Gandalf, the wizard in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings – I: The Fellowship of the Ring, is speaking privately with Frodo, who is faced with having to make tough decisions that affect himself and his friends. He is having difficulty in the what and how of these challenging decisions – in fact, decisions which actually may not be his to make. Gandalf patiently counsels him, "The only thing we can decide is what to do with the time we have been given." In our moments of quiet self-reflection, it is daunting to ask ourselves "what am I doing with the time I’ve been given?" And maybe more importantly, how do I decide? This is not a search for yet another set of daily to-do lists, or a schedule for rummaging through time management articles and productivity apps. Instead (to apply a simplistic economic image, if it’s true that time is money), how do you decide the amount of time you will spend or waste – and how do those get defined?

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal reported about a new study – the Executive Time Use Project – from the Harvard Business School and the London School of Economics. One finding is that organizational leaders spend 1/3 of their time in meetings (not all of them productive or inspirational). Further, after time spent was added up among meetings, calls, business meals, and adding in travel and exercise – roughly just six hours a week remained for solitude and working alone, which the leaders said they wanted more of simply to think and plan.

If you conducted such a self-survey of an average week, which categories would house the majority of your time? In what areas do you want to spend more time? What adjustments might be needed?

In other words, what are you doing with the time you have been given?