6 Truths About Time Management Most People Learn Too Late
Let’s say you could magically add an hour, or two, to each day of your life — would you do it?
For most people, the answer is hell yeah, because we all feel like we don’t have time. And we genuinely believe that reaching our ambitious goals would be a lot easier if we just had a little more time.
If I just had a little more time, I’d work out every day and prepare healthier meals.
If I just had a little more time, I’d spend more time with my loved ones.
If I just had a little more time, I’d finally write that book, start my own business, go on that vacation, or finally work on all those unread emails piling up in my inbox.
Let’s be honest: We’ve all been there.
Most of the time, life feels like a race we can’t keep up with because time is passing so quickly.
Yet, I’m going to tell you something you don’t want to hear: You don’t lack time.
You have enough of it. We all do.
We just struggle to use it effectively because we’re too busy taking care of dozens of small tasks and ideas.
The truth is, time works differently for each of us.
I have different goals, strengths, responsibilities, and weaknesses than you, so I might naturally use my time differently than you do.
The good news, however, is that there are common rules that can work for all of us, no matter where we are and what we want:
You have to stop thinking about time (the way you always did)
Even though we’re all chasing more time, the truth is that we don’t need any more of it.
Instead of “having more time,” what we ultimately want is having more space for the things we love — our hobbies, friends, and family.
We don’t need more time to do a job we hate.
We don’t need more time to do the chores or run errands.
We just need to do all these things quickly, so we have more space for activities and people we love.
And the truth is that thinking about time the way we typically do is the wrong approach.
Most people desperately claim that they need more time but have no idea how they’d use a few extra hours each day. And in reality, they’d probably just waste those extra hours.
“It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?”
– Henry David Thoreau
If I type time management on Amazon’s search bar, I face 60,000 results.
Is there really that much to know about how to manage time?
The honest answer probably is no.
In fact, you probably already know most of the tips, tricks, and strategies described in these books anyway: Don’t procrastinate, wake up early, use the Pomodoro technique, say no more often,… the list goes on and on.
Yet, the problem with those lists of time management strategies is that they don’t really help in the long run.
Instead, we might need a shift in how we think about time.
Instead of thinking about how we don’t have time, we should consider why we even need that time. As Peter Turla writes:
“Managing your time without setting priorities is like shooting randomly and calling whatever you hit the target.”
If you had more time, how would you use it?
Is there any chance you could do that thing even though you won’t magically have more hours in the day?
These are the questions worth thinking about. Or, as Gary Keller writes in The One Thing, it’s not that we have too little time to do all the things we need to do, it’s that we feel the need to do too many things in the time we have.
Instead of wondering about time management strategies and productivity hacks, start thinking about your values and the few goals in your life that truly matter.
For instance, my #1 value in my life is freedom.
I make all decisions thinking about whether they’ll help me be free or whether they’ll restrict my freedom.
Most of the time, this simple reminder is enough to make the right choice.
On top of that, my top priorities are my health, relationships, and work.
If I’m sick, anything else is worthless, so I take time to support my body each day.
My relationships and experiences make my life worth living, so I always prioritize them.
My work enables me to be free, so I work efficiently on tasks that truly matter to make as much money as possible in the least amount of time.
When I think of my life like this, I know that I have enough time for the few things that truly matter. I just need to cut the fluff and avoid wasting my time on meaningless activities that would drain my energy (e.g., spending time with negative people, watching tv, scrolling through toxic news pages,…)
Bottom line: You probably don’t need more time. You need to shift your perspective and start thinking about why you’d like to have more time in the first place.
Stop having so many priorities
By definition, priority is singular.
A priority is the one thing that’s more important than anything else.
As soon as we have multiple priorities, calling them a priority doesn’t make much sense anymore. Yet we do it all the time.
We have 15 yearly goals, ten priorities for each month, and a dozen tasks on our daily to-do lists.
As a result, we fail at most of them, end up feeling frustrated, and start all over with fresh New Year’s Resolutions by the end of each year.
Luckily, there’s a way out of that vicious cycle: Stop aiming for so much.
If you’re chasing a dozen goals, it probably means that you don’t care enough about any of them.
As the Latin writer Publilius Syrus claimed more than 2,000 years ago:
“To do two things at once is to do neither.”
You can, of course, work on more than just one goal at a time, but if you do so, the two goals should fuel different areas of your life.
You could, for instance, aim to become fitter or lose weight while also building your own business.
Realistically, you won’t spend more than 1–3 hours per day working on your goal of losing weight. You can work out and prepare healthy meals, but that’s pretty much it. There’s no point in working out for ten hours per day, so you’ll still have lots of time to do other things, such as working on your business.
And you probably also know that being glued to your laptop for 10+ hours each day isn’t healthy or productive.
So combining your fitness goals with your business goals won’t necessarily contradict. Those two goals might even support each other — but only if you succeed in avoiding all other time-wasting activities.
Bottom line: Instead of trying to do more, try to be more careful about what exactly you do. Or as Peter Drucker said, be effective instead of efficient:
“Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.”
Stop wasting your most precious hours
While trying to manage their time, most people forget about a resource that’s even more precious: their energy.
Just think of the last time you’ve been so sick: You had lots of time but no energy. As a result, you couldn’t use your time.
Being aware of your energy levels and scheduling your days accordingly is one of the most underrated productivity hacks.
We only have a limited amount of energy per day.
Plus, our energy levels vary throughout the day. If you’re most alert and creative in the early hours of the day, it makes sense to use that time for the most challenging tasks of the day.
If you spend your high-energy hours tackling small tasks like responding to emails, you’ll likely lack the mental capacity to tackle more complex tasks later during the day.
Bottom line: Be aware of your energy level throughout the day and use your peak times for challenging tasks.
The magic question
In his bestselling book The One Thing, Gary Keller claims that you only need one question to gain clarity about what to do next in order to achieve your goals:
“What’s the ONE thing I can do, such that by doing it everything else will become easier or unnecessary?”
If you spend your day, week, or month working on your *one thing*, you know it was a good day, week, or month.
If you, however, spend too many days without working on your one thing, you’re probably just wasting your time by keeping yourself busy.
Bottom line: Find out what your one thing is and put it on top of your to-do list as often as possible. This is the task that should make you happiest, healthiest, and wealthiest in the long run.
Re-think the way you use your to-do list
The most common productive advice is to write a daily to-do list.
The underrated danger of a to-do list is that it can keep you busy working on the wrong things.
Instead of creating action-oriented to-do lists, most people treat their to-do lists as wish lists or, even worse: as idea lists.
What you should do instead is turn your to-do list into an actionable tool that works in your favor and helps you make better decisions throughout the day.
As soon as you add a new task to your to-do list, make sure to add two pieces of information to it:
- The level of importance
- A deadline (when setting a deadline, you naturally have to think about how much time it’ll take you to complete the task)
Adding and adjusting these details is easier when you’re using a digital task management system, that’s why I’m using Todoist.
When I add a new task, I immediately pick a date and decide on how important the task is.
I use three priority levels: Each day, I have one high-level task that needs to get done. This is my “one thing.” If I get it done, I know it’s been a good day.
Next, I have 1–3 tasks that are also important but usually take less time to complete.
And last but not least, I have 1–5 tasks that are quick to complete and less urgent and important.
Using this system helps me ensure that I always get the important tasks done first.
My most important task is on top of the list, and the third-level tasks are at its end. That way, I never need to wonder what to do next because the answer is obvious as soon as I look on my to-do list.
Bottom line: Instead of using to-do lists as a burden that make you feel stressed and uncomfortable, start using them as an effective tool by adding deadlines and prioritization.
You will die
Stop worrying so much about how productive you are and start enjoying life a little more.
Instead of constantly aiming to get more done, aim to make your time count.
You have 1,440 minutes per day, so make sure to dedicate at least a few of them to doing things that make your heart happy.
Take a deep breath, read a poem, pet a dog, listen to your favorite song, enjoy the sunshine, drink your coffee in silence, smile at a stranger, send a cute message to someone you love, or just do anything else that makes you happy.
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