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Chapter 2

Own Your Time

Inside This Chapter

•The exact number of minutes that you’ll probably be alive.

•How to determine where your time should be going, and where it should not be going.

•How to start saying “no” to commitments that feel like a pointless expenditure of your time, or that feel mis-aligned with your values.

•How to start delegating, even if it makes you uncomfortable at first.

•The sneaky way that indecisiveness steals away your time and energy.

•How to take responsibility for where your time is going, prioritize like a boss, and redirect your time toward the goals and experiences that really matter to you.

The Clock Is Ticking

If you’re very lucky, you’ll be alive for about one hundred years. That’s 52,560,000 minutes.

The average human lifespan is more like seventy-five years. That’s 39,420,000 minutes.

Millions of your minutes have already been used up at this point. Where are the rest of your minutes going? This can be a startling question, but it’s such an important one.

At a very basic level, taking ownership of your life means taking ownership of your time. It means taking personal responsibility for where your time is going. It means spending your time intentionally, focusing on things you really want to be doing. It means cutting out distractions and pointless commitments.

Taking ownership of your time is not easy to do. It’s something I still work on every day. As my kids grow older, as my business expands, as my personal priorities shift, and as new challenges arise, there’s always more fine-tuning that needs to be done. Like yoga, taking ownership of your time is an ongoing practice.

We live in a society where people—particularly women—are constantly interrupted, derailed from their work, asked to do special favors, and expected to do extra chores.

We’re supposed to drop everything and be available at a moment’s notice if a colleague, partner, or kid needs something. We’re expected to make our own needs secondary to everybody else’s. Every day, in big and small ways, we’re asked to give our time away: one more carpooling trip; one more errand; one more email; one more phone call to discuss tonight’s dinner plans or weekend activities. Often, our knee-jerk response is, “No problem. I’ll be there. Consider it done.”

Year after year, all that time adds up. One day, you blow out the candles on your thirty-second or fifty-ninth or seventy-eighth birthday cake, and you wonder, “Whoa. Here I am. Where did all of that time go?” There was a point in my life when I woke up and realized, “I’m not happy with how I’m spending my time. I need to make a big change.” It was an uncomfortable realization—and it all started with a pair of khaki slacks*.

*Yes, slacks. Because you need to know these weren’t just your average “pants.” These were straight-up “slacks.”

The Story of the Khaki Slacks

During this particular era of my life, I was dating a guy who was devoutly Catholic. I was raised Catholic too, but observing all of the Catholic rituals was never that important to me. I’d always preferred to have my own personal sense of spirituality. Organized religion had never been my thing.

But Catholicism was extremely important to him, and to both of our families, so…I pretended that I was interested. I figured I could adapt. I could become the type of woman that he wanted. (Spoiler alert: this is never a great way to begin a new relationship!)

During the time that we were together, Catholicism consumed a huge percentage of my time and mental energy. We went to mass every week. I sent my son to Catholic school, even though it wasn’t the ideal environment for him. I allowed myself to be pressured into volunteering for all kinds of Catholic school committees—like serving hot lunch in the cafeteria. Whatever the church asked me to do, I said, “No problem. I’ll be there.”

I want to be very clear: I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with getting involved in your local church—or your local temple, mosque, meditation center, or any other spiritual center that calls to you. If going to church brings you joy, then it’s absolutely something you should do. If you love it, be part of it. The problem is…I didn’t love it. I didn’t even like it. I wasn’t genuinely interested in this particular church and its teachings. I was just desperately trying to fit in.

I wanted my boyfriend, his family, and the people in our neighborhood to think that I belonged, that I was a good mom and a good woman. I wanted to earn their admiration and respect. Participating in these activities became a daily performance that I put on, like putting on a mask. It wasn’t coming from my heart. It was all for show.

Looking back now, I’d say I poured hundreds of hours of my life into church-related commitments and activities. The entire time, it didn’t feel right for me. But I suppressed my feelings and kept chugging along with a fake smile on my face.

The crowning moment was the annual photo shoot. You were supposed to get dressed up in your nicest clothes and smile for a photo, which was then included in the church directory so that other people could recognize you. The plan was to have a big Catholic wedding at that church one day—you know, a wedding of which our parents would approve. So obviously, we had to do the photo shoot. It seemed nonnegotiable.

I remember getting dressed for that photo shoot. I had bought a pair of khaki pants (ahem, slacks), a powder blue sweater (a shade that totally washed out my skin tone), loafers, and a string of pearls—clothes that I thought looked “respectable.”

If I just described your daily uniform, rock on with your preppy self! But to say these clothes were not “me” is an understatement. It felt like putting on a costume. In high school, my idols were Courtney Love and PJ Harvey. My teenage uniform had been Doc Martens, stripy tights, and dark lipstick. After that, I’d spent the next five years supporting myself by working at strip clubs, donning six-inch platform heels, black eyeliner, and mini-dresses every night. Now, I was so concerned about putting that version of me to rest that I was willing to play the part of someone I was not.

The entire photo shoot was completely awkward, and I hated how the photos turned out. I looked uncomfortable and rigid, like I was holding my breath or suppressing a scream. Which is exactly how I felt.

How long did it take to do that church photo shoot? Maybe it took an hour to shop for those clothes that I hated; another hour to get dressed and do my hair; another hour to drive there and back; and another hour for the actual shoot—in total, perhaps four or five hours. There it is. For that photo shoot, I spent five hours of my life doing something that was a lie. I was masquerading as somebody I wasn’t, wasting my time on activities I didn’t want to be doing, trying to be the person I thought I was supposed to be. It probably won’t surprise you to discover…that relationship didn’t work out. I know, not exactly a big shocker.

Here are my questions for you:

What’s your personal version of “the khaki slacks”?

I know you’ve got one. I think everyone’s got a story like that.

When do you feel like you’re putting on a costume?

When do you feel like you’re putting on an elaborate performance in an effort to earn people’s respect?

When you look at your calendar for the upcoming month, how many commitments feel meaningful, and how many trigger feelings of resentment?

Those seemingly small commitments—one more errand, a couple more emails, a project you don’t really want to do—all of those choices add up. Think about five hours, multiplied over the span of a year, or over a decade. That’s a monumental amount of time—time you can never get back.

Reclaiming My Time!

If you’ve been living in a monastery for the past couple years and you haven’t peeked at the internet in a while, then please Google “Maxine Waters—Reclaiming My Time” and watch the full video. You will not regret it.

Maxine Waters serves in the US House of Representatives. She’s a strong, confident woman who doesn’t tolerate time-wasting or excuse-making. Not from anybody. During an important meeting involving the House Financial Services Committee. Maxine was given a very limited amount of time to hold the floor and ask her questions—and obviously, she didn’t want to waste a single second.

After she asked one of her colleagues a simple question—“Why did you not respond to my letter?”—he began awkwardly hemming and hawing, clearly trying to avoid the question. After allowing him to prattle on for a few moments, Maxine interjected and said, “Reclaiming my time! Reclaiming my time!” What she meant was that she wanted her colleague’s meandering, pointless comments to be stricken and not counted as part of her official time. She knew he was just wasting her precious minutes—and she wasn’t having it.

The footage of Maxine calling out, “Reclaiming my time!” went viral. People around the world applauded her courage and her take-no-shit attitude. Is she too bossy? Too demanding? Rude? Nope. She’s just trying to do her job and she doesn’t have a moment to waste. And if someone tries to steal her time, you’d better believe she will reclaim it. (Applause!)

We should all take a cue from Auntie Maxine, as she’s known by her fans. Don’t allow anyone to waste your time, to steal it, or to drain it. And this starts with you, of course. Don’t give your time away. Don’t make commitments you don’t want to make. Don’t over-serve other people while ignoring your own needs. For chrissakes, don’t wait for someone to give it back to you. Reclaim your time!

Where Should Your Time Be Going?

You might be thinking, “Yes! I want to reclaim my time like Auntie Maxine. I want to spend my time wisely. I want to make my time count. But I’m not sure where my time should actually be going. I have so many things going on in my life. How do I prioritize?”

I’ve wrestled with those questions, too. For a long time, I thought, “Well, I’m a mom, so my kids are always my top priority. If there’s any time left after that, I guess that’s for…my partner?” It honestly didn’t occur to me that I was allowed to carve out time that’s just for me—time for my goals; my aspirations; my legacy.

Things started shifting during my late twenties. I had enrolled in college once again (fifth time’s the charm!), and I was determined to finally earn my undergraduate degree. I was working toward a BA in English, but someone had suggested that switching to women’s studies might be more up my alley. It turned out my college was holding a women’s studies conference, so I went to check it out. At the conference, I stepped into a breakout session entitled something like: “How to Be More Confident in Your Decisions.”

I thought the title of the workshop sounded kind of fluffy, but I was going through a rocky time personally and I knew I could use an extra dose of confidence, so I decided to attend. During the workshop, the instructor—a brilliant woman named Elizabeth Johnson—urged us to write down our passions, our values, and our talents, explaining that naming these would help paint a picture of what she called our Authentic Selves. Then she posed some challenging questions:

“As you go through your daily life—school, work, parenting, volunteering, seeing friends—do you feel passionate? Are your values being honored? Are your talents being used?” In other words, were we living authentically?

She also asked, “What are some roles that you play that don’t feel authentic? What are some situations where you feel like you’re hiding your real self, masking your true feelings, or living a lie?”

This was the first time I’d ever confronted these kinds of questions. It was unsettling but also very illuminating. My mind was blown. Maybe you’re the kind of person who lives in a BS-free zone, saying what you mean, meaning what you say, and generally owning your life. At that time, I was not. I felt like I had just stepped into a minefield of personal revelations that came one after another.

During that workshop, I began to see that my life up until that point had been extremely inauthentic. My passions, values, and talents weren’t being honored, and they definitely weren’t being represented by the things scheduled into my calendar. In fact, they weren’t just unacknowledged; in some cases, they were intentionally hidden. Almost everything I did felt like a ruse, a disguise, or a way of pleasing and appeasing other people. I was so worried about being who others thought I should be. Meanwhile, the things that made me me were being ignored. It was not good.

I left that workshop with pages and pages of notes, epiphanies scribbled in every margin of my notebook, new plans, and new promises to myself. I had a shitload of work to do. And I decided to start right away—which meant reimagining how I spent my days.

When we change what’s on our calendars, we change our lives.

Write & Discuss: Your Passions,

Values, and Talents

In order to determine where your time should be going, first, it helps to understand your passions, values, and talents (another way to think of this is “self-expression”). Then, the goal is to fill your calendar with commitments that allow you to express these hallmarks of your Authentic Self instead of ignoring or suppressing them. Discuss these questions with a few friends. Write out your thoughts here.

What are your passions?

Passions are: things you could stay up all night talking about, things you love, things you’re obsessed with. (Some of my passions are: gender politics, music, social justice, activism, business, goal setting, and productivity. Oh, and Harry Potter. In high school I was obsessed with foreign languages, but not so much anymore. Passions aren’t fixed, they can change over time, so don’t agonize over getting this right. It’s not etched in stone.)

What are your values?

Values are things that you think are really, really important, the kinds of things where you think, “If everyone believed in this and behaved accordingly, the world would be a much better place.” (Some of my top values are: feminism, equality, self-expression, honest communication, and personal responsibility. Some of your values might be: courage, community, friendships, contribution, creativity, patience, or perhaps something else.)