Warning: Time Management Doesn't Work and Here's Why
Carson Tate
Consultant & Executive Coach – Strategic Planning & Execution / Transformational Change & Employee Engagement / C-suite Coaching & Consulting / U.S. Private Equity Fund Engagement
Get ready.
Because I’m about to disrupt, flip-on-its-head and re-invent this most honored and celebrated tradition of our 21st century society with one simple sentence.
Time management is dead.
Time management has been the strategy to improve your productivity and more efficiently manage your time. 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. And in the research that is available 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 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 liberating 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. It is an individual’s preferences in perceiving and processing information to guide behavior. And your cognitive style can be leveraged to more accurately and effectively help you stop being busy and start being productive.
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.
So, what’s possible if…
If you woke up tomorrow, and committed to taking a stand to start operating from your personal work style, your purpose, your passion instead of just trying to get through the day by managing your time?
Carson Tate is the founder and principal of Working Simply, a management consultancy. Her new book, Work Simply, was published via Penguin Portfolio last year.
Experienced Partner Alliances & Channel Leader...Growth builder.... #Cyber Security
7 年Cognitive style....like it very much, great concept...
Leadership, Organisational Development | Project Team Effectiveness | Facilitator & Coach |
8 年Agreed it's down to the individual and their own 'cognitive' style.
debt collector at ccs
8 年I have always said this, noone ever listened. I was a debt collector for 15 years and boy was I a SUPERIOR collector when I had management that admired me and let me be me. I followed the laws, but also followed my passion and put myself into my work. My time spent at work was extremely productive. I worked 20 hours per week and collected twice the money of 40 hour people, by simply being myself on the phone and loving my job and chatting freely with my customers. When new management started making me talk like a robot and trying to change me, I became unperductive. I literally collected millions of dollars for the company to everyone else's hundreds. My job went downhill under new management that wanted me to worry about saving time. If anyone out there reading this wants me to work for them, and make them millions, I am billing to listen. I am now living off Social Security and I am living in poverty. CCS COMPANIES fired me for being me. The last straw was CCS COMPANIES refusing to shut off the fluorescent light above my head, when I gt ad a eye surgeons note asking them to please shut it off. What a strange world we live in. Only if people would listen and let productive people follow their passions. Millions can be made and the world would be a better NV and more productive
Own Your Focus-The Reset Mindset-Keynote Speaker ?? TEDx Speaker > 1 M Views | 2x Best-Selling Author
8 年Great Article. I also feel that peoples focus on time is creating more stress. Time never was and never will be a measure of our productivity. So how did this term take hold? My Book is called "The Productivity Zone: Stop the Tug of War with Time". I am happy to be part of the movement to wake people up to the real factors that drive our productivity.
english teacher
8 年Time management is the act or process of planning and exercising conscious control over the amount of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency or productivity.