Stop Trying to Manage Your Time! It’s Not Getting You Anywhere...
Ahhh, time management. No matter how we try, it seems like something we just can’t escape!
Between the endless discussions about it, the books, the seminars….it certainly seems like time management is something that we should all be concerned about and trying to perfect, doesn’t it?
Yet, I have a big problem with this approach, with this illusion of time management.
And this problem stems from 2 major misconceptions that most of us are all guilty of believing:
1. Managing your time is something you can actually do.
2. Managing your time is something important that’ll get you results.
Let’s look at the problem with #1: managing time is something you can actually do.
For better or worse, time is not something we can manage. We can’t make it faster. We can’t make it slower. We can’t save some of it for later.
Despite all the energy and effort we spend trying to deal with it, there’s really nothing we can do, manage, or control about time.
And even if we did have control over time, it still wouldn’t be important! As an entrepreneur, what I (and what I assume most of you) actually care about is this: the result.
And result is not a direct output of the time. Just because I spend 4 hours writing one article does not automatically mean it’s better than the article I only spent 1 hour on. Sometimes, that 1-hour article could turn out much better than that 4-hour article. (We’ll get to why that is in just a minute.)
So, most of us are putting a lot of work into trying to manage something that is impossible and unimportant for us to manage.
But what’s the alternative?
Think back to that 1-hour article that turned out better than that 4-hour article. Why?
What it all comes down to is something we don’t talk nearly enough about: focus.
One-hour of highly focused work can certainly outperform 4-hours of distracted work.
In other words, the results we create have less to do with time, and more to do with the focus we have with the work.
Which means that instead of always working towards time management, we should instead always be working towards focus management.
Just look back at those 2 misconceptions about time management I put above. Swap out the word “time” for the word “focus,” and you’ll find they go from false...to true!
1. Managing your time focus is something you can actually do.
2. Managing your time focus is something important that’ll get you results.
Plus, embracing your task focus also helps you get more done in less time. Which in turn makes you feel more productive and thus less overwhelmed.
But how can I work on my focus management?
Working on your focus management is a combination of improving your focus skills as a whole and then applying that mindset to how you organize your days.
Here are a few tips, tricks, and resources to help:
1) Strengthen your focus muscle.
Yes, focus behaves like a ‘muscle’ and yes, it can be strengthened! (And you can read all about it right here.)
Unless you already have some impressive focus skills, this should be your very first step.
2) Stop trying to find more time to do things or trying to work faster to fit things in!
Desperately scrambling for time or racing to do as much as you possibly can is not only incredibly stressful, but will likely prevent you from creating high-quality results.
But by accepting you can’t find more time and by switching to a concern about the focus, not the time, you spend on a task, you’ll find creating more powerful results easier.
Another way of looking at this is to aim for effectiveness (a tenet of focus management), not efficiency (a tenet of time management). Read all about it here.
3) Try to put your focus within the context of your calendar.
When you are putting together a schedule or a list of tasks to do, don’t just set aside a period of time to complete each task. Instead, set aside a period during which you will give your full focus to the task at hand.
Like 30 minutes of a distraction-free focused period (with all devices and notifications off and the web disconnected) to just write.
I’m a big fan setting of timers and Pomodoros for this.
4) Establish your prime work time.
Often, being able to find that focus and full-engagement for a task is easier said than done. Sometimes, your brain just doesn’t feel like cooperating!
How can you combat this? By finding your prime work time.
Finding your prime time is a matter of figuring out what time of day you naturally work best for certain types of tasks.
For example, I’ve found that ‘creative’ tasks come more naturally to me (and thus I can complete them more effectively) in the morning, whereas ‘social’ tasks work better for me in the afternoon. So, I’ve adjusted my schedule as much as possible to accommodate this.
You all know how I love to simplify, so here are the 4 key takeaways I want you to remember from this article:
1. Managing your time is not something you can actually do.
2. Managing your focus is something you can actually do.
3. Managing your time is not something important that’ll get you results.
4. Managing your focus is something important that’ll get you results.
Got it? Good :-) Then head out and start scheduling some focused work!
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