The more you discipline yourself to use your time well, the happier you will feel and the better will be the quality of your life in every area.

[For every thing you do, you can sleepwalk without awareness about your actions, or become more consciously deilberate about your actions. Contemplate whether this is a good use of your time by answering some honest questions.]

Some questions you could ask yourself are:
- What is the reason or goal for this activity?
- What benefit am I getting from this?
<strong>- Where is this activity taking me?</strong>

how important it is to choose what you consume and pay attention to: just as you are what you eat, when it comes to the information you consume, you are what you choose to focus on. Consuming valuable material in general makes scatterfocus sessions even more productive.

The key question to keep asking is, Are you spending your time on the right things? Because time is all you have.

The way you spend your time is a result of the way you see your time and the way you really see your priorities.

By controlling how much time you spend on a task, you control how much energy and attention you spend on it.

If some pleasure is promised to you and it seductively calls to you, step back and give yourself some time before mindlessly jumping at it. Dispassionately turn the matter over in your mind: Will this pleasure bring but a momentary delight, or real, lasting satisfaction? It makes a difference in the quality of our life and the kind of person we become when we learn how to distinguish between cheap thrills and meaningful, lasting rewards.

1. How much of your time you spend intentionally 2. How long you can hold your focus in one sitting 3. How long your mind wanders before you catch it

Stop Managing Your Time. Start Managing Your Focus.

TRY THIS: AUDIT YOUR TIME Spend a week tracking how much time you devote to the following: family, friends, health, and self. (Note that we’re leaving out sleeping, eating, and working. Work, in all its forms, can sprawl without boundaries. If this is the case for you, then set your own definition of when you are “officially” at work and make “extra work” one of your categories.) The areas where you spend the most time should match what you value the most. Say the amount of time that your job requires exceeds how important it is to you. That’s a sign that you need to look very closely at that decision. You’re deciding to spend time on something that doesn’t feel important to you. What are the values behind that decision? Are your earnings from your job ultimately serving your values?

If you can’t count durable relationships among the fruits of your time at work, you haven’t invested your time well — even in purely financial terms.

It's like, at the end, there's this surprise quiz: Am I proud of me? I gave my life to become the person I am right now! Was it worth what I paid?

Ask yourself: Are you spending your time on the right things? You may have causes, goals, interests. Are they even worth pursuing? I've long held on to a clipping from a newspaper in Roanoke, Virginia. It featured a photo of a pregnant woman who had lodged a protest against a local construction site. She worried that the sound of jackhammers was injuring her unborn child. But get this: In the photo, the woman is holding a cigarette. If she cared about her unborn child, the time she spent railing against jackhammers would have been better spent putting out that cigarette.

"The best way to judge a life is to ask yourself, "Did I make the best use of the time I had?