Time Management is Dead; Long Live Personal Productivity

Later tonight (7-8pm EST, to be exact), I’m partnering with Levo League for a Google Hang-Out to talk time management for the career-driven woman.

Take a big, deep breath though because in this Google Hang-Out I’m going to talk briefly about time management before I disrupt, flip-on-its-head, innovate, and re-invent this most honored and celebrated tradition of our 21st century society.

Why?

Time management is dead.

Time management has been the strategy to improve your productivity and more efficiently manage your time. In corporate America, time management workshops are a staple in most corporate training departments.

There are copious books, articles and blogs written on time management and if you Google “time management” your search will return at least 241 million results. Based on the volume and pervasiveness of time management trainings, advice and strategies, it must be the solution to the busyness epidemic that is consuming everyone.

However, if time management was the solution, would we not all by now be productive, efficient people living balanced, purpose-filled lives? I think so. But, we are not.

Time management does not work.

In spite of the popular literature and Google searches lauding the benefits of time management, which stems from the untested popular belief that poor allocation of time impairs performance, there is scant empirical research examining time management Time management training has not been proven to have direct impact on performance. Additionally, look around, how many people in your office, in your neighborhood and at your gym talk about managing their time better and then frantically pull out their smartphone, rush to the next project or meeting because they are just so busy?

Time management is built upon the premise that by teaching an individual how to more effectively manage their time; job performance will improve. Empirical research on this premise has produced mixed conclusions. What about antidotal evidence? Look around your office, talk to your friends and neighbors, and you will also see that this is true.

Time management is inherently limited in its effectiveness in changing behavior in today’s multifaceted, dynamic work environment and always on culture. Time management does not consider the broader context of our work and the need for a comprehensive overall strategy that is not myopically focused on increasing one’s perception of control of time and increasing time available to pursue activities.

Time management is not what impacts productivity; rather it is our work strategies that impact our productivity and enable us to move beyond busy.

Work strategies are a person’s approach to planning and allocating effort across goals, activities and time periods. The way we approach our work is often unsystematic, rather than deliberate and rational, and even though it is unsystematic, patterns can be detected. It is these patterns, which are the result of an individual’s cognitive style, that when identified, can provide strategies that actually work. Strategies that liberate us from the hamster wheel.

So, what is cognitive style? The term cognitive style refers to a habitual pattern or preferred way of doing something. Cognitive style is an individual’s preferences in perceiving and processing information to guide behavior.

Research on cognitive styles has revealed two qualitatively different cognitive styles. The first style is commonly described by the terms analytical, deductive, rigorous and constrained. The second style is commonly described as synthetic, inductive, expansive and unconstrained. Do these sound familiar? These are often the definitions used in our culture to describe left brain and right brain thinking.

The left hemisphere and the right hemisphere of our brains are specialized for different modes of thought. Cognitive style, our preferences in perceiving and processing information, can be leveraged to more accurately and effectively help us stop being busy and start being productive.

It is time to let go of the traditional approach to overcoming busyness and instead embrace our brains and the functioning of our brains to guide and inform the choices we make about planning and executing on our daily work.

It is time to abandon the traditional approach, time management, which does not work and embrace our individual cognitive style and begin to develop work and life strategies that move us beyond busy to a productive, engaged, purpose-filled life.

Let’s stop fighting nature, understand how our brains actually work and then leverage the power of our productive brains. It is time to get personal about our own productivity and effectiveness.

Your Next Action Steps:

• You’re invited to join us tonight! Read all the juicy details and RSVP. Then, join me via Twitter at @thecarsontate for an after-the-Google-Hangout live tweet-up Q&A; please use the hashtag #worksimplylivefully.
• Meet two women with Levo League who make powerful strides for young career-driven women. Get to know two connectors from Levo League; Meet Local Levo Leader, Maxie McCoy, and Charlotte, N.C.'s Local Levo Leader, Caitlin Sellers.
• What’s YOUR productivity style? Long live YOUR productivity style; take ten minutes right now to take the assessment here; please use passcode: WorkSimply15.
• Craving more talk about your busyness, attention management, priorities, goals, and getting clear on your email strategy? My new book, Work Simply, is now available; Order Work Simply right now.

Carson Tate is the founder and principal of Working Simply, a management consultancy. Our mission is to bring productivity with passion back to the workplace. We do this by providing tailored solutions that help people to work smarter, not harder.

Her new book, Work Simply, was published on January 2, 2015.