Is Time Management Wasting Your Time?

When people think about time wasters that are robbing them of productivity, the first thing they usually think of is the need for better time management. “If I just had a better app/system/hack,” the thinking goes, “then I’d have a better handle on my life.”

If you’ve ever had thoughts like that, and I’m guessing you have, you might be surprised to learn that better time management might not be the best solution. Depending on the system, you can often waste even more time trying to track your time and activities efficiently. When that happens, you feel guilty that you didn’t get as much done as you should have within a given timeframe. 

An Alternative to Time Management 

Leading productivity experts claim that you should aim for a new measure if you want to be more productive: attention management. It isn’t about how organized you are or how hard you can hustle to get more done. Instead, attention management prioritizes your projects in a way that has nothing to do with how much time they take. This causes you to get your most important tasks finished first, because you devote your full attention to those tasks.

Staying on Task – Regardless of Time

When you subscribe to a time management system, you’re constantly looking for ways to shave a few minutes off every task. We often set unrealistic goals for ourselves about how long various tasks should take, and then we often fall short of our own expectations. 

Instead of feeling the time crunch when your allotted schedule is nearing its end but you still have another hour of work left on that project, one idea is to shift to a project-based system. 

Attention management ensures that you take care of tasks in their order of importance. You work on one task until it is completed, ensuring that it has your full and undivided attention. By finishing one thing before moving onto the next, you avoid that panicked feeling of running out of time.

Put Things in the Right Order

In addition to organizing your day based on projects, the order you put them in makes a big difference, too. Most people love starting their day with an easy project, or something “fun.” If you want to have a greater overall impact, though, then increase productivity by focusing on what’s important.

Research has shown that, when you start your day with a lower value activity, its completion leaves “attention residue.” This basically means that, after you’ve completed the easy or fun project, it can be more challenging to finish the “important” task afterwards, especially if you’re resisting its completion because of the effort required. 

Save the easy or fun project for last, so you have an internal reward after the completion of your highest value activity. Think of it as your dessert after eating dinner. Because you’re looking forward to the easy or fun task, you’ll be motivated to get through everything as efficiently as possible. 

Making these small adjustments can help you unlock the secret to motivation. 

Minimize Interruptions

If you want to get more done, it probably goes without saying that you need to minimize the number of distractions in your environment. Do your best to carve out time in your schedule for creative, non-linear thinking, too. 

It’s not enough to combat distractions from other people, though. You also need to minimize the enticing interruptions like social media breaks and reading or listening to news. 

While cutting these time-wasters out altogether may be the ideal, it isn’t reasonable for most of us. Instead, you should plan to work them into your schedule as a reward at the end of the day, or on a break after making great headway on a difficult task. 

Even small windows of time can be used to make large chunks of progress toward your goals. For example, 15 minutes is enough time to catch up with a client over the phone, write and send a couple cards or notes, or schedule your highest value activities for the week. 

Attention management is a unique way to think about how you can better manage your time. It keeps you from being a slave to the clock and gives you more incentive to finish all of your tasks in a less distracted state, also known as a flow state. Consider how you can implement a few of these changes to your daily schedule, and you might be surprised by how much more you get done with these simple shifts.