How to Control Your Life

“Control Part One: Five Facts about Control” (this page)
“Control Part Two: Parts of Control”
“Control Part Three: Why You Feel Frantic, Helpless or Incompetent.”
“Control, Part Four: Boost Your Power by Not Controlling Certain Things.”
“Control Part Five: Top Succeed Let Others Control You“
“Control Part Six: The Four Circles of Control”

Control Part One: Five Facts about Control

Like money or nuclear power, control can be used for good or evil. You can use it to harm, suppress or destroy lives. Or you can use it to help people, increase your income and improve the world around you.

Negative, destructive control gives control a bad name. Yet positive, constructive control is essential to successful living. When you are in control, you make progress, enjoy your work and achieve success.

Taking better control of yourself, your time, career, business, equipment, relationships, family, property, habits and so on, is much easier when you understand and apply five facts about control.

Five Facts about Control

1. Control is the biggest difference between success and failure.

2. Control consists of three parts: Start, Change and Stop.

3. Your control problems are based on your weaknesses with starting or changing or stopping.

4. If you try to control people or things outside your sphere of operation, you fail.

5. To succeed, you must let others control you.

Each of these facts are covered in five separate articles. In this first article, we cover the first fact.

1. Control Is the Difference Between Success and Failure

“What is control?

“Whether one handles a machine of the size of a car or as small as a typewriter or even an accounting pen, one is faced with the problems of control. An object is of no use to anyone if it cannot be controlled. Just as a dancer must be able to control his body, so must a worker in an office or a factory be able to control his body, the machines of his work and, to some degree, the environment around him.

“The primary difference between ‘the worker’ in an office or a factory and an executive is that the executive controls minds, bodies and the placement of communications, raw materials and products, the worker controls, in the main, his immediate tools.” — L. Ron Hubbard

Consider two different restaurant owners: Steve and Kate. Steve owns an Italian restaurant and Kate owns a French restaurant. One of them succeeds and the other one fails because they manage their restaurants in different ways.

Steve loves to chat with customers while Kate loves to improve her operations.

Steve hires an accountant to handle his bookkeeping while Kate stays late to figure out how to do her own books.

Steve believes his personality gets people to return while Kate decides good food and a fantastic team keeps people coming back.

Steve loves Italian food but cannot cook. He can only hire experienced cooks. He must bend over backwards to keep them on the job, despite their bad attitudes.

Kate and her cooks invent their own recipes and keep them in a book. Kate establishes checklists for the staff for setting up tables, cleaning and so on. She also enjoys training inexperienced cooks, servers and other staff.

If Steve’s top people quit working for him, what will happen to his restaurant? If Kate’s top people quit, what will happen to her restaurant?

Who is in better control? Which restaurant will succeed?

Another Example

Jill and Sue are hired by a large hospital on the same day. They are expected to type medical reports explaining the patients’ treatment so the hospital can collect its fee from insurance companies.

Jill decides to be a robot and simply type whatever is in front of her. One day, her computer goes down. She calls the technician and paints her fingernails until the computer is fixed. She has no idea what she is typing as she cannot understand the medical terms. She decides to just pretend it is a foreign language. She types every word placed in front of her without using the computer shortcuts. She produces 20 reports per day.

Sue wants more control of her position. As well as typing the reports, she learns about the computer. She reads the help screens to learn shortcuts in the program. She learns to copy and paste large sections of text and other time-saving actions. She produces 30 reports per day.

Sue finds a medical dictionary in the storage room and starts to look up the terms in her reports. She buys lunch for a nurse so she can ask about medical procedures.

Who is in better control of her job? Of her career?

One day, Jill types a report about a one-year-old receiving treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. She types it exactly and sends it to the insurance company. That same day, Sue is typing a report for an eighty-year-old man’s immunization shot for chicken pox. She knows this is a mistake and sends it back to the nurse. The nurse realizes the patient names were switched and is impressed by Jill’s level of responsibility.

Who is the more valuable employee? Who should get the next promotion? Obviously, Sue is on her road to success.

Are you in control of your work?

10 Signs You Are Not in Control of Your Work

1. Easily fatigued or exhausted
2. Work area is messy and disorganized
3. Job is not interesting
4. Easily stressed
5. Need constant help
6. See no way to improve performance
7. Easily confused by others while on the job
8. Frequently think of quitting
9. Frantically react to emergencies
10. You cannot conceive of greater productivity

10 Signs You Are in Control of Your Work

1. Energized, motivated
2. Work area is neat and organized
3. Work is interesting and enjoyable
4. Feel challenged, not stressed
5. Effectively supervise self
6. Constantly looking for ways to improve
7. Rarely confused while on the job
8. Frequently thinking of more responsibility
9. Rationally respond to emergencies
10. You have good ideas for increasing productivity

On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being in full control, how well do you control of your job? Your home life? Your possessions? Your personal habits? Your success?

Fortunately, taking better control of your work is easy! The first step is to make a list.

Recommendations

1. Make a list of all your most important areas of your life. Your list can be your responsibilities or your highest priorities. Example:

My bills
My daughter
My health

For a job:

My energy
My daily production numbers
My relationship with my boss

2. Rate your control of each area on a scale of 1 to 10.

3. Imagine how your life would be in you could increase your control of each area to a 10.

4. Work out a plan to take a little more control of each.

In “Control, Part Two” we explain to take control of anything, including yourself. You can also learn more about control in The Problems of Work by L. Ron Hubbard.