Your Brain Has a Steering Wheel. You Still Have to Use It.

Part 1: Why can 45 minutes disappear without you deciding to give it away?

You get home tired, hungry and slightly annoyed about something at school. Your phone has approximately 47 things "pinging" for your immediate attention. You had planned to go outside and finish an assignment before dinner. Forty-five minutes later, you are still scrolling. You made a series of decisions that brought you here forty-five minutes later. They just did not feel much like decisions. Real life works that way. Tiredness, stress, excitement, embarrassment, friends and whatever you were already doing all influence what happens next, commonly not getting to "what you had to get done". This is where the three musketeers of making a choice meet: self-awareness, decision-making and self-management. Self-awareness helps you notice what is pulling you. Decision-making skills help you consider what happens next. Self-management helps you actually do something with that information.

Catch yourself: At three random times today, pause for ten seconds. Ask: What am I doing right now, and why am I doing it?

Part 2: What part of a situation actually belongs to you?

Someone makes a really irritating comment that gets under your skin. Bad timing. You have an exam tomorrow that is already weighing heavily on your mind; add to that, you have pressure from friends wanting you to come out tonight. Part of you wants the break. Part of you knows you need to prepare. And that comment is immediately rattling around in your head. There is a lot of traffic in your head at this intersection. A lot that is going into how you choose to respond. But you have agency over what happens next. Agency is: I have choices. My actions matter. I am capable of acting on those choices.

Agency is you being at the steering wheel in determining your part in what happens next. The alternative is to react without pausing, considering, that is without practicing being an agent at the steering wheel. We know how that ends…

One final important point: You will not control everything happening around you, and sometimes your choices will be limited. Agency is knowing that having limited choices is not the same as having no choice.

Find your part: Think of one thing that bothered you today. Make two quick columns: Not Mine to Control and Mine to Influence. Where could you act?

Part 3: What happens if you run the decision forward?

A friend suggests something that sounds fun but also has a decent chance of ending badly. Instead of asking only, Do I want to do it?, look a little further ahead. Ask: If I do this, what might happen? What might go well? What might not go so well? Looking ahead does not make the decision for you. It just helps you see more of what might come with it before you decide.

Responsible decision-making does not mean automatically choosing the safest or most boring option. It means seeing more of the possible outcomes. Important to this is what is called considering the pros and the cons of a decision. For a decision that really matters, implement the "10-minutes, 10-hours, 10-days Test". How will I look back on my decision and actions in ten minutes? Ten hours? Could it still matter in ten days? Choosing socks probably does not require this level of strategic review. Some other decisions likely do.

Run it forward: Consider a decision you are facing or recently faced. What looks different when you consider tomorrow, not just right now?

Part 4: Why does knowing the better choice still not mean you will do it?

You can know sleep matters and still be awake at 1:07 a.m. You can know movement helps and spend Saturday barely moving. Knowing is not the same as doing. Self-management is where a decision becomes an action. One way to help is to make the next step specific. “I'll exercise more” leaves another decision waiting for you. Be specific: “After school Tuesday, I'm walking to the park with Maya for 25 minutes” tells you when, where and what. The same works for sleep, studying, stress or taking a break from your phone. A plan made earlier gives you something to follow when you are tired, distracted or tempted by something easier.

Make it real: Choose one thing you want to do this week. Give it a when, a where and a first step.

Conclusion: So who is actually steering?

You will not make every decision perfectly. That was never the job. The skill is noticing what is influencing you, pausing, looking ahead and deciding what deserves your next action. Then see what happened. If the plan worked, you learned something. If it did not, you learned something too. Change it and try again. Self-management is getting better at steering when real life is actually happening.

Your turn at the wheel: Think of one repeated decision. What usually influences it? What would you like to do differently next time?

There is no failing at self-management.

There is only the journey of mastering self-management.

“It’s not about perfection. It’s about progression.”

Kerri DeZutter