Can You Control How Much Control You Have of Your Life?

Yes, to a degree. You cannot choose all the circumstances of your life, but some of the things you do today can expand or shrink the choices available to you tomorrow. You can sometimes control your future control.

That is different from simply “taking control of your life.” A better way to think about it is as building optionality: developing resources, skills, relationships, and flexibility that give your future self more possible moves.

You cannot guarantee what happens next. You can sometimes change how many ways you will be able to respond.

Some choices change your future choice set

Imagine you are offered a better job in another city.

Whether you can accept may depend on decisions made long before the offer arrived. Do you have enough savings to move? Do you have commitments that keep you where you are? Can your skills travel with you? Could you manage a few weeks without income between jobs?

You did not control when the opportunity appeared. Earlier choices helped determine whether you could act on it.

The same pattern appears elsewhere. Building savings may eventually give you the ability to leave a job, absorb an emergency, retrain, start a business, or turn down an opportunity you do not want. Learning a broadly useful skill can increase the jobs you could plausibly pursue. Maintaining relationships can increase the people you can call when you need information, help, or an introduction.

Choices can narrow the field too. Taking on large fixed expenses makes some future income unavailable before you earn it. Signing a long contract restricts your ability to change course. Specializing deeply in one area can make you more valuable there while making some alternatives harder to pursue.

A choice today can change the range of choices available later.

Today's choices can alter tomorrow's control

We often ask about control in the present: What can I do about this now?

But some decisions deserve a second test:

Current control: What can I choose now?

Control-building actions: Which choices could expand my future options?

Control-reducing commitments: Which choices could narrow them?

Imagine two people in similar jobs who both want the option to change careers in three years.

One develops a transferable skill, saves six months of expenses, maintains professional relationships, and experiments with freelance work.

The other develops skills specific to the current employer, increases fixed expenses to consume nearly all available income, and lets outside professional relationships fade.

Neither person controls the labor market three years from now. Neither is guaranteed a successful career change. But the first person has created more ways to respond to whatever that labor market looks like.

“What can I control?” therefore misses an important dimension.

Ask: “What can I do now that changes what I will be able to control later?”

Feeling in control is not the same as having options

Psychological research often studies perceived control, including feelings of mastery and constraints. Longitudinal research using Health and Retirement Study data found that perceived control and health can influence each other over time. Better health was associated with subsequent perceptions of greater control, while greater initial control predicted smaller health declines. The relationship appears to run in more than one direction rather than following a simple “think positively and gain control” story. (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

Another useful concept is self-efficacy, which the American Psychological Association defines as a person's perception of their capability to perform in a particular setting or attain desired results. It is not the same as actual control. You can be highly confident and still face an outcome you cannot determine. (dictionary.apa.org)

Self-Determination Theory adds a different distinction. It defines autonomy as an experience of volition and willingness, not as complete independence or the power to get whatever you want. Your circumstances can constrain your options while you still retain meaningful choice within those constraints. (selfdeterminationtheory.org)

These concepts describe different parts of the problem. Confidence affects whether you believe you can act. Autonomy concerns whether your actions feel volitional. Your environment determines which actions are actually available.

None alone tells you how much control you have over your life.

You can change your exposure without changing the event

Suppose something currently sits outside your control. Ask whether you can change your exposure to it.

You cannot control whether your company eliminates your position. Savings may reduce how much that event dictates your immediate choices.

You cannot control which candidate an employer hires. Additional skills and a larger network may increase the number of opportunities you can pursue.

You cannot control another person's behavior. Boundaries can change how much access that behavior has to your time and attention.

You cannot control uncertainty. Redundancy, insurance, knowledge, relationships, and alternatives can sometimes reduce your dependence on one outcome.

The external event remains outside your control. Your exposure to it has changed.

That is a more realistic way to increase control than trying to make uncontrollable events controllable.

More control is not always better

If future options have value, it is tempting to conclude that you should preserve as many as possible.

But control has costs.

Keeping every career possibility open can prevent you from developing deep expertise. Avoiding commitments to preserve freedom can make it harder to build lasting relationships. Holding all your resources in reserve for unknown future needs means giving up some opportunities to use them now.

Many worthwhile decisions deliberately close possibilities.

Choosing one city means not living in hundreds of others. Marriage, parenthood, specialization, leadership, home ownership, and entrepreneurship can all remove certain freedoms while creating different ones.

A life designed for maximum optionality could become a life in which you never commit enough to obtain what the options were supposed to make possible.

The goal is not maximum control. It is to preserve control where uncertainty matters and willingly surrender it where commitment matters more.

Ask what your decision does to your next decision

When facing an important choice, examine both its immediate result and the choice set it leaves behind:

“What do I control right now?” → “Which choice creates useful future options?” → “Which options would each choice close?” → “Which closed options would I actually miss?” → “What commitment am I willing to make?”

This changes how you evaluate decisions.

A job offer is not only about salary. It may expand or narrow what you can do next.

Saving money is not only deferred spending. It can purchase the ability to say no later.

Learning is not only acquiring knowledge. Some knowledge increases the number of problems you can solve and roles you can perform.

A commitment is not only something gained. It is also a decision about which alternatives you are willing to stop protecting.

You cannot control everything that will happen to you. But you can sometimes influence how many choices you will have when it does.

That may be the most practical answer to how much control you can control.

📚Bookmarked for You

Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke: A useful companion for separating the quality of a decision from an outcome you cannot fully control, especially when luck and uncertainty remain involved.

Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman: Explores the other side of control: accepting that time, possibility, and human capacity are finite, so a meaningful life requires choosing what not to pursue.

🧬QuestionStrings to Practice: Expanding Your Options

Use this sequence before a decision that could significantly shape your future flexibility.

“What choices do I have now?” → “Which choice creates the most useful future options?” → “Which options would each choice close?” → “Which closed options would I actually miss?” → “What commitment am I willing to make?”

The objective is not maximum freedom. It is having the right freedom when you need it.

For the other side of the problem, QuestionClass has explored How do you know when something's outside your control?, which asks how to recognize the boundary between what you can change and what you must respond to.

Keep asking better questions with QuestionClass’s Question-a-Day.

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