Why Time Management is a Myth
“Time is the most valuable coin in your life. You and you alone will determine how that coin will be spent. Be careful that you do not let other people spend it for you.”
― Carl Sandburg
One of the trickiest things about time management is there are two kinds of time: objective time and subjective time. Objective time is measured by the clock and calendar, and subjective time is our experience of it. Some days, time passes slowly and other days we wonder where the afternoon went. You close your eyes for a minute and the time on the clock says an hour just passed. Your husband says you can have 10 minutes in the shop, yet comes looking for you after three.
As you get older, time passes more quickly. As a child, summer stretches on for months. As an adult, you cannot believe it is Christmas already. Watching the clock at work makes it tick by even more slowly. Being immersed in a good book can pass the whole weekend in an instant.
Combine our subjective view of time with an inability to accurately gauge how long the task will take, and you can see why time management is an impossible dream.
Psychologist Neil Fiore has developed something called the un-schedule. Instead of blocking out time on the calendar for projects we are working on, he suggests first scheduling everything else we know we have to do, including laundry, cooking, cleaning up afterwards, eating, travelling, working out, walking the dog, visiting friends and so on. People soon realise there is a lot less unstructured time than we first imagined. Fiore also recommends scheduling time for fun; otherwise, we feel stretched and overworked because relaxation gets missed from our busy days.
Once your un-schedule is complete, you will soon realise that instead of visualising large, unfettered blocks of time in which to write your novel, you must instead build more margin around the edges, segment tasks into 15-minute blocks and steal time wherever possible.
Michael Hyatt is a life coach and claims we can shave 10 hours off our work week. His four strategies include: boosting your energy, guarding your time, sharpening your focus and flexing your ‘no’ muscle. Working long hours use to be a badge of honour, we now realise it is a fast track to burnout. Getting a good night’s sleep, being physically active, staying positive, planning your day, choosing focus over multitasking, batching tasks and automating ‘no’ are all strategies Michael recommends to build more margin into our work week.
Richard Svensson argues in his book Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives, that without an indicator light, we don’t accurately gauge our capacities. We fill our schedules uncritically, and we overbook ourselves. We need to build space between our load and our limits. We must hold something in reserve for contingencies.
The combination of portable devices and technology make it impossible to disconnect fully. The modern streamlined workforce requires ‘more for less’, meaning we are busier and more overworked than ever. Society views busyness as a badge of honour. Bosses send emails to staff on Christmas Eve to show how dedicated they are to working right up until holidays. We take our laptops to coffee shops, mobile devices on cruise ships and parents go back to work as soon as they are able, squeezing family time into a few hours at night.
It is easy to blame our jobs, families and society as the reason we are so busy, but in the end, it is up to individuals to set their limits. For many, it is a paradigm shift to slow down, say no, or not do it all. To replace manic multitasking with Zen-like focus is to many, myself included, a complete personality overhaul, but it is possible. Our attitude toward stress and dizziness is a choice. Once you take ownership of that concept, life can be very different.
