The Truth About Time Management 

I always chuckle a little to myself when a people ask me how I manage my time.  You know, there really is no such thing as time management. We can’t manage time.

Think about it; the term is an oxymoron. Time cannot be managed. It cannot be controlled in any way. Everyone gets the same 24 hours, 1,440 minutes and 86,400 seconds in a day. You can’t save up time from today to be used tomorrow or borrow from next week for today. Time is external to us – we have no control over it. It ticks away, a second at a time, and when it is past, can never be reclaimed.

The key to creating an extra hour a day is changing your mindset to SELF-MANAGEMENT! 

I believe self-management is about acknowledging we are responsible for our lives. It is your choices that have created your life. Not your boss or your parents or the government or anything else. Yes, those things have an impact, but how you choose to see the circumstances, how you choose to interpret and respond determine your life. 

To create and extra hour a day you need to start by adopting a mindset of self-management where you accept responsibility for your life totally. Then you can start to see new options and opportunities that will create more time. 

How we choose to use that time, however, is very much within our control. Time is a precious resource and one we must use wisely. While we can’t manage time, we can manage ourselves in how we use our time. Time management is a misnomer – it is actually self management we seek.

1. Recognize the difference between urgent and important.

We often respond first to the people or tasks that make the most noise, those things that are urgent because they are most proximate (in our face). The phone rings – we answer it. Someone approaches our desk – we leave the task at hand to respond to their request, regardless of its importance.

I once saw a small sign posted next to the desk that said, “Lack of preparation on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.” Don’t you wish your cubical or office came with a sign like this?

Too often we allow urgent things to take such precedence that we have little time, if any, left to focus on truly important things. Things like coaching a high performing employee, spending time creating a strategic map of your career, or even ensuring all your files are in order so information is easily accessible.

Know the difference between urgent and important – and choose important whenever possible.

2. Recognize the difference between good and best.

Choosing between good and bad is easy. None of us have to think very long to decide to spend our day either a) robbing a bank or b) going to work. It’s choosing between good and best that is often difficult. Whether to get a project adequately out before deadline or taking a little extra time in perfecting details to present a really great product or service.

“Don’t get caught up in the thick of thin things,” is solid advice from one time management expert.

3. Act accordingly.

Take the time to make deliberate choices as to how you will spend your time. Choose important over urgent and choose the best over the good. Once your choice is made, follow through and do what you’ve planned.

Make changes in your approach to work, if necessary. Turn off the tone that notifies you each time an email arrives; instead, plan to check email periodically during the day. Let the coworker who interrupts you to discuss the implications of the stock market know that you’d enjoy meeting over lunch.

Time management is not really about minutes and seconds. It is all about self management, the self discipline of choosing to distribute your time in ways that are most important, the best, receive your focus. Nobody, no matter how shrewd, can save minutes from one day to spend on another. No scientist, no matter how smart, is capable of creating new minutes.  And even though people talk about trying to “find time,” they need to quit looking. There isn’t any extra lying around. Twenty-four hours is the best any of us is going to get. 

Nothing separates successful people from unsuccessful people more than how they use their time. Successful people understand that time is the most precious commodity on earth. And that we all have an equal amount, packed into identical boxes. So even though everyone’s box is the same size, they get a higher return on the contents of theirs. Why? They know what to pack.

Henry David Thoreau wrote, “It is not enough to be busy. The question is, ‘What are we busy about?’” How do you judge whether something is worthy of your time and attention? 

How you spend your time is an important question not only for you but for your team. People tend to take their cues from the leader when it comes to time management—so make sure there’s a match between your actions, your business priorities, and your team’s activities.

So much has been written in various sales training about time management that you hardly have the time to read about it. There are numerous time management programs, processes and tools, and even with all this help, you still can't manage time no matter how hard you try.