“Either you’re spending your time. Or your time is spending you.” – Seth Godin

I’m reminded of the classic story where you are given a magical bank. Each day it puts $86,400 into your bank account, but there’s a catch. (There’s always a catch, right?)

At the end of the day, whatever you don’t invest, whatever you don’t give away, whatever you don’t spend, it vaporizes. It goes away without anything to show for it.

If you were granted this magical account, what would you do with it?

I’m sure most of us would blow it on ourselves, but eventually, that would get old (or then again, maybe not). We would start to find ways to invest it in future opportunities. And once we experienced the joy of spending it with and giving it to others, we would start spending it with and giving it to those around us. Eventually, we would realize that every dollar is precious and would make certain that we were getting the most of every dollar, every day.

Where am I going with this?

Take 24 hours x 60 minutes x 60 seconds and see what you get. That’s right, you get 86,400 – the number of seconds there are in one day.

You see, each of us has 86,400 seconds we get to spend every day. At the end of the day, poof! They are gone.

Forever.

We cannot get them back.

Each day we make choices about how we spend our time. We can spend it on ourselves. We can invest it in future opportunities. We can spend it with others or give it away by helping them. It’s up to us to make conscious, wise decisions about how we spend our time.

However, if we get careless, if we do not choose how we spend our time, then the choices will be made for us. We can fall into the trap of letting life spend our time – things like our anxieties, our worries, our job, our possessions. We can let others spend our time for us. We can fall victim to social media and our digital devices. We can let life run on auto-pilot.

The result? You wake up one day and wonder, what happened? Where did the time go?

Put simply, you didn’t spend your time. Your time spent you.

The point is that you need to be mindful and aware every day of the time you are given. You need to be aware of how the time is being spent, and who is making the choices.

It is our responsibility to be wise and proper stewards of our time. We should be spending it building things that we will remember. While these could be big, life-changing things, the small things matter to. It can be as simple as logging off Facebook, putting down the phone, and spending quality time engaged with those closest to us. The little things add up, and over time, they become big things.

Don’t stress over it. Just make sure that you are in control of your time. Start making the choices. Start today. Start now. Make it count.

Bottom line, don’t let your time spend you.