Choose Your Time

The Simple Newsletter - Issue # 079

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Adam’s Thoughts

Today, I was at one of our CEO mastermind lunches.

As we were wrapping up, someone looked at the time and said:

“Oh man, I have to go.”

Have to.

That phrase sounds completely normal because most of us say it every day.

I have to pick up the kids. I have to get to this client meeting. I have to make it to the store before it closes. I have to get to the gym before work.

But what kind of pressure are we putting on ourselves every time we say those words?

Do we really have to?

Most of the people in that room—and most of you reading this—are supposed to be CEOs.

Not just of our businesses.

Of our lives.

But when you say you have to do something, you give away some of that authority.

Someone else owns your time. Something else controls your energy. Another obligation is making the decision for you.

For that moment, you’re no longer acting like the CEO.

You’re operating under someone else’s command.

So I’m going to be more careful with the phrase have to and start replacing it with something more intentional:

Choose to.

A few years ago, I read Essentialism by Greg McKeown. One of the ideas that stayed with me was the shift from I have to toward I choose to.

Because if you have to do everything, you’re not focused on the essentials.

You’re just doing everything.

Most business owners eventually realize they can do almost anything.

But we cannot do everything.

We have to choose.

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Adam’s Lessons

An old Italian man once shared a phrase with me:

Freedom is never having to be in a rush.

I’ve never forgotten it.

When you feel like you have to do something, you’re usually rushing to finish one thing or get to the next.

You’re physically in one place, but mentally, you’re already somewhere else.

That isn’t freedom.

Freedom means having enough agency over your life to choose where your attention goes.

It means choosing to pick up your children because being there matters to you.

Choosing to meet with a client because you believe in the work.

Choosing to go to the gym because taking care of yourself supports the life you’re building.

The responsibility may not change.

But your relationship with it does.

That shift—from obligation to choice—gives you back your agency.

And agency is the freedom, power, and capacity to act intentionally.

At Atomic Business Coaching, and especially inside Be the CEO, we want people to develop both agency and certainty.

Certainty about what matters.

Agency to act on it.

Being the CEO of your life doesn’t mean you have no responsibilities. It means you consciously decide which responsibilities deserve your time, money, and energy.

So stop telling yourself you have to do everything.

Start recognizing what you choose to do—and make those choices deliberately.

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So here’s my question for you this week:

What is one thing you’ve been telling yourself you have to do—and how would it feel different if you recognized that you’re choosing to do it?

That’s all for this week.

See you next Saturday.