The Ultimate Guide To Time Management

Time management is becoming more of an important topic, particularly with coronavirus. Whether you work for 10 hours a day or have lots of free time, learning about time management will be useful.

This post will provide all the information you need on time management. You’ll learn what time management is, how to approach it, and some general tips to help you manage your own time.

What Is Time Management?

In essence, time management is the ability to use your time effectively. Most people see time management as working with efficiency and being productive.

Time management is getting the most out of your time. Being as productive as you can and having enough time available for other things.

But, I want to propose a different approach to time management. See, time management itself is a concept that is only partly true. Regardless of how we spend our time, time itself will go on.

It doesn’t matter if we are productive or waste several hours every day. The way we manage our own time doesn’t change the time of the billions of other humans living on this planet.

Self-management

When you approach time management like this, the term ‘self-management’ is more accurate.

Here, self-management is the ability to manage one’s self. It’s controlling the activities you choose to do; when you choose to do them; and how long you spend on them.

In this sense, we gain a better understanding of optimal living. It’s not only about time anymore, but our whole being.

To further explore this concept, self-management is about using ‘The Focus Funnel’. You can learn more about self-management in this TED talk.

The Focus Funnel

Self-management is deciding what tasks to remove. Then, deciding what tasks to automate, followed by what to delegate. Finally, you decide whether you’ll do the task now or later.

Doing the task now means to concentrate and complete the task. Delaying it for later is to ‘procrastinate on purpose’. This means you put it back through the funnel shown above, then repeat the funnel until you can apply an action.

At some point, a stage of the funnel will apply to your task. Or, the task will need your immediate attention, so becomes an activity for now.

For the sake of clarity and understanding, I will refer to self-management as time-management throughout this post.

Why Is Time Management Important?

Not to get dark and existential, but we will all die one day. You will die, I will die, those who came before us have died and those who come after us will die. Life is finite, and as a result, our time is also finite.

Time is all we have, and we don’t even have that for long. Once you understand this, you will realise the importance of time management.

To spend your time is to spend your life.

Time is not equal to money; it is equal to life.

Here we realise that what we choose to spend our time doing is how we choose to spend our lives. To spend several hours watching Netflix or YouTube is to spend part of our life that we will never get back.

So, to answer the question. Time management is important because without it we’d waste our lives.

We can then use death in two ways. First is as motivation to spend our time well. The second is as a reminder that we cannot undo or rewind our time. Once you’ve spent your time, it doesn’t return.

Effective Time Management

Often, it’s not as easy as it seems to have effective time management. The way I phrase the above paragraphs may make time management sound easier than it is.

Unfortunately, the number of ways we can spend our time in modern life creates a struggle within us all. This prompts a perpetual Fear Of Missing Out.

This FOMO provokes within us the inability to decide. It makes us unable to take any proper action. This is because the available options may contain the best possible action.

The majority of the time, it is unlikely that the action we choose to take will be the best action we could have taken. But, we must live with the consequences anyway. Taking any action, regardless of how big or small it may be, is better than taking no action.

When I refer to action here, I’m talking about productive action. Productive action is doing things that progress us towards our goals.

‘Any’ action, when taken literally, can include unproductive activities such as mindless scrolling. But, doing so would result in the worst possible action. That’s the opposite of what you actually want. You want the best possible action.

This large choice of options and the resulting ‘FOMO’ means we struggle with time-related decisions. So, we end up wasting our time. Because of this, we believe that we are ‘busy’ or ‘don’t have time’ to focus on the things that matter.

Effective time management is actually choosing an action, then living with the consequences of that choice.

It is understanding that the choice you make will likely not be the best one. It is living with the fact that you may never know what the best choice was – and that’s completely ok. If that means missing out, so be it.

Without choosing or acting, you’d be missing out on progress and improvement.

Time Management Method 1 – Parkinson’s Law

The first core method of time management that we will explore is Parkinson’s Law. To quote, Parkinson’s Law states:

Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
C. Northcote Parkinson

The more time you have available to complete a task, the longer the task will take. The less time available, the shorter it will take.

Here, it’s easiest to think about time when working to a deadline for either University, school, or work.

For example, say a 2000 word essay was due on April 31st. It’s likely that you’ll make no progress until the final few days. At which point, you’ll make significant progress.

With more time available, effort is low. With less time available, effort is high. Below is a visual graph to help understand Parkinson’s Law.

Before, I’ve talked about Parkinson’s Law and its uses for goal setting in particular. You can learn more about that here.

Using this theory, if a task or goal has no deadline, it’s likely you won’t complete it. With infinite time available, the work will expand forever, so you’ll never complete it.

How To Use Parkinson’s Law

When time is running short and a deadline is fast approaching, something shifts within us. Your focus and concentration become intense; nothing else in the world matters.

Video games, email, texting, YouTube, and other distractions all lose their grip on you. Present life becomes completing the task before the deadline. Otherwise, you’ll suffer the consequences.

To use Parkinson’s Law, the most simple approach is to set a deadline. Put a time limit on tasks and goals, and work towards them.

When doing this, though, be reasonable. Consider how long the task would actually take – Parkinson’s Law aside – and dedicate that amount of time for it.

For better results, shorten that time ever so slightly, such as a day short of a week-long goal. This will push you to achieve more and make good use of Parkinson’s Law.

Consequences

Although, sometimes Parkinson’s Law doesn’t have a strong consequence. Without this, the law isn’t as useful as it could be.

It’s possible to ignore the deadline if you aren’t close enough to completion by that point. Here, one of the most useful things we can do is make the deadline more threatening. Bring real consequences into the equation.

Not completing essays in time for University would have dire consequences. You would likely fail the unit or achieve a low grade. That would, in turn, alter the outcome of your degree grade.

This is also like work responsibilities; you could get fired if work isn’t completed on time. These consequences are real and act as an ultimatum – complete the work or something bad will happen.

So, to create more threatening deadlines, we can put in place undesirable consequences.

There are services that exist to help with this, such as Beeminder. These services hold you accountable to your goals through the offering of a tribute. If you don’t complete your goal or make progress towards it by a certain point, the site will charge you a few dollars.

I’ve used this site in the past and it does work quite well. But, it’s easy to say you’ve completed your goal or made progress while not actually having done so.

It comes down to your strength of integrity and circumstances. Since the service is automatic, it’s difficult to have evidence verified.

An alternative

Instead, an alternative can work better for the bolder among us. Take an embarrassing picture or write an embarrassing story about yourself. Seal it in an envelope.

The more embarrassing, the better. Try not to be explicit, and ensure that if the wrong person saw your photo then nothing serious or bad would come of it.

Then, give the envelope to a trusted friend or loved one, and tell them not to open it. Agree on a deadline and the work you will have completed by that point.

When the deadline arrives, you must provide evidence to your confidant that you’ve completed your task or goal. If you fail to do this, they can open the envelope or send it to someone else to open.

Time Management Method 2 – Time Blocking

Our second approach to time management is time blocking or scheduling. Time blocking is where you block out segments of time. You then dedicate these to specific activities.

It is the productivity technique that Elon Musk uses. With time blocking, Musk is able to manage several businesses and still find time for family.

Time blocking is the practice of setting a fixed amount of time for each task and integrating the resulting time blocks into your schedule.

You don’t have to be as strict as Musk and block every minute of your day. But, having your workdays blocked out can improve your time management and productivity.

The power of time blocking comes from two central factors:

Time blocking removes choice and promotes clarity. With dedicated blocks for certain tasks, you don’t waste time thinking about what tasks to do and when. You decide everything ahead of time, allowing you to get on with the work.
Your focus becomes more intense during each time block. You must complete each task during its given time block. Otherwise, you won’t be able to begin the next task the following hour.
- This helps you to activate Parkinson’s Law and get the current block’s work completed.

How To Time Block

Time blocking is quite a flexible approach to time management. You can be strict and block out 15-minute chunks like Musk. Or you could block out general hour chunks. Both add structure to your life.

To create your time blocks, there are three main mediums to use.

The first is through writing: using a whiteboard, a loose piece of paper, or writing in a journal.

The second is using a calendar. This could be a physical flip chart or a digital calendar such as Google Calendars. If you choose to use a calendar, I find that digital often works better. Digital calendars are more flexible and it’s easier to change certain items.

Finally, there are several apps which serve the purpose of blocking out your time.

Experiment with all three and find which works best for you.

Track Your Time

To best judge how long each task will take, try tracking your time before doing the planning.

Take a week or a few days to track where you spend your time. Look at what you spend your time doing and what the biggest time-eater is.

Apps and services such as Toggl are an easy and effective way to do this. Use Toggl on a manual setting rather than automatic. This will make you more conscious of your time usage and will help you to understand your time better.

Planning Your Blocks

The initial planning of your blocks can feel overwhelming, but don’t worry. This can be a useful feeling as it prompts the breaking down of tasks into smaller tasks.

Take your large tasks and break them down into smaller tasks.

For example, you can break down ‘creating a YouTube video’ into the following:

Plan video
Write script
Filming main footage
Gather b-roll
Create a thumbnail
Upload video

Don’t input these into your schedule yet though.

The first things to input are your big tasks – the ones that need the most focus and time. Input these at the time of day when you are most productive; for most people, this is the morning.

You could chunk out 6AM – 11AM for ‘Creating YouTube video’. Then, split that into the sections found above, divided as needed.

Follow this with smaller tasks. This can include:

Answering important emails
Doing business social media posts
Checking in with clients
Planning for the following day

Finish with the smallest tasks. These are things such as getting a coffee with a friend, confirming timings, or tidying a shelf.

The size of the task is representative of its importance.

Why this approach?

Let me direct your attention to a quite well-known analogy of time management.

The jar above represents your life and time. The rocks represent big tasks, the pebbles smaller tasks, and the sand the smallest tasks.

If you try to fit in all the sand first, followed by the pebbles, and finally the rocks, not everything will fit. Your time isn’t optimised. Further, the things that are most important are the things that aren’t included.

Rather, begin with the rocks. This ensures the most important tasks fit first. Follow that with the pebbles, and finally use the sand to fill the gaps. Only in this order can everything fit and so you’ll be making optimal use of your time.

Thanks for reading so far. If you’d like to learn more, continue to part 2 of this post.

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