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Nobody Else Will Guard Your Time. That’s Your Job.
Your calendar shouldn’t belong to everyone else.
In an interview on the In the Heights podcast, Taylor Swift said, “Treat your time as if it’s expensive. Not everyone can afford it.”
Your time probably isn’t expensive in dollars (at least, not to the level of Taylor Swift!). But you have a limited quantity of it. Every hour you give to someone else is an hour you can’t get back. It’s either worth the exchange — you give an hour, you get something in return — or it isn’t.
You have to decide who gets access to your time. The eldest daughter and recovering people-pleaser in me spent many years doing the opposite. If someone asked, I gave… even if it was something I didn’t want to do. Extra projects, extra commitments, and suddenly I found myself stretched too thin.
Whether it’s work or your personal life, you’re the filter. Protecting your time comes down to knowing who and what deserve access to your precious hours and sticking to your boundaries.
Everyone asks for your time
Time creep is what happens when you say “yes” to a lot of small things, sometimes without thinking. Requests come at you from all sides, and you respond quickly, sometimes without thinking. You say “sure” before…
