Time management has been the holy grail of productivity for a long time. It’s also a well-celebrated trait that often goes into job descriptions.
I myself can be a religious Pomodoro timing, calendar blocking, frog-eating ninja. And as I take my first steps in the professional world, I’ve really gone all out on maximizing my time to polish my resumé, take online courses, and build my network.
I probably inherited it from competitive academia. The tendency to stuff every nook and cranny of the hour with something productive. I remember teachers praising this student who pins waterproof notes to study in the shower. And for a long time, this was how I approached productivity. Road-mapping my daily calendars with a concise to-do list and ticking things off to get that dopamine hit.
However, in the middle of the pandemic, I began to struggle following my pre-set timelines. My concentration seeped through the cracks by the minute. In turn, I was always anxious about wasting time. All of which made work and life more exhausting than they should be. Eventually, I hit the brakes and re-examined my approach to productivity and time management. As well as to change my ways of working into something more sustainable.
Why time management is faulty
1) It creates time-scarcity anxiety
There will always be a limited amount of hours in a day. In turn, there will always be a limit to how much we can do. Ironically, the better we become at managing time, the less of it we feel we have. These time-bending methods, when used on overdrive, can worsen the anxieties they were meant to delay.
And let’s say if we’re suddenly bestowed with twice as many hours in a day. Would this solve the problem? Likely not. Even if we have more time, we will only end up doing more things. Add more to our to-do lists, spend more time on social media. Very quickly, time catches up with us again and we become as busy as we were before.
2) It is an outdated, one-size-fits-all approach
Advice about time management seems to remain its old adage since the Industrial Revolution. By default, we think we need to wake up early, put in our eight hours, then go home and relax. However, the work landscape has changed so much since the 1800s. Now, knowledge/desk-work and remote work are becoming more predominant. Therefore, other factors such as our energy levels, willpower, and mental wellbeing, will override our excellent time analysis skills.
3) It doesn’t guarantee productivity
In a culture obsessed with productivity, we’re often told that we can reach our productivity nirvana once we finesse our Google Calendars. However, we are our own examples proving this isn’t always true. This AtTask survey even finds that people only spend 45% of their 8-hour workdays on their primary job duties. And the remaining 55% on emails, admin tasks, and other interruptions.
We might be quick to assume that these people are being negligent or lazy. But it’s really because many of us do not bear the cognitive resources to work deeply beyond a certain number of hours. Cal Newport’s book Deep Work highlights that most even the most adept deep workers cannot spend over four hours a day in true depth. All of which evidently shows that productivity goes beyond blindly clocking in hours to just to be performative.
Three strategies beyond time management
1) Energy Management
James Clear’s blog about Simple Ways to be More Productive Every Day urges us to reflect on our daily energy rhythm and plan our work around it. This energy management approach to planning is based on the human chronobiological cycle called the Ultradian Rhythm.
While it sounds intergalactic, what exactly is the Ultradian Rhythm?
- They are 90-120 minute cycles in which our bodies move from high to low energy states. (Not to be confused with our circadian rhythm, a.k.a. our sleep wake cycle)
- Toward the end of each cycle, our bodies begins to crave a period of recovery. The signals include physical restlessness, hunger, and difficulty concentrating.
- Many of us ignore these signals and keep working. The consequence is that our energy reservoir—our remaining capacity—burns down as the day wears on.
By keeping an audit of our Ultradian Rhythms we can then establish specific intentional rituals throughout the day to regularly renew our energy levels.
2) Attention Management
“If you’re trying to be more productive, don’t analyze how you spend your time. Pay attention to what consumes your attention.”
Adam Grant, organizational psychologist and New York Times bestselling author
Adam Grant’s paper on The New York Times highlights how after two decades of research, time management has proven to be less prolific than we think. He, therefore, suggests a more practical alternative: attention management.
Attention management is essentially
• prioritizing things, people, and projects that matter
• the art of getting the right things done for the right reasons, in the right places, and at the right moments.
This approach emphasizes that our productivity failures aren’t driven by inefficiency. Rather our lack of motivation tampers it. Therefore, being selective about what deserves our attention prompts us to derive motivation from more intrinsic rather than extrinsic values.
For example, instead of focusing on how quickly I can finish this article, I asked why I agreed to write it in the first place. My attention then shifts from trying to mass-produce generic articles within a short amount of time, to appreciating the learning and educating process.
3) Honing the art of subjective time
The concept of time isn’t as objective as we’d like to believe.
Dr. Abbie J. Shipp, the renowned researcher on the subjective and psychological experience of time, critiques our obsession with clocks and calendars as a measure of human experience. She stories her burnout caused by a history of Type-A time management. And how she began her healing process by introducing the concept of subjective time.
Essentially, subjective time takes into account our internal and personal experience of time. It reflects how people perceive, interpret and mentally travel through time. And how we use both hindsight and retrospect to make sense of the present.
Based on her paper, I’ve narrowed the three elements of subjective time we can implement into our days:
- Flow: The Flow State is the experience of being so immersed in a task that you almost forget the existence of time. Hence, try occasionally introducing days where you move away from a fixed schedule of ten tasks. This eliminates the pressure of clocking in certain number of hours for certain types of work. You’re also more likely to complete one task as a whole, giving you a sense of peaceful closure.
- Meaning over efficiency: Capitalism has driven us to hyper focus on the economic value of time. This worldview of time as a commodity therefore makes us perceive time as scarce. As a result, we shift away from activities that are meaningful to us, or hobbies we enjoy. However, a satisfying and productive life requires us to find a balance between meaning and efficiency. Rather than seeing work as purely fixed, hourly tasks, try seeing how they can be stringed as a series of meaningful events. This mental shift prompts you to get creative in even the most mundane of tasks.
- Creative mind-wandering: A narrow view of time-management stamps out the freedom needed to generate unique and creative ideas. As knowledge work becomes increasingly valuable, it helps to celebrate occasional mind-wandering for our unconscious to ping us those elusive “aha” moments.
Concluding thoughts…
To be fair, implementing these strategies did not change the machine of my work schedule entirely. I still put in my hours to pay the bills. And I still enjoy eating my frogs and pinging my Pomodoros. But I do admit retiring from being a time-management purist to introducing more holistic productivity strategies. Doing so has made it easier to draw motivation from intrinsic values rather than objective metrics too. And just by realizing that we have choices beyond the limits of our 24-hours, we instill a better sense of control, clarity, and ultimately a better peace of mind.
