Freedom Isn't Free: How to Buy Back Your Life From Your To-Do List

Have you ever caught yourself thinking that your life doesn't truly belong to you? It seems the choice of what to do and how to spend your time is always yours, yet somehow, it’s unnoticeably siphoned away by work, bosses, clients, duties, and a thousand other little things. There's never enough time. It feels as if you are no longer in control of anything in your own life.

A huge proportion of people facing this feeling solve the problem by leaving employment to work for themselves. At first, this appears to be the ultimate solution. It promises limitless freedom, the ability to make decisions you deem right, and complete control over your activities. For the first couple of weeks, perhaps a month, this illusion holds. But then, the interesting part begins.

Then, as a rule, you face the harsh reality. In this reality, you are in constant fear—of losing clients, of missing deadlines. Unlike in employment, you have no guarantee you will even earn money. The most interesting part is that in this reality, there is often no real freedom. Before, you had to obey a boss; now, you must obey the client and the deadline. It doesn't sound as great as it seemed from the shore, does it?

But the point here isn't about freelancing versus employment or business. Absolutely any person can feel like a hostage to their circumstances. The issue lies in something else entirely, in one simple question: Who, or what, controls your life?

The Only Person in the Driver's Seat

When you refuse to meet with friends for the second week in a row, sleep four hours a day, and do everything possible to satisfy a client's request, it may seem that the client controls your life. In fact, this is not entirely true. A thought that is perhaps simple but profound needs to be felt, not just understood: Only you control your life.

No customer, boss, or employee is truly capable of controlling you. Here is why. Whatever you do, and at whatever scale, you, like all other people on this planet, have always had and will always have only 24 hours in a day. You can spend this time however you like, even lying on a bed staring aimlessly at the ceiling. But most likely, you have many goals and tasks—so many that you simply do not have enough time to complete them all. You are forced to choose which ones are worth your time and which are not.

It is in this choice that the whole essence is hidden. Our life is a constant choice of what to spend our time on. If you feel that your business takes away your freedom and your clients take all your time, it means you are making a choice in favor of giving them control. To regain that control, you must learn to manage your time perfectly, so there is enough for life, work, friends, family, and yourself.

The "Hell Yeah or No" Filter

The first step is to refuse tasks that do not cause you delight or bring you closer to your goal. There is a wonderful approach for this, detailed by Derek Sivers, called "Hell yeah or no." If a proposal doesn't make you burn with impatience to get involved, then no reward for its completion is worth the time spent on it.

Our brain will not derive satisfaction from work that feels like hard labor. A task undertaken with resistance will inevitably take more time and effort than even a more voluminous task that you are excited about. Of course, in conditions of a total lack of money, this practice may not be feasible. But if your basic needs are covered, you must learn not to grab onto everything. Otherwise, you will simply burn out, leaving no strength, motivation, or time for what you are actually working for.

Imagine you are a video editor with a global goal of launching your own creative agency. Three editing projects a month cover your basic living expenses. All work beyond that is, in theory, for your global goal. Now, an unpleasant, demanding client contacts you. You agree to take the work out of inertia—money is money. As a result, you spend far more than your usual 30 hours on the task. You experience stress, fatigue, and burnout, losing precious time to emotional recovery.

You covered a financial need, yes. But what if you had refused? You need money to eventually hire a scriptwriter for your agency. Why not skip the stage of earning that money and instead spend this time learning to write scripts yourself? One simple manipulation of time yields multiple advantages:

• You gain a new skill.
• You better understand how to delegate to a scriptwriter in the future.
• You avoid negative emotions from dealing with a difficult client.
• You save recovery time.
• You reinforce the feeling of control over your life and time.

This is precisely how the "hell yeah or no" principle works.

Freedom Through Limitation

The second important part of managing your life is embracing freedom through limitation. It sounds strange, but consider this. At 17, it seems that being able to do whatever you want is freedom. But is it?

Take a trivial example like smoking. The logic seems correct: I am free to do what I want, including smoking. But any bad habit is an addiction, and in a state of addiction, freedom is impossible. You begin to restructure your life around the habit, which means you become less free in your actions. The same can be said for endlessly scrolling social media, compulsively shopping online, or tracking the lives of acquaintances.

The logic of freedom through limitation is to tell yourself: "I am not free to smoke or glue myself to a screen, but I am free not to do all this." You consciously limit yourself in one area and, paradoxically, acquire more freedom. By refusing to smoke, you reclaim an hour a day. You have limited yourself in only one action but gained access to a million others, which can potentially bring you closer to your goals. Even more importantly, you gain a sense of internal freedom and realize the preciousness of your time when you see how its reallocation leads to new results.

Building Your Day with Intention

A schedule and a task planner are fundamental tools for managing your life. It's not a new idea, but it works. A few key principles make it effective:

1. Identify Regular Tasks. In my case, this is a minimum of 30 minutes of physical activity every day. Sport helps maintain discipline and generates energy. Find your non-negotiable daily habit that fuels everything else.
2. Set a "Highlight of the Day." This is your single most important, priority task for the day. It must be completed, no matter what. Ideally, you should schedule this task for the first half of the day when you are most productive. If you finish your main task by 2 p.m., you can approach the rest of your day with a sense of accomplishment and confidence.
3. Time-Block Your Tasks. A task should not exist in a vacuum, separate from time. If you have a task written down—"Work on Project X from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m."—you will automatically deal with anything that could distract you by 3:30 p.m. A schedule is the simplest guideline for yourself.

Buying Back Your Time: The Logic of Delegation

When you first start working for yourself, you may feel you lack the money to delegate. This is where simple math can be liberating. You need to sit down and actually count. You may have an opportunity you simply don't see.

Suppose you are a private tutor with the goal of opening an online school. An hour of your time costs a respectable fee. At first glance, you have nothing to delegate. But if you look wider, you can see non-obvious tasks. For example, general apartment cleaning takes 3-4 hours a week. In those four hours, you could earn a significant amount tutoring. More importantly, you could take on a new student, which brings you closer to your ultimate goal.

Does it make sense to hire a housekeeper? If the cost of cleaning is less than what you would earn in that time, the decision is obvious. But even if the amount is comparable, it still makes sense. You are using that time to build toward your larger goal, rather than spending it on a task someone else can do.

The Art of Contentment

Finally, the most difficult but most important skill is the ability to be satisfied with the work done, without feeling guilty that you could have done more. Without a feeling of satisfaction, any work becomes meaningless. There is a simple truth: we like it when we succeed. Blaming yourself for not doing more leads to nothing but a loss of time, opportunity, and self-confidence.

Instead of self-criticism, it's always better to say: "Okay, I did well. This morning there was nothing, and now something exists because of my efforts. Now, all that remains is to figure out how to do even more tomorrow." Positive thoughts lead to positive results. Remember that.

To summarize, only you control your time. To learn how to manage it wisely and take full control of your life, focus on these principles: the "hell yeah or no" filter, freedom through limitation, the highlight of the day, task delegation, and praising yourself for your accomplishments.

References

• Sivers, D. (2020). Hell Yeah or No: what's worth doing. Hit Media.

  This book expands on the core idea that decisions should be a clear "hell yeah!" or a "no." Sivers argues that being more selective about commitments frees up time and energy for the projects that truly matter, which directly relates to the article's point on avoiding draining tasks and clients.

• Knapp, J., & Zeratsky, J. (2018). Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day. Currency.

  This work provides a practical framework for intentionally designing your day. Its central concept of choosing a single "Highlight" to prioritize each day is a direct echo of the article's advice to identify the "highlight of the day." The authors offer strategies to eliminate distractions and build energy to accomplish that one important goal, reinforcing the theme of taking control of one's schedule (see Part 2, "Highlight," pp. 51-98).