This is a guest post from time-management expert, Walt Hampton. Who also happens to be my husband, which is a problem because he’s highly judgmental of how I spend my time. I suppose he has a right to play all morally superior because he does, essentially, everything you’re supposed to do in this department. Plus, he flosses his teeth twice a day. But I thought I’d bring him out nonetheless because I keep hearing how afraid people are that they’ll have no time if they start in on a book project. I get the fear, except…

Time.

Everyone wants it. No one has enough of it.

We all want to manage it.

But here’s the problem: Time can’t be managed. Time is just an idea, a construct. Time just is.

Einstein said that time is relative. He talked about a space-time continuum.

More recently physicists have hypothesized that time is all laid out on a palette, on a landscape before us: past, present and future.

I think time is more like the wind. We can feel it blow across our face. We can see its ravages in the mirror and in the faded photos in our drawer. We can perceive its impact on the lives around us and upon the world we live in.

But you can’t grab hold of it. You can’t contain it. You can’t wrestle it to the ground.

You can’t command it to stop. You can’t get more of it.

And you certainly can’t ever hope to manage it.

That’s the bad news.

But there is a sliver of good news.

The good news is that you can manage you. And when you do that, you will become a master of your time.

Becoming a master of your time means getting clear on what you value most and then choosing – consciously choosing – continually, courageously relentlessly choosing – to devote your time to what matters most. And saying no to all the rest.

I’m not suggesting that this is easy. Of all the issues that challenge our private coaching clients, and all of the business leaders and professionals with whom we work, this ‘time management’ thing is the most challenging of all.

But getting it ‘right’ is crucial.

Because the sands run quickly through the glass.

Because there is no time.

Because at the end of our lives, none of us is going to wish that we had ‘spent’ more time in the office, billed more hours, accumulated more miles, closed more deals, seen more clients, sold more products, networked more, Tweeted more, or updated our Facebook status more frequently. What will matter will be the experiences we have had, the lives that we have touched, and the love that we have shared. What will matter will be whether we have fulfilled the deepest longings of our hearts, whether we have spent ourselves, not on the urgent, but on the important; whether we have lived without regret.

If you’d like to become a master of your time, check out Walt’s book, The Power Principles of Time Mastery