a good strategy is so important. Knowing you have the right tactics can be the different between one drink before bed and an all-night bender. When morale is higher, we make better decisions about time.

There are four key concepts about time that are worth mastering. The first, time management, is obvious, and I won’t spend much time on it here. The second, time stealing, and the third, the law of accumulation, are two powerful ideas that I will address in the next installments in this book. The fourth one, time/money crossover, is a later stage concept I’ll touch on down the road.

For now, let’s do a breezy, non-PowerPoint review of time management. As I see it, “time management” refers to so-called “best practices” that a person can implement to make the most out of the time they have. The key here is eliminating inefficiencies in our schedule in order to have the most time possible to spend at our discretion. I’ve spent years obsessing over my daily/weekly organizational systems. The best systems are ones that you devise to fit your own circumstance. Some people are visual list-makers like me, crossing tasks off when they are done, others prefer electronic tools and reminder “prompts”.

Time is too important a resource not to bring all your logistics to bear upon it. For most of us, there are inefficiencies that can be rooted out. To use a couple examples from my own life: for several years, my commuting time took vital hours from my day. When I had the chance to get my own office, I made sure it was close to my house so I could reclaim that time.

More recently, I figured out some techniques for “drip-drying” my hair, even in the winter, with a minimum of blow drying. This may sound absurd, ok – it is absurd – but to me, that’s twenty minutes a day I used to spend messing with wet tangles. Any time you can save in the cash-strapped present is gold. You can then invest that time toward the development of assets than change your life.

Planning is another component. On Saturdays, I geek out over my calendar for the upcoming week. I almost always identify some overlapping commitments – things that need to be shuffled around or combined into one trip across town. The main purpose of this “look ahead” is to see if I can earmark any time for creative projects.

If I have too many pending appointments, I push some back to ensure I have time to write. If you this kind of fine-tuning sounds tedious, I would say, you’re right. But it’s better than running out of time. And as we’ll see, sometimes the difference between parachuting out of your current career versus having to jump without one is a matter of a few crucial hours a week.

Of course, to be willing to fight for this time you have to believe in yourself and what you’re fighting for, but our biggest challenge is not a lack of dreams. Most of us have no problem dreaming big, but over time, our dreams poison us; we have no idea how to get there. And from that state of despair or resignation, we squander our time. Without the right tactics, time has no obvious value to us. At that point, we waste time indiscriminately to avoid staring at the wall, or perhaps a mirror.

Worse yet, we might head off in the wrong direction to avoid the discomfort of standing still. Spending time on the wrong plan is like putting gas in an electric car. Time is a resource only when we know how to use it. That’s why I believe that the right tactics are more important to our morale (and ultimate success) than any other factor. And the biggest tactic of all is taking control of our time.

We spend all kinds of time fussing over our cars, our lawns, our kids. We owe it to ourselves to fuss over our time, and develop systems to spend it better – understanding, of course, that drooling on the couch is an important part of every week too. It’s not about becoming automated work machines, but it is about making conscious choices in the context of an overall strategy you believe in. In the next chapter, we’ll take a closer look at some advanced concepts pertaining to time that can make a huge difference in how to get these vital side ventures up and running in the midst of the daily grind.

Want to buy Free From Corporate America or see reviews of the final published version from readers like yourself? The printed book is now available on Amazon.com with product reviews.

You can also get a discounted version of the final book in eBook (PDF) format, or you can pick up a copy on the Kindle. The published version of the book is significantly enhanced from the web version available on this site.