Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can’t buy more hours. Scientists can’t invent new minutes. And you can’t save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you’ve wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow. ― Denis Waitley

I’ve written more words in the last 3 years than I have in my entire life. Most of those words were not even for my job or school. I simply wrote because I wanted to. No one was telling me to sit down and write almost every single day.

No one told me to write a book. I just did.

And when it comes to time, it is that simple. As Denis said, “Time is an equal opportunity.” We all have 24 hours to manage for ourselves. Sure, some of us are busier than others, but in many cases, that is a choice. We can choose to be busy just as simple as it is to choose to be lazy.

You must learn to manage your time and your energy in order to become a better writer.

That means you have to start studying yourself. What are your habits? What time of day are you the sharpest? When you get home from work are you feeling too drained to do anything? What motivates you? How can you cultivate that motivation?

These are all questions you need to ask yourself. I have to do this to myself all the time. I get lazy. I get tired and I start to create bad habits. This isn’t really about “life hacking” it’s more about discovering who you are and how to make the best of your traits.

None of us are perfect, but all of us are capable.

Time after time you hear incredible stories from people against the odds that still manage to make a success of themselves. It’s not always about work or a career. It’s about themselves. It’s to prove that they are in fact capable. The next question to ask yourself is this.

Is it possible to do what you want to do?

Next question.

Are you willing to commit time to make it happen?

Final question.

What time of day are you most productive?

The simple next step is to designate your most productive hour to your goal. Writing is hard and you will need the best version of yourself to make sure you are able to be productive on even the most uninspiring days. Writing is more about ourselves than we realize. Why waste our productive time focused on sitcoms and dramas when we can invest our productive time in making something great?

It doesn’t matter how much time you’ve wasted in the past, you have all of today and tomorrow to make up for it.