"It's not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?"
Time management strategies is one of the first things our clients at Cairn Leadership ask about. Of course, if you are reading this, you’re probably strapped for time too. If so, scan for the orange links to get the key resources! If you can take a minute to think about managing your time more effectively, reading all of this is worth your while.
You won’t find many tactical tips here, like the pomodoro technique or time blocking on your calendar. They either work for you, or they don’t. These techniques only address a symptom of poor time management, but not the disease. If you want to get philosophical about it, dig into Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. Below are ideas that can change your life and make those tactical tips much less relevant.
I want to say up front that I have learned much of this from Joe Byerly and his excellent interviews on the From the Green Notebook podcast. I guess he was also trying to find meaningful time management in his life, because his guests were incredibly helpful.
1. Start time management by getting your priorities straight
Don’t waste your time on the unimportant. In Happier Hour, Dr. Cassie Holmes shares a wonderful anecdote of a jar (video here).Take this jar and fill it with golf balls. Is it full? It might appear so, but no. Fill in the space around them with pebbles… still not full. Pack in sand around the pebbles. Now it’s full. But wait, there is still room to pour in a beer.
Here’s the point, if you go in the wrong order you can’t get it all in. Spoiler: You’ll never ‘get it all in.’
The sand is all the filler stuff in your life, social media, Netflix, TPS reports, and pointless meetings (not urgent / not important). It takes up a lot of time and brings marginal happiness or utility.
The pebbles are the things we need to do, laundry, meals, work tasks, key meetings (urgent / important).
The golf balls are the things we value most, screen free time with our children, strategic work for our teams, date night with our spouse (non-urgent / very important).
2. Apply long term perspective to short term time management problems
Unfortunately we typically do the pebbles first, because they are urgent, and then we fill in the rest of the space with sand. There is often no room left for the golf balls – those things we truly value, the things that bring us joy and give us energy. If we passed away in a car accident tomorrow, we would be left with a handful of sand and regrets (See The Daily Stoic for more on the remembering our death…). I have started asking two questions at the end of my day. If I passed away in my sleep, would I be content with how I spent my day? If I passed away in my sleep, would the people I love remember me the way I hope they would?
KEY: Identify the things you would regret not doing in the long term, and build the rest of your schedule around them!
You might be thinking that’s nice, but I still have to do the laundry. That’s true, but try not to be so myopic. We are not great as humans at thinking long term. By the way, here are some ways to improve. Honestly, I have started letting the laundry pile up all week and washing it when I have some free space over the weekend.
I find myself all tied up on Mondays with meetings that add tasks to my list. They make me feel overwhelmed. That said, I have a lot of time built into my calendar to do those tasks on Tuesday and Thursday. As a whole my weeks average out to ‘enough time.’
The same concept can help on a larger scale. As a parent of young children it can feel like I am slipping behind professionally. A younger adult might feel that they are behind in the family building department. Don’t worry, it’s just a proverbial Monday. As I learn to honor the seasons and rhythms in my life, I begin to give myself grace.
Your golf balls will change over the years. Career, school, children, aging parents, exploration and other priorities will shift into the most important roles. Your task is to notice what you value, realign your priorities on how you spend your time, and be OK with it.
If your hair is on fire (and you toddler just lit the pantry on fire too), know that this too shall pass. In fact, you’ll miss it in 10 years. Notice and appreciate the weekly, monthly, and yearly rhythms of busyness and recovery.
3. Create space for more creativity and less busyness
You can over-optimize your time – think packing the jar to maximum density. Juliet Funt offers a beautiful analogy of trying to light a fire with no space between the logs – you can’t. Oxygen is a critical component of a fire, so you must have space between logs.
Pull that thread just a little – your life is probably a dense stack of firewood that you are trying to light with a flame thrower, to no effect. Take a pause and space the wood out! It can feel frivolous to build in five minutes (or thirty) between meetings or schedule a two hour walk on Wednesday mornings to just think, but it will make your life better. See stories of how the most iconic leaders of our age do this in Lead Yourself First.
Read A Minute to Think for an incredibly useful breakdown on creating space or listen to this episode and this episode of FTGN with Juliet Funt. If you want another take, check out The Effective Executive (the first section is most useful). Build literal white space into your calendar between meetings, i.e. separate the colors on your Google calendar. Schedule in blank spots to step back and think, ideally outside, and during the time of day you have the most energy. Write down ideas and non-urgent tasks for regular meeting times on your ‘yellow’ list instead of bombarding people with non-urgent emails that steal their space to breathe.
4. Eliminate hurry, slow down, and pay attention
Dr. Holmes shares a wonderful story of making Thursday mornings a coffee date with her toddler. She took a mindless routine (getting coffee) and made it a mindful ritual – 20 special minutes with her toddler on Thursday mornings. We get used to the things that make us happy, our spouse, ice cream, brainstorming new ideas with our team, and they make us less happy over time.
Enhance your time management by finding some mindless routines like coffee with your spouse in the morning and add a little spice to it. Doughnuts for the Wednesday creative meeting? Special coffee and discussing what you’re reading with your spouse on Tuesday mornings? A special walk to the playground with your toddler on Sunday evenings? Notice and hype up these moments to make them mindful, otherwise they will be over too soon – Slow Down to Be a Better Leader! While you’re at it, cut out the constant hurry. It does not make you look important, it makes you look unorganized. The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry might be the most impactful book I have read this year.
5. Set clear boundaries and say no more than you want to
We often focus on trying to optimize to get all the things done, sort of like operations cutting costs to increase the bottom line. Instead, we should be saying no more often to increase the overall amount of time available, like sales adding more revenue to the top line. The best way to do this is setting clear boundaries and ruthlessly cutting things that take up your time. It’s so easy to say yes to something will only take a little time, but it all adds up. Saying yes too much, even to things you want to do, results in you being mediocre at a lot of things you care about instead of truly contributing to one thing that matters most.
Melisa Urban shares highly actionable ways of setting clear boundaries in your life in her Book of Boundaries (get the summary on this FTGN episode). Tip: communicate green light, yellow light and red light zones to people and then stick to them. If someone goes into your red zone, cut them out. I also find Charles Feltman’s discussion of how to refuse requests compelling in one of my favorite FTGN episodes. Try telling your boss, “I can do that, but which of these other priorities should I drop to make time for it?”
6. Optimize time by creating more energy
Most of this is about time, but it would be foolish not to mention energy. As a harried business owner, spouse to a medical resident, and father of young children, I often find myself at the end of the day with an hour or two available to do work. I try to muster some semblance of coherence, but instead stare at the wall – or worse Netflix – because I am exhausted. Finding ways to manage your energy can help you make much better use of your time and help you avoid burning out.
This article in HBR is chock full of recommendations to increase your energy. You won’t like some of them – like more sleep, less alcohol, and less coffee. If you want more, read The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working. Another great resource to help prevent burnout is Dr. Neha Sangwan’s book, Powered by Me.
If you are strapped for time, check out this interview with her instead.
There are time management tools that help a lot, like the Eisenhower Matrix, yellow lists, and mindful rituals. There are a million other hacks that probably end up wasting time in the long run like painstaking calendar blocking. It’s important to understand that you will never win the fight against time. If you are saying no a lot, eliminating hurry, maximizing opportunities for your priorities, and using principles instead of rules to manage your time, you are probably on the right track.
