To really understand, manage, maximize, and squeeze every opportunity out of the time you have – you must fully understand and appreciate how much of it is available to you. You must take control of your time. If you listen to people discussing the topic of time – especially regarding the amount they have at work – you’ll probably hear a lot of complaining. People act as though work is something to get through, yet they spend very little of their time even doing it. Most people only work enough so that it feels like work, whereas successful people work at a pace that creates such satisfying results that the work is a reward. Truly successful people don’t even call it work, for them, it’s a passion.

You must decide how you are going to use your time. You must command, control, and squeeze every second out of it in order to increase your footprint and dominate the marketplace. Get all necessary parties involved – your family, colleagues, associates, employees – to recognize and agree upon which priorities are the most important. If you don’t prioritize, you will have people with different agendas pulling you in various directions.

Work should provide a purpose, a mission, and a sense of accomplishment. These things are vital to every person’s mental, emotional, and physical well-being. People who promote the new age advice of “take it easy” are encouraging a mindset that’s negative. Consider the negative traits this thinking has created in people: laziness, procrastination, a lack of urgency, a tendency to blame others, irresponsibility, entitlement, and the expectation or assumption that it’s up to someone else to solve our problems.

 “Only time will tell if it was time well-spent.”
-Jimmy Buffet 

“Time isn’t the main thing. It’s the only thing.”
-Miles Davis

“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.”
-William Pinn

“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.”
-Peter Drucker

“Time is a created thing. To say, ‘I don’t have time’ is to say, ‘I don’t want to.”
-Lao Tzu

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.”
-Paul J Meyer

“People often complain about lack of time when lack of direction is the problem.”
-Zig Ziglar

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”
-Stephen King

“Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness.”
-Jean de la Bruyere

“There is no such thing as time management; there is only self-management.”
-Rory Vanden 

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”
-Steve Jobs

“Ordinary people think merely of spending time, great people think of using it.”
-Arthur Schopenhauer

“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four-hour days.”
-Zig Ziglar

“Your future is created by what you do today, not tomorrow.”
-Anonymous