I will be the first one to admit you can sure waste a lot of time reading articles and going to seminars on time management. A lot of the information out there on the subject is “cutesy,” redundant, and not always applicable to the way most people live their lives. I like to think that the courses we teach a Baker Communications are the exception to this trend, but still, there comes a time when you have to get a grip and deal with life. The best kept secret about time management is that there is no magic bullet that will miraculously rearrange your life, introduce peace and tranquility where none existed before, and quadruple your efficiency while doubling the amount of free time you have for golf and outings with the family. Busy people are going to remain busy people as long as they have gifts, talents and vision to offer the world. Good time management strategies can bring order to your busy activities and help you think more clearly about your priorities – which is good, but time marches on, with or without you.
Will Rogers once said, “It ain’t what I don’t know that gets me in trouble. It is what I do know that just ain’t so.” With that in mind, here are a few time management “facts” that everyone knows, which, as it turns out, “ain’t necessarily so.”
1. With the proper training, we can learn to manage time better. Wrong. Nobody can “manage” time. Physicists can’t even explain exactly what it is. Time comes and goes, and there is not a thing we can do about it. As time is passing, we can either be doing things that are productive or things that are wasteful. Like Old Man River, time just keeps rolling along.
2. Time management strategies help us get more things done. Wrong. A good time management strategy actually enables you to get fewer things done. As you implement your strategy, you will eliminate a lot of the noise and distractions, prioritize your most valuable tasks, and do a better job of getting those important things done. You will probably end up doing fewer things (after all, nobody has the time to do everything on their list anyhow), but what you do accomplish should deliver a bigger and more satisfying payoff.
3. To do lists are a good way to help complete your important projects. Wrong. A to do list is simply a list of things you need to do, meaning that they aren’t done yet! A task can stay on your to do list forever and never get done. If you want to get something done, get it off of your to do list and set aside a block of time in your schedule for it. This is the way to make yourself a promise that you will work on it, which greatly increases your chances of getting it done.
4. An organizer system will help you get organized. Wrong. Plenty of hopelessly disorganized people own very expensive organizer systems. It would be better to say that people who value being organized can use organizer systems very effectively. Unless you are willing to make the changes in habits and attitudes that it will take to put your time to better use, carrying an organizer simply becomes an exercise in pretension.
5. Interruptions and distractions such as phone calls, unscheduled visitors, last minute “urgent” projects, and meetings are the major time bandits that should be controlled or avoided in order to boost your productivity. Wrong. Life is full of interruptions and distractions, and some of them are very important! You should have a strategy for responding to them, but you can’t hope to eliminate them, and many of them are too critical to be avoided in the first place. Some of interruptions are really opportunities you just weren’t expecting. The truth is the one time bandit that you have the most control over is YOU! Most of your time is wasted through procrastination, searching for things that should have been tracked better, perfectionism (not being able to let go of a project until it is “just right”) interrupting yourself in the middle of an important project to “bunny path” after something else, etc. The key to effective time management is to make better choices ourselves, not shift the blame to others.
6. Stick to one task until it is completed. Wrong. Oh, in your dreams, it would be nice to just zero in on one thing and pursue it obsessively until it was totally, perfectly accomplished, but life doesn’t work that way. Set aside significant chunks of time each day so that you can make steady, efficient progress on your major projects, but leave time for other things that will inevitably come up. See #5 above.
Everybody says that time is money. Wrong again. If you think time is only about money, your vision and your priorities are way off the mark. Time is Life; Life is Time. They are hopelessly, marvelously entwined. Wasting time is the same as wasting life. This means that time management is another way of saying “life management.” Life isn’t about Day Planners and to do lists; life is about living! In order to receive the most happiness and the deepest satisfaction from every minute, make sure you are devoting the most time and energy to those things that bring you joy and satisfaction, and neither your time nor your life will be wasted.
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December Time Management Quick Tip of the Month – Using Time Logs
Some people suggest that a good first step toward effective time management is to log how you spend your days, writing down your activities in 15-minute increments. But seriously, who needs more paper work and distractions to keep up with when your time is already stressed? A time log can be a useful tool, but it is not the place to start. Instead, adopt a time management strategy that trains you in better habits like setting priorities, delegating, time blocking, and information management. Give that system time to become a part of your life first (it could take a couple of months.) Then, if you still find yourself falling behind and feeling stressed, spend a week or so logging your time. You may have some blind spots that need to be addressed, and logging will expose them so you can correct them.
