Time Management: A Worn-Out Cliché

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After looking at the title you’re thinking, “What?! I have been reading this guy’s newsletter for weeks called ‘Time Management Tips’ and now he is telling me it is irrelevant.” Hang with me, your participation has not been a waste of time.

“Less than 1 in 5 people (18%) have a proper time management system.”

 Development Academy and Acuity Training, 2022

People manage their time, but they continue to manage it poorly. Life is a populated with a series of reactive responses to personal priorities and professional needs. Individuals do not control their calendar; the calendar controls them. Until there is a clear understanding that true productivity begins when the narrative is switched to a proactive mindset, 82% will continue to wallow in time managed obscurity.

Using information from Statista, TimeDoctor, PTC Education, TeamDeck, Zippa, and Time Watch, here is a small sample showing additional examples of time management challenges:

• The average person tries 13 time management methods
• 32% say they waste 1-2 hours and a further 17% waste 2-3 hours
• Only 38% use a to-do list to manage their time
• Two-thirds of employees experienced some kind of burnout symptoms during the year.
• In 2021, staff spent more than 44 minutes every day on social media.

Since the onset of COVID 19, 60% of students and businesspeople struggle to manage their time – based on hundreds of self-assessments from the Time Management Analysis (TMA) tool launched in 2021.

Clearly, there needs to be a new line of thinking. The reactive nature of time management needs to be reframed and replaced with a proactive method of time optimization.

Time Optimized time management is a continuous pursuit of the right preparation, along with the right execution, to escalate broad control over personal productivity.

In effect, the key words to remember are preparation, execution, and control (PEC). Each one of these in itself, requires an expense of time to manage time better.

Preparation

Preparation establishes the provision, design, forethought, groundwork of time tied to a future project, task, event, or undertaking. While each project or pursuit will not have the same requirements, there is knowledge in preceding assignments. Time optimized preparation taps into the previous knowledge, applying in the present, to help accomplish what needs to be done in the future. This type of preparation never ends, linear in execution, and cyclical in evaluation.

Execution

After the plan is generated, time management then shifts to the execution. It is as much procedure as it is technique. Without any methods in place, you are not helping yourself or anyone else. In fact, you might be causing more harm than good. Execution here is a reaction to preparation. While linear in nature, you may find the execution sending you back to the preparation stage for modification.

Control

An often-overlooked aspect, by just as important an element of time management, is control. Your control. The best preparation and execution can be nullified if you lack the authority over the period allocated for performance and virility. Control is getting back on track or diverting from preparation and/or execution to keep an original timeline.

Get going on PEC

Incorporate PEC into your approach to time and begin to see the reactive challenges of time management be replaced with the proactive approach of time optimization.

David Buck is the author of the book The Time-Optimized Life, owner of Kairos Management Solutions, LLC, and founder of the Infinity Lifestyle Design program. David helps individuals, teams and businesses “in-career” create more time flexibility in their lives. In addition, assists individuals and couples craft a “post-career” lifestyle strategy to meaning and purpose. To learn more, contact him at dave@kmstime.com or visit Infinity Lifestyle Design.