LAURA VANDERKAM: How to gain control of your free timeWhen people find out I write about time management, they (1)_________ two things. One is that I'm always on time, and I'm not. I have four small children, and I would like to blame them for my occasional tardiness, but sometimes it's just not their fault. I was once late to my own speech on time management.We all had to just take a (2)__________together and savorthat irony.The second thing they assume is that I have lots of tips and tricks for saving bits of time here and there. Sometimes I'll hear from (3)__________ that are doing a story along these lines, generally on how to help their readers find an extra hour in the day. And the idea is that we'll shave bits of time off everyday activities, add it up, and we'll have time for the good (4)________. I question the entire premise of this piece, but I'm always interested in hearing what they've come up with before they call me. Some of my favorites: doing errands where you only have to make right-hand turns.Being extremely judicious in microwave usage: it says three to three-and-a-half minutes on the (5)_________, we're totally getting in on the bottom side of that. And my personal favorite, which makes sense on some level, is to DVR your favorite shows so you can fast-forward through the (6)____________. That way, you save eight minutes every half hour, so in the course of two hours of watching TV, you find 32 minutes to (7)__________.Which is true? You know another way to find 32 minutes to exercise? Don't watch two hours of TV a day, right?Anyway, the idea is we'll save bits of time here and there, add it up, we will finally get to everything we want to do. But after studying how successful people spend their time and looking at their (8)____________ hour by hour, I think this idea has it completely backward. We don't build the lives we want by saving time. We build the lives we want, and then time saves itself.