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Advice from a recovering time-addict
27 January 2023
Lessons I've learned the hard way about managing time.
As the author of a business book about time management, people often expect me to have nailed time management perfectly, to never turn up late and to get everything done whilst still having time to spare. Let me hold onto that appealing depiction for just a minute or two … because it is definitely not my reality.
I described myself recently on a webinar as ‘a recovering time addict’ because most of my adult life I feel like I’ve been desperately chasing time, needing more of it, obsessing over it. Looking back, I’ve been as guilty as anyone at trying to fit too much into my waking hours, being overambitious about how long things take to do and complaining about never having enough time. When our daughter was tiny, I’d start cleaning the house at 9pm at night because I never managed to fit it in earlier (yes I know, I should have just accepted the mess).
I should have seen the warning signs earlier on (we’ll come back to those pesky ‘should’s shortly). In the 1990’s, when I was starting my career, Belbin team roles were all the rage. You answered a questionnaire and were told whether you were a ‘plant’ (fun-sounding creative type), ‘shaper’ (bossy-sounding leader) or another one of the 9 roles. Me? I was the very unexciting-sounding ‘completer finisher’. Combined with being a J in Myers-Briggs, that means I find it really hard to stop work and play unless I’ve got to the bottom of my to-do list. Which, as we all know, never, ever happens.
So what led me stumbling down the path towards enlightenment? Over the past 25+ years, a great deal of research and learning around human behaviour, group dynamics, work cultures and people’s experiences of work, and more recently the concept of time, our perceptions of time, the neuroscience of how we think about time and the science of how habits form, stick and fail.
Through my 1:1 and group coaching, team workshops and consulting work, I now help individuals, teams and organisations to develop ‘time intelligence’ or TQ, by which I mean: our ability to notice how we’re spending our time and to consciously invest our time in more rewarding ways, so that we reap a better ROI for ourselves, our teams, our businesses and our families. You can read more about that in my January newsletter here.
My own relationship with time is a source of constant fascination to me and very much ‘work in progress’. in this blog, I thought I’d share a few of the things I’ve learnt along the way and that work for me; they might not work for you, but feel free to borrow and adapt them to suit you.
I look at time management in 3 ‘buckets’: goals, mindset and systems, and I work on all of these in parallel.
Goals: these are the big questions I ask myself from time to time, about ‘what kind of person do I want to be?’ and ‘what does a life well-lived mean to me?’
So much of the way we spend our time is wrapped up in our identity, our values and what matters most to us in life. That’s one reason why it can feel so hard to change our daily habits – it’s not simply about flossing our teeth every night or networking better, it’s about something much, much more significant to us.
Mindset: I try and take an honest look at some of the self-talk going on inside my head. In The Chimp Paradox Steve Peters calls it ‘chimp chatter’, whilst in Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway Susan Jeffers calls it ‘the Chatterbox’. I think of it as my inner radio, which I can choose when to tune into and when to switch off.
Good questions to help you explore your self-talk are ‘what outdated beliefs am I holding onto?’ and ‘what limiting ways of thinking are keeping me stuck in unhelpful habits?’ And ditch those 'should's! Jim Detert, author of Choosing Courage and a recent guest on my podcast, describes this mindset work as cognitive behavioural thinking here (audio starts at 40m 55s).
Systems: these are the tools, reminders and nudges that we put in place to help us make better choices day in, day out around how we spend our time. 3 great books I recommend on creating effective systems and habits are The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, Atomic Habits by James Clear, and How to Change by Katy Milkman.
Here are 5 ingredients of my own system:
1. I think about and plan my time A LOT.
At the end of every week I review how I’ve spent my time and what I gained (in the fullest sense) from it and I write down what I want to spend my time in the coming week. At the end of each day, I list the few things I most want to get done the next day, at work and at home. Once a quarter I have a ‘standback’ session where I look more critically at how things are going, what I’m happy with, what’s bugging me. And during holiday time, when I’ve detached from work, I get a relaxed perspective on the same questions.
2. I make my time as visible as possible.
So much of what we spend our time on goes unrecorded and unacknowledged. Of course it’s not possible to capture everything but I try and get a clear view of the things that matter most to me. I have a hand-written, 6-weeks-on-a-double-page view of what’s coming up at work and at home; I have shared calendars with family members; I don’t just put tasks in, I put social time, family time, reading time and ‘me’ time in.
3. I don’t rely on my imperfect memory.
I offload as much as I can to ‘external memory’ sources, whether that’s my calendar or a list (or telling my daughter who has an incredible memory!). Importantly my list isn’t a ‘to do’ list, it’s a memory list and from that, I decide what things I want to move to my daily and weekly ‘to do’ lists. I set frequent reminders; I use countdown alarms to help me finish up tasks on time; and I write short notes after important conversations.
4. I ask myself ‘what do I most want to spend my time on right now?’
This simple question helps me avoid motoring relentlessly from one task to the next while the hours fly by. If necessary, I walk away to another room or viewpoint to break my focus and then answer the question. And whatever my week has been like, Sunday afternoons are sacred – no chores, no work, no cooking, just idle time and leisure time.
I described myself recently on a webinar as ‘a recovering time addict’ because most of my adult life I feel like I’ve been desperately chasing time, needing more of it, obsessing over it. Looking back, I’ve been as guilty as anyone at trying to fit too much into my waking hours, being overambitious about how long things take to do and complaining about never having enough time. When our daughter was tiny, I’d start cleaning the house at 9pm at night because I never managed to fit it in earlier (yes I know, I should have just accepted the mess).
I should have seen the warning signs earlier on (we’ll come back to those pesky ‘should’s shortly). In the 1990’s, when I was starting my career, Belbin team roles were all the rage. You answered a questionnaire and were told whether you were a ‘plant’ (fun-sounding creative type), ‘shaper’ (bossy-sounding leader) or another one of the 9 roles. Me? I was the very unexciting-sounding ‘completer finisher’. Combined with being a J in Myers-Briggs, that means I find it really hard to stop work and play unless I’ve got to the bottom of my to-do list. Which, as we all know, never, ever happens.
So what led me stumbling down the path towards enlightenment? Over the past 25+ years, a great deal of research and learning around human behaviour, group dynamics, work cultures and people’s experiences of work, and more recently the concept of time, our perceptions of time, the neuroscience of how we think about time and the science of how habits form, stick and fail.
Through my 1:1 and group coaching, team workshops and consulting work, I now help individuals, teams and organisations to develop ‘time intelligence’ or TQ, by which I mean: our ability to notice how we’re spending our time and to consciously invest our time in more rewarding ways, so that we reap a better ROI for ourselves, our teams, our businesses and our families. You can read more about that in my January newsletter here.
My own relationship with time is a source of constant fascination to me and very much ‘work in progress’. in this blog, I thought I’d share a few of the things I’ve learnt along the way and that work for me; they might not work for you, but feel free to borrow and adapt them to suit you.
I look at time management in 3 ‘buckets’: goals, mindset and systems, and I work on all of these in parallel.
Goals: these are the big questions I ask myself from time to time, about ‘what kind of person do I want to be?’ and ‘what does a life well-lived mean to me?’
So much of the way we spend our time is wrapped up in our identity, our values and what matters most to us in life. That’s one reason why it can feel so hard to change our daily habits – it’s not simply about flossing our teeth every night or networking better, it’s about something much, much more significant to us.
Mindset: I try and take an honest look at some of the self-talk going on inside my head. In The Chimp Paradox Steve Peters calls it ‘chimp chatter’, whilst in Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway Susan Jeffers calls it ‘the Chatterbox’. I think of it as my inner radio, which I can choose when to tune into and when to switch off.
Good questions to help you explore your self-talk are ‘what outdated beliefs am I holding onto?’ and ‘what limiting ways of thinking are keeping me stuck in unhelpful habits?’ And ditch those 'should's! Jim Detert, author of Choosing Courage and a recent guest on my podcast, describes this mindset work as cognitive behavioural thinking here (audio starts at 40m 55s).
Systems: these are the tools, reminders and nudges that we put in place to help us make better choices day in, day out around how we spend our time. 3 great books I recommend on creating effective systems and habits are The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, Atomic Habits by James Clear, and How to Change by Katy Milkman.
Here are 5 ingredients of my own system:
1. I think about and plan my time A LOT.
At the end of every week I review how I’ve spent my time and what I gained (in the fullest sense) from it and I write down what I want to spend my time in the coming week. At the end of each day, I list the few things I most want to get done the next day, at work and at home. Once a quarter I have a ‘standback’ session where I look more critically at how things are going, what I’m happy with, what’s bugging me. And during holiday time, when I’ve detached from work, I get a relaxed perspective on the same questions.
2. I make my time as visible as possible.
So much of what we spend our time on goes unrecorded and unacknowledged. Of course it’s not possible to capture everything but I try and get a clear view of the things that matter most to me. I have a hand-written, 6-weeks-on-a-double-page view of what’s coming up at work and at home; I have shared calendars with family members; I don’t just put tasks in, I put social time, family time, reading time and ‘me’ time in.
3. I don’t rely on my imperfect memory.
I offload as much as I can to ‘external memory’ sources, whether that’s my calendar or a list (or telling my daughter who has an incredible memory!). Importantly my list isn’t a ‘to do’ list, it’s a memory list and from that, I decide what things I want to move to my daily and weekly ‘to do’ lists. I set frequent reminders; I use countdown alarms to help me finish up tasks on time; and I write short notes after important conversations.
4. I ask myself ‘what do I most want to spend my time on right now?’
This simple question helps me avoid motoring relentlessly from one task to the next while the hours fly by. If necessary, I walk away to another room or viewpoint to break my focus and then answer the question. And whatever my week has been like, Sunday afternoons are sacred – no chores, no work, no cooking, just idle time and leisure time.
5. I pack away – or squirrel myself away from – distractions.
Putting my phone in a bag or a drawer does help me stop reaching for it mindlessly; moving my home office upstairs and away from the kitchen helped minimise family interruptions and mute the siren call of the larder cupboard. Whilst working I switch off all programmes and apps except the ones I need to use for the task at hand, and I’ve found a couple of quiet, welcoming places in Kent and London where I go and do a day or half day of some ‘deep work’ from time to time.
No, my system isn’t perfect, yes it falls over sometimes (as do I). But each day I start again, and I think it’s the patience that I’m cultivating that is the most rewarding outcome in itself. It’s a welcome antidote to our hunger for instant gratification, and in my view a vastly undervalued superpower in our speed-obsessed world of work. I don’t want to hurtle through life then look back and wonder why I spent so much of my time in a headlong rush, I want to enjoy life more as I go and stop to enjoy the views … whilst accepting happily the things I’ve left undone.
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