Your Time Management Sucks Because Your Ego Rules the Day

Let’s break down the two statements in that title.

First: you're terrible at managing time. I know this because you're reading this. I didn’t send this to you with a picture of your child and a threat that if you don't read this, something bad will happen. People with airtight calendars and personal systems don’t have time to read time management blogs. That’s what I call the Awareness Paradox: the people who waste the most time are usually the ones searching for answers instead of implementing what they know already works.

Second statement I know is true today: your ego is the reason for the chaos in your life. You’ve been telling everyone it’s the demands of your work schedule or your ADHD. It’s not. Nor is it your health, kids, or spouse. It’s your ego.

You think the problem is procrastination, over-committing, or distractions. If you’ve heard me talk, you know how much I rail against smartphones. But those are all symptoms. The real problem is one of integrity; you don’t keep your word. Thus, your time management is not a logistics problem. It's a character problem.

You stay in conversations too long because you want to be liked. You say yes to dumb shit you don’t want to do because you want to be seen as helpful. You avoid deep work because it’s uncomfortable and, not that deep down, you’re very afraid to fail. You overbook yourself because being busy (or at least looking busy) makes you feel important. No one’s buying it but you anymore.

None of this is untrue for you, but I’m not a clairvoyant or a con-man. It’s simple, proven psychology: your ego is running your day like it owns you and you’re letting it.

Everyone’s favorite podcasting Navy SEAL, Jocko Willink, has a famous tagline: “Discipline equals freedom.” He’s right. But discipline isn’t just waking up early to sweat or scribble in a journal. It’s keeping your word to yourself at every hour, even the late ones. Not just the ones after work and practices and dinner clean up; but especially when nobody’s watching and you really don’t want to do it.

Ego hates that stuff. Ego wants options, comfort, and most annoyingly, it wants to feel good now all the time. Unless you’re a psychopath alpha accountant, your ego has never once screamed with genuine passion that it was excited to do the boring and mundane.

This may sound like I’ve tailor made these paragraphs for you. That’s your ego. This is what we’re all dealing with. So what’s going on?

“Ego” comes from Latin for “I,” but my beloved ancient Stoics never used the term as we do today. It wasn’t until a dude called Sigmund built an entire framework around it, placing our ego as the middleman between primal urges (the id) and moral demands (the superego). For Freud, the ego's job is to keep you functioning through the crazy inner workings of our complex being; as if three personalities have to be perfectly balanced to get the best version of you.

The Stoics had a different perspective when it came to stoking human excellence. They spoke in terms of training character, deferring always to logic, and restricting passions. What we call “ego,” they called pride, vanity, and false judgments, especially about self-identities like “wealthy,” “lucky,” or “gifted.” These are the illusions that blind you to reality. In Stoicism, ego is the untamed horse dragging your chariot off the path. Not evil, just untrained.

Every animal acts out of self-interest. You are no different. Your ego does have a legitimate job: to keep you alive. But because it has accomplished that objective every day for the last however many thousands of days you’ve been alive, your ego is feeling rather important. But it’s gotten too big and now says things like you’re special because you’ve gotten this far or because you set some new record of human achievement never before seen on this planet. You really think no one has ever done that before? I bet you’re the type to think people 100 years ago were dumber than we are now. Or worse that you’re better than someone else; at any point or place in history.

The brutal truth about the evolution of human ego? It’s way more boring.

Remember, you’re essentially just another animal. A smart one, sure. But we humans have all just gotten really good at doing life well. That said, you’re still a creature driven by a fear of death, loneliness, inadequacy, and an annoying urge to mash your crotch into stuff. You’ve adapted incredibly well since we began, but your mental software is ancient. You’re still running around in survival mode in a world that doesn’t demand it as much anymore.

5,000 years ago, short attention spans kept us alive. Miss a threat, you gone. A rustle in the bush, a shadow overhead, a crack of thunder? That meant move, now. Today, it’s a buzz, a ping, a TikTok loop. Same reflex, different input. Your brain hasn’t caught up to your environment. That’s not your fault, but now it is your responsibility to train that first nature to survive happily in an entirely different world.

Oh, and all you ADD/ADHD identifiers? Maybe stop calling yourself a disorder and start calling yourself the truth: a perfectly normal human brain doing exactly what it was built to do. You are meant to scan rapidly for threats, shift focus fast, and stay alert in a dangerous world. You’re not broken. You’re an adapted species with a remarkable ability to stay alive in a world of new and emerging threats. The problem isn’t your brain, it is how you’re allowing yourself to exist in a particular environment and the fact that your ego hasn’t caught up to modern life. You’re still reacting like every ping, buzz, or flashing light like it is life or death. Think about this…what would be absolute and unequivocal hell for most people today? How about sitting in a field for hours alone with no chair, no phones, no books, no music, no screens, or any available conversations. Just stillness. Guys, like fifty years ago, that was just called Saturday afternoon for nearly everyone alive.

I know, I’m drifting. But stay with me. We’re almost there. There’s just one last point about ego and modern life I need to hit before we tie this back to time management.

Besides the layers underneath tech distraction disorder and our dopamine addiction, your ego is completely overloaded in a world obsessed with appearances and fake connections. Media and marketing has finally achieved its objective in convincing us we have actual relationships with people we’ve never met. You think you know them. You have no clue

Relationships require physical proximity and presence. Politicians are never considered in a relationship with someone unless they meet in person. Why? You need to feel a voice’s vibration to gauge if it carries weight or passion, see if their body moves with confidence around their words, and hear their discomfort or conviction through inflection.

As someone who’s handled hundreds of Zoom depositions and hearings, let me be clear: meaningful human connection doesn’t happen on screens. If most of your “friends” exist only in pixels, you don’t have real relationships, you have simulations. If that stings, good. You probably need what I’m peddling more than you think.

When humans began civilizing, the goal wasn’t peace or enlightenment. It was still always survival; just longer, with more support, and a bit more joy over sorrow. Tribes became towns so we could share resources and recover from disasters quicker. Civilization made life safer and longer, but it has also distracted us from our biological mission.

That mission? Survive longer so more of us could reproduce and help raise self-sufficient kids. That’s the point for everyone. You’re not special. You’re not exempt from this calling. But then medicine extended lifespans like we’ve never seen and culture delayed parenting into the fourth decade for some, me included. For others, we began giving out passes to be childless as long as they contribute to our economies or advance science or the arts. But society has now also allowed adolescent dependence to stretch into the third decade for some.

And that, humans, is why your calendar’s a mess. You think doing things for others is uncomfortable or not pleasurable. You’re chasing your goals, comforts, or validation. You may not be driven by your ego the same way I was for a few decades, but you’re certainly guilty of ego gratification. Your ego wants to be tired and lazy and pleasured and you let it. Instead of waking up to pursue our goals with fervor and haste as nature has always called for humans to do, you’ve thought you were above it. You thought you could quietly do the bare minimum and let the modern comforts of technology provide you with a satisfying life. How’s that going for you?

You want clarity again? A new perspective? A renewed sense of purpose? Start here:

You’re not here to protect your comfort. You’re here to serve; daily, hourly, right now. Serve your family. Your communities. Your values and the good part of your soul. Reclaim that and you reclaim your time and sense of purpose immediately. But to do it, you need to reign in and control that bad part of your soul first. Don’t get upset or feel special; remember, ego is in EVERYONE. The people you thought were better than you? They weren’t. They just had less of their ego show up because they were in control of it.

Thus, the cure to your time management woes isn’t another productivity app; although everyone could benefit from more meditation. No, It’s killing the current version of your ego through humility. That means finally getting honest about your limitations, your conditioning, and your access to distractions. It means confronting those fickle delusions of grandeur you’ve never admitted out loud. But it also means treating your calendar like a contract with real consequences and penalty interest. It means delaying gratification and saying no to the easy stuff that undermines the real work.That means always doing the hard thing, especially when you don’t feel like it.

Start by tracking how often you lie to yourself about time. How often you’re late. How often you scroll when you said you'd work. How often your ego whispers, “Just a little longer,” or, “You earned it,” when the truth is, you rarely earn it the way you promise yourself.

Start saying no, often! Build a schedule with boundaries and rituals. Journal every morning like it’s a date with a probation officer you can’t miss. Be brutally honest while you’re there and watch the hard stuff become easy and procrastination a thing of the past.

Want help building the tools to win this war? This is exactly why I built The Honesty Experiment and the Ego Detox. Both are daily practices for calling out the lies, sharpening your integrity, and reclaiming your time for your purpose.

Call or text me now to get started if you need help. Or keep lying to your calendar.

Your call.

“Don't be ashamed of needing help. You have a duty to fulfill just like a soldier on the wall of battle. So what if you are injured and can't climb up without another soldier's help?” - Marcus Aurelius