Time Management is Dead: Long Live Adaptability

How not to feel like a failure in time management.

Do you feel that you have a lot of things going on in parallel in your life, and you are mostly in reactive mode, jumping from one task to another? Do you feel like you need more time to think about what you want, and everything seems ad hoc? Do you even remember all the things you did yesterday?

You are not alone. We are incredibly overwhelmed and stressed and feel pushed from every angle of life.

We are full. Full of thoughts, problems, and tasks, and most of these are so loud and noisy that we become numb and ill.

We started feeling guilty because of our poor time management and failed productivity hacks while others, seemingly, are doing it better. No, that’s a lie.

Time is time; it does not need to be managed. It was the same a million years ago and will be the same after us.

About productivity, Oliver Burkeman put it right:

“Productivity is a trap. Becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed, and trying to clear the decks simply makes them fill up again faster. Nobody in the history of humanity has ever achieved “work-life balance,” whatever that might be, and you certainly won’t get there by copying the “six things successful people do before 7:00 a.m.”

OK, if productivity is a trap and time management is empty, how can we survive?

Well, first, we need to stop for a bit and think. Consider what is important to us and what we want, and accept some hard facts.

Our capabilities and context, as well as how much we see and understand about the world, are limited, and there are an infinite number of things you will miss out on.

If you say yes to one thing, you say no to many other things.

While time is finite, you will miss out on infinite opportunities.

Everything has a price and a benefit. You decide whether you accept the price or not.

If your plans change, it is only a matter of price and benefit. Is the change worth the deviation from the original plan?

Many other facts point towards you as the main architect of your life, even if you don’t feel it now or stop reading these lines, saying, “ Thanks for nothing.”

That is responsibility in action. How you live and what decisions you make. Even if you don’t decide, you make a choice.

Suppose you are a mother with two kids, working constantly to keep above the surface. In that case, your life is a very different story than if you were an office worker living alone, burnt out and developing multiple stomach issues because of the stress and sadness.

What is common in both is that we can greatly improve our circumstances. To an extent, of course. You may not live without work where the money comes your way or with calm, independent kids at age six who will never disrupt you.

Change where you put your focus and work with it.

Don’t try to plan every minute of your day. Instead, have a rough plan and be adaptable. But how could one be flexible when the change is constant?

You need to know the price and the benefit to decide. If you see both sides, you can manage the events better.

You are heading to the school with the kids when you run into a traffic jam. You will not make it there in time, so you will also be late for work. One thing you can change in this situation is your response. You can freak out, but events don’t bother our feelings about them. Or you can check what you will miss and how to adapt to it.

If you have an agenda, a plan, you are not simply a victim — which is a big shift in the narration.

Map your day out on paper. You don’t need to go down to every ten minutes, but draw blocks of hours and write down what you do on an average day within that hour.

You may end up with a mess. If you want to visualise it, you can use colours and categories for the different activities. Don’t put the ad hoc errands there; only what is typical, like commuting, work, lunch, and exercise. If something is less than an hour, it is OK to overlap with something else. It is for you, and you will know it. Here is an example:

A possible map of a day. Keep it simple.

Once you have a typical day with the different activities mapped out, start looking for gaps where you can group and block time for similar tasks.

For example, you start working at nine every day. Block at least an hour or two to check your emails and work on the most important tasks. So, next time, when something comes in at about ten, you will know that that is your focus time, so you can decide if the change is worth it to get out of the flow. Mark those that are super important for you.

It is also useful when you don’t know what to do because you finished a task early. You can check what is typically the next thing in your day and follow your agenda. Less stress again.

You now have an agenda to optimise and rationalise, giving you control over your day and activities. While it is not ad hoc, you will not stress as much as before.

You can always make headroom and a place for errands, unstructured time to think and plan, learning, or even socialising.

It is not time management and may seem silly. However, when you feel in control and can choose instead of going with the flow, you can feel more relaxed and confident.

And that’s more important in the long term than planning every ten minutes and watching it collapse when the first change comes in or the feeling that you have no control over your life. You always have.