Applied Research in a World of Increasing Time Demands
How do you prepare for a future in which there are not only more time demands, but fresh new channels of delivery? In this podcast from 2Time Labs, I interview Dr. Michael Einstein and develop into this question, based on his research.
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It
‘s obvious to most of us that time is a precious resource. Unlike others, it is finite and non-renewable. When we get to a certain point in our philosophical development, we begin to face the fact that we won’t live forever and that our lives as human beings has an inescapable quality: it is marked by an unknown expiry date.
This realization hits us at different times, and perhaps it occurs as a slow, creeping acknowledgment for most. As we live our lives with this concern in the background, we experience a growing urge to make the best of what we have. That is, we try to optimize our lives.
Mathematical optimization is a field of study that has existed for at least a century. It’s inhabited by operations researchers, management scientists and other applied mathematicians. However, their tools are normally applied to physical objects or physical activities in time.
In Perfect Time-Based Productivity I take the concept the step further, but state that human beings are caught in a tangle of misnomers and misunderstanding. That is, we know that we want to make the best use of the time we have been given. Specifically, at the end of every day, week, month and year we want to be able to look back on the time elapsed with satisfaction and give ourselves a passing grade. The same applies to the last few minutes of life.
However, we have a problem. While we want to optimize our use of time, something is broken which leads us into a state of confusion.
Dr. Brigitte Claessens is an Assistant Professor at Radboud university in the Netherlands and she’s one of the foremost researchers in the area of time management. Quite fittingly, she’s in the Psychology Department where she has created waves with her bold assertion that “Time cannot be managed in any sense.” She’s not the first person to make that claim, but she is the first academic of note to pull together her knowledge from a number of fields to state the finding in plain terms. It’s stark, unequivocal stance does more than provoke: it brings into question all the work that has ever taken place in the field. (In the 2Time Labs InnerLab we are conducting a year-long research effort examining this assertion.)
If she (and others) are right, then humans have been looking for all the right answers in the wrong places. And it won’t be the first time.
Weight management, for example, isn’t accomplished by trying to manage weight directly. Instead, we all know that it’s accomplished by jointly managing our food intake and level of exercise. In the language of mathematical optimization, there is an objective function which maps calories consumed and calories burned onto the results shown on our bathroom scale, measured in pounds or kilos.
The same is true for time optimization. We have always thought that optimizing one’s time was a function of managing time but, according to Claessens and others, we are wrong.
In Perfect Time-Based Productivity, I discovered that we manage a psychological object which other researchers have called a conscious intention but I named a “time demand“. I defined it as “an internal, individual commitment to complete an action in the future.”
A new objective function would be stated like this, as a start: optimized time usage is a function of managing time demands.
How should we optimize time demands? Immediately, two kinds of activities spring to mind.
1) The activities that take place before a time demand is executed.
2) The activities that take place while it’s being executed.
Perhaps optimization has something to do with paying attention to these practices.
In the first case, we know that a time demand is created in the mind in response to a trigger of some kind. In some cases it’s an explicit thought that represents a kind of internal promise. Successfully shepherding a time demand from the moment of creation to the moment preceding its execution involves a series of steps I lay out in my book in further detail.
My research shows that all functioning, adult human beings create time demands – a skill that we teach ourselves in our early teens. We do so with varying levels of skill: here are some typical flaws in the ways we manage time demands before the point of intended execution.
Flaw 1 – we create too many time demands to be accomplished in a day, year or lifetime leading to feelings of regret or guilt
Flaw 2 – after a time demand is created, it becomes lost. Some of us blame our memory, which psychologists call prospective memory. Others point the finger at the surfeit of data in our environment i.e. information overload. Whatever the cause (and there are many possible culprits), the result is the same: a time demand unconsciously disappears before the intended moment of execution.
In the second case, once a time demand has begun to be executed, the research shows that it’s best to give it our full, undivided attention. It’s the best way to maximize the quality of the end-product, its timely completion, the cost of the effort and the quantity of output realized. Writers such as Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi have written about the flow state – our most productive way of completing time demands.
There is evidence, however, that humans do more than just create and execute time demands like machines. Given the role time demands play as carriers of commitment, they are essential to the completion of every goal we have in life in that require our agency.
Relationships, money, well-being, happiness: any of our goals in these or other important areas require the creation, management and execution of time demands. As we enter our teens, we come to realize that this isn’t an easy activity for anyone to perform. It’s a hard job – in the words of Julie Roberts in the film “Pretty Woman”, they are “slippery little suckers.”
What makes things worse is that they are all competing with each other due to limited temporal space. According to Jordan Etkin of Duke University , the fact that some may be in direct conflict makes us feel more time-pressured. As a result, most adults live in a state of anxiety with regards to the burden of their time demands. Apparently, they are anxious that the time demands they create simply won’t be completed due to forces outside their control.
Given this concern, there are a number of techniques people use to mitigate the risk. These techniques are mostly self-taught, according to my research. As a result, they end up with skills that are uneven as the data collected from participants in my training confirm
However, there is another important reason why these techniques are different.
When someone creates a time demand, it appears that they also attach certain attributes to each one. To understand how this happens, imagine the creation of a record in a database of customer names.
While the name is an essential component in the record, it’s also likely that the database creator may want further information to be used, such as the person’s age, gender, address or phone number. There’s no limit to the number of attributes that can be added – we could let our imagination run wild and create a list of infinite length.
However, in a broad sense, we wouldn’t be creating this list without a reason. The “Why?” behind the creation of this database determines which attributes we would pay attention to, and which ones we’d ignore. When we create the database, we’d therefore collect a limited number of attributes – the ones that are important to us.
When we create time demands, we do something similar. A simple time demand such as “pick up the milk” could also have attributes we care about such as urgency, importance, time duration, scheduled start time, physical location, emotional mood, price, and others.
Of course, none of us creates a list of attributes a mile long – we only use those we care about. Like former President George H. W. Bush, we may not have a clue what the price of the milk we are about to purchase might be because we simply don’t care. It’s only natural for us to ignore those attributes which are least important.
But there’s more.
In my book I lay out a theory: we human beings often focus on a single attribute. It’s the one we find most scarce. We then use this attribute to manage all our time demands.
Here are a few examples:
This motley group may end up side-by-side at the same intersection, but each is there for a different reason. They are each attempting to optimize an attribute that’s most critical to them, subordinating other attributes in that moment.
These are just a few examples, but the two that stand out are time and physical proximity. Most people who have read several books on the use of schedules focus on the former, while some of those who focus on the latter have been influenced by books like Getting Things Done® by David Allen.
Some do argue that the attribute they happen use is the only one that’s important, and that the use of other attributes is irrational or foolish. However, my research shows that optimizing your use of time demands depends on your concerns in life, and even on the phase your life is in. In other words, one size doesn’t fit all.
What’s true in general, is that as you attempt to optimize your time via your creation, management and execution of time demands, you use a hierarchy of attributes. I would speculate that Pareto’s Law applies: 80% of the time you use the same attribute. Furthermore, your current habits, practices and rituals are geared to optimizing this attribute.
Therefore, the best attribute to use is the one that works best for you, and you alone.
Knowing this fact while being fully aware of the attribute you currently use is the first step. Unfortunately, life keeps changing and with it we need to make adjustments. With full understanding, for example, a young couple who is recently married may start by “maximizing opportunities to be together.” Six years, three children and two promotions later, their needs in life may shift to a different focus: “maximizing time.” When this change occurs, it’s best to make a conscious change in their individual techniques in order to optimize their use of time.
Therefore, the final answer to the question: “What’s the best way to optimize your time?” is “It depends.” A new objective function might be that one’s optimal use of time is a function of the way one manages time demands, the way one executes time demands and the “attribute of scarcity” one happens to use.
When this awareness falls short, it’s easy to end up trying to optimize your time in ineffective ways. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, we aren’t taught these skills. Left to our own devices, we often struggle, especially if all we know to do is try to “manage time.”
Having an expanded awareness and understanding is the key to getting tasks done, completing projects and achieving your life goals over the long term. Knowing when to switch and make an upgrade becomes all important.
This is an excerpt from the book, Embracing the Now by Gina Lake.
One reason people feel overwhelmed by life is that they expect to be able to do everything they think of doing. But thinking is a lot easier than doing! It takes time to accomplish things – as much time as it takes. We tend to compare how we want things to go with how long it actually takes and feel that we don’t have enough time, when we, of course, always have enough time for whatever we are doing – because we’re doing it! We may not have time for what we think about doing, which is always the case, since the mind is always thinking about doing other things while we are engaged in whatever we are doing. That’s what minds do — they jump ahead. This jumping ahead leaves us feeling like there’s never enough time. It leaves us us feeling hurried and harried, when all that is being asked of us is right in front of us, and that’s all we can do anyhow.
In my book, Perfect Time-Based Productivity, I make a very big deal of achieving peace of mind as the primary goal. According to the Zeigarnik Effect and work done by Baumeister and Masicampo this is hard to achieve because incomplete or unmanaged time demands prey on our subconscious. In other words, it’s not easy for us to enter the flow state described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi because of our intrusive thoughts
Gina adds to that notion in this excerpt from her book. and she goes a step further – we are also struck by a remarkable ability to create more time demands than we can handle.
Furthermore, we are constantly judging our performance rather than allowing ourselves to be immersed in it. While there’s a healthy way to adjust the way we do things on the fly, she’s talking about the anxiety and self-doubt that ruins performance. Some call it “choking.”
This internal chatter resists reality: we will never have enough time to complete all the time demands our mind creates. Furthermore, things take as long as they take, regardless of our opinions.
Many of us believe we don’t have enough time, which she says will always be our experience no matter how many techniques, like delegation, we master. That’s because it’s the thought that creates the experience – not the task itself.
This flies in the face of our conventional wisdom. But it’s true, in my experience. One way to never, ever achieve peace of mind is to maintain the habit of “jumping ahead” while we are doing whatever we are doing. Carving out a new habit takes lots of patience, or so I have discovered.
If you know any scientific research that supports her statement (which I take to be intuitive, like most of her writing) do let me know!
In this interview with Dawna Ballard, we discuss what is needed to make positive change in organizations. She’s a professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin and an expert in how time is abound to communication.
It’s a stimulating conversation about how to be a change leader, among other top
ics.
Brigid Shulte is the author of Overwhelmed: How to Work, Love and Play when No-One Has the Time.
I sat down with her and in our conversation, we examined the disparate impact the changing world of work has had on female professionals.
Click here to be taken to the podcast. While there, remember to subscribe to the feed on iTunes.
Many software and hardware designers are hoping to hit it rich by replacing the top time management apps: Outlook, Google and Lotus. These global products account for billions of users which means that replacing them isn’t easy.
Much of the challenge boils down to replacing habits users employ every day in their struggle to be productive. It’s a fact many designers discover late in their development cycle, to their detriment. How can they hit their goal of becoming the next great thing, when existing products are already shaping users’ practices?
The facts are clear. Designers of time management applications have a tremendous effect on their users’ habits. Since the advent of email over 20 years ago, they have altered the behavior of millions. The result is that they have had an outsize (and perhaps unintended) effect on worker productivity.
Yet, even the most popular program for managing tasks and calendars – Microsoft Outlook – is used grudgingly. It’s an engineer’s dream with tons of bells and whistles, but there is hardly a rabid fan-base of users who love the design of the product. Its dominance comes from its proximity to Outlook’s email program within Microsoft Office, rather than from its functionality, ease-of-use or elegance.
Perhaps the same could be said of time management products developed by Google and Lotus. In all these cases ( according to research outlined in my book, Perfect Time-Based Productivity) email apps were meant to be the centerpiece. Time management apps such as calendars and task managers, were included as after-thoughts. Ugly step-children.
Many designers chafe at these programs outdated interfaces and dream of supplanting them. As a result, there are over hundreds of task and calendar apps on the web, and in iPhone and Android stores, all hoping to improve existing designs.
There’s no doubt they are built by designers who are highly motivated.
But they all appear to be missing the mark. Outlook was released in the mid 1990’s and has never lost its place as the most popular time management program for the desktop. Google’s products became popular because Gmail was a well-designed, web-based email client. It didn’t happen because its time management apps were any good.
It’s easy, therefore, for a designer of time management apps to get jazzed by a cool idea and imagine what it would be like to grab even a small piece of a very large pie. By the end of 2015, the Radicati Group estimates that there will be over 4 billion email users. According to recent research of small business owners, some 82% will also use a task or calendar app. This majority translates into big revenue potential.
Some designers believe that people don’t migrate to new apps because they lack cool features. Recently, some have integrated GPS capabilities into their programs, so a smartphone can remind the user when, for example, they are near to a grocery store so they can pick up the milk.
Is their hypothesis correct? Would users flock to their apps because they include a cool new feature?
To understand why they are wrong, we need to take a deeper dive than the average designer takes, because it’s easy to become confused when designing apps for this particular market. Why? Well, for example, for starters, there’s no such thing as “time management.”
It turns out that the phrase “time management” is a misnomer. According to Earl Nightingale, “You don’t manage time, you manage activities.” He’s backed up by Dr. Brigitte Claessens, perhaps, the foremost researcher in the field in this new millennium. She wrote, “Time cannot be managed in any sense.” At 2Time Labs, where I work, we have a team currently studying this question. It might be the first time it’s being tackled in a systematic way, accounting for recent findings in psychology, quantum physics, philosophy and anthropology. Our early results back up their statements.
Yet, even though time cannot be managed, it can certainly be wasted. Any app that can help users waste less time would be an instant hit.
The remedy, however, is not time management. To discover a useful answer, designers of productivity apps must do a some things that all innovators of new products, services and apps must do. They must dig deep into academic research, focus on shaping current habits and pull information from a variety of fields.
Like their counterparts in other fields, designers need to go past popular, but trivial answers. For example, some bloggers argue that the replacement for time management should be “self-management.” This all too-obvious answer, which happens to be true, isn’t useful. Every kind of management known to mankind includes an element of self-management. You can’t study “self-management” with the intent of designing a specific product.
A far better substitute involves a new definition discovered at 2Time Labs: a “time demand.” It is defined as “an internal, individual commitment to complete an action in the future”. It happens to be an example of what researchers call a “psychological object,” named as a “conscious intention” by Drs. Wood and Oullette.
According to the research outlined in my book, human beings teach themselves to manipulate time demands starting in adolescence. We share a similar learning path. After discovering the existence of time at the approximate age of eight or nine, we realize that keeping time demands alive is critical to reaching our goals, big and small.
As adults, things have changed. Modern technology allows us to create many more time demands than ever before, triggered by an explosion in information. Potential time demands sit in an increasing number of places in the life of today’s professionals. They can be found in email, on written to-do lists, in electronic task lists, on calendars, in voicemail, in DM’s on Twitter to name a few sources, and there are more new locations being added each day.
One reason all time management apps look the same is because they don’t start with the basic idea of a time demand. Instead, perhaps confused by ill-defined “time management”, they only look for inspiration to other, existing products. The result is that they perform (more or less) the same functions, with little variation and no real innovation. In this field, there have been no breakthroughs since Outlook was released to the public.
A skillful designer should start by asking “What are the habits people currently use to manage time demands? What are the obstacles? How is life making time demand management more difficult? How can I help users turn off the spigot at will, if time demands are something they create without knowing it?”
These question can help a designer get closer to creating a breakthrough product. It’s impossible to arrive at this point following the conventional wisdom, or just by adding a single feature.
Most books and classes in time management present long lists of new practices for users to undertake in order to be productive. This style of teaching often fails because authors and trainers ignore the fact that functioning adults already have their own, self-taught methods for manipulating time demands.
Plus, they didn’t learn them yesterday: as I mentioned before, they learned these methods in adolescence, putting together a system of habits, practices and rituals. Over years, or decades, they have used this system to achieve every success in life.
Along the way, they picked up helpful software, gadgets and services, yet there are millions who still use the paper and pencil techniques they learned when they were 12.
Designers shouldn’t make the same mistake – they need to understand what’s called andragogy: the kind of teaching which works for adults. One important difference is that adults approach a learning opportunity with knowledge and systems already in place – they aren’t blank canvases.
Therefore, assuming that it’s easy for an adult to unlearn an old habit, while learning a new one, is a major mistake. For example, a user who decides to change calendar apps must first unlearn old habits, learn new ones and simultaneously ensure that their reminder to pick up the milk tonight doesn’t fall through the cracks. It’s a tough, real-time change management problem.
A designer who understands andragogy can develop powerful products that don’t require steep learning curves. Obviously, a product that asks a user to change too many things at once is likely to be discarded.
For example, when I taught time management programs over a decade ago I noticed users struggling to implement a large number of newly learned behaviors. Now, using the principles of andragogy, I show users how to implement a planned, custom sequence of small changes lasting months and even years.
An example: Users hate to switch applications in order to use a task or calendar app. Most of their potential time demands arrive via email, and it’s often easier to manipulate these time demands using software that is bundled into their email clients. (As a side note, with the advent of social networks, this habit appears to be slowly changing and with it should come a fresh opportunity.)
One of the risks of relying too much on a single book, researcher or field of study is that it’s easy to get trapped into a simplistic line of thinking that’s far from reality. It’s critical that designers be flexible, able to move between schools of thought with ease, keeping uppermost the goal of finding solutions for users. That’s very different than trying to implement a single theory, no matter how good it seems.
For example, in time-based productivity, most of the research has been done by psychologists. Traditionally, they have focused on concepts like “perceived control of time” – a feeling of being on top of things. While this emotion is valid, and we all cherish it, studies show that there is little or no connection between this particular feeling and performance.
It turns out that the key to improved performance in manaing time demands lies in another field entirely – Business Process Management (BPM). It was popularized in the 1990’s by industrial experts like W. E. Deming and Michael Hammer, who focused on the movement of physical objects or information through factories, distribution systems and offices.
Now, imagine their principles being applied to the way we manipulate time demands, in which we use seven distinct actions. Specialists in BPM have probably never conceived of applying their expertise to psychological objects.
This combination of psychology and management doesn’t come from conventional wisdom, but it provides a better model of the everday actions people take. There’s even a term for this approach, as I recently discovered: “The Adjacent Possible.” It’s the notion that great design sometimes comes from combining insights lying in disjoint, but nearby fields of study. The amalgamation of ideas provides far better understanding of people’s current behaviors, which in turn points the way to better designs.
A designer who understands both worlds could, for example design breakthrough calendar software.
My research shows that the most effective type A individuals schedule the majority of their time in their calendars, including much of the time they spend alone. However, I have never seen software built for their purposes. All that exists are calendars built for appointments with other people. This group, which makes up some 50% of the population, includes many executives and entrepreneurs, or in other words, some of the most influential movers and shakers.
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These three points show that, in time management, an opportunity exists for a radical new kind of product. Rather than ignore users’ current habit patterns, it would build on them. Discovering and understanding these habits is the avenue to creating superior value.
Also, revealing the underlying assumptions a designer is using is critical to creating a breakthrough product. This is especially true if better assumptions are available that can be used to better serve users.
These principles don’t only apply to time management, however. Anyone who attempts to design a product intended to shape user behavior must contend with current habits and seek to grow the limits of their own understanding. The promise of radical new products can inspire them to defy conventional wisdom and seek their own path to success.
P.S. If you are a developer of hot, warm or cold time management apps, hardware or software, spend a moment to join my mailing list or discussion group on Google+.
At the start of the new year (2015), I’ll be launching a new InnerLab (the 5th iteration) and this one will be different. We’ll be looking to answer a single question over the next 6 months of its duration: Does Time Management Exist?
The result will be a completed Special Report – one that I have already started researching but had to put aside when the book turned out to require more than just a few months’ effort.
That didn’t stop me from making the statement a major premise of the book, however. The idea that time cannot be managed was articulated by Earl Nightingale, the now-deceased motivational speaker and businessman, perhaps in the 1960’s. More recently, Dutch researcher Dr. Bridgett Claessens made a similar assertion in a book, as I noted on my recent article page entitled Big Ideas! Time Management Does Not Exist.
But now it’s time to go further, and delve into the work of philosophers, theoretical physicists and psychologists to discover the scientific foundation behind the statement, which she (and others) have never provided.
I honestly thought that I’d find a single document I could understand that would address this topic in full. But as I dug, I realized why it doesn’t exist. There are at least three ways of thinking about the problem, which I have summarized as the Philosopher’s Point of View (POV), the Physicists POV and the Psychologists POV. In similar fashion to the way I developed Perfect Time-Based Productivity, we’ll be bringing these POV’s together for the first time in the hope of answering the main question.
Based on my reading, I have developed a working definition of “time.”
Time, like distance, is a man-made concept that we all use to help navigate a complex world. It appears that we created the notion of distance, for example, when we observed that two objects existed separately from each other in space. Distance was used as the way to describe and scale this spatial separation.
Something similar happened when we observed that there was a sequence in time that could not be reversed. For example, you cannot unbreak an egg, which means that scrambled eggs always comes after the egg was broken, which comes sometime after the egg was laid. Time was used as the way to describe this temporal sequencing and separation between events.
Both constructs are essential to function in the world and we learn both of them so early and so quickly that it appears to many as if we never did. They are both language based constructs, it appears, that we learn to manipulate in countless ways to produce desired results.
If time is just a construct used to describe events sequenced, can it be managed? Or is this a misnomer like “The War on Terror?”
To test our hypothesis, we’ll need to formalize it a bit for those who like the next level of rigor (pardon me if this goes a step too far your taste.)
Ho: Time can be managed
H1: Time cannot be managed.
We’ll be gathering evidence from different fields in an attempt to disprove the null hypothesis, Ho.
At first blush, this may all seem quite esoteric, but it has practical implications. It’s possible that millions professionals have been wasting their time chasing after an improvement that’s impossible to make. If that’s so, then this effort would help put a stop to a fruitless quest that has occupied people’s minds for centuries, perhaps even since the first clocks were invented in the Middle Ages.
It reminds me of Native Americans who, when asked who owned their land and how it could be bought, answered:
“My reason teaches me that land cannot be sold. The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon. So long as they occupy and cultivate it, they have a right to the soil. Nothing can be sold but such things as can be carried away” –Black Hawk
To some Native Americans, “Land ownership” was an absurd man-made construct simply didn’t make sense. I’d say that, based on my research to date, my own reason teaches me that time cannot be managed, so those of us who share this notion in the next InnerLab will be planting a stake in the ground that says, “No More.”
What does your reason tell you? Let me know, then consider joining me for a 6 month effort where we dive into a question that could change the way human beings think about time management.
FAQ: Is the InnerLab free? Yes. The time commitment will be 1-2 hours per week.
Why have there been so few studies of what happens to time demands after we create them? In this post, I go hunting for some answers.
This week, I uncovered a great article written by Judith Ouellette and Wendy Wood. It’s entitled “Habit and intention in everyday life: The multiple processes by which past behavior predicts future behavior.”
Like many other academic articles, it has an inimidating title that seems obscure but the text is quite readable once the new terms it uses are understood. The most important, for the post, is what the authors refer to as a “conscious intention.” For all intents and purposes, it’s the same as a time demand.
Their article confirms one of the ideas I include in my book: that our daily actions can be divided into two types.
Type 1) Habits we perform with a level of automaticity that requires little energy.
Type 2) Conscious intentions that require explicit thought (i.e. time demands.)
In a follow-up diary study led by Dr. Wood, approximately 33-50% of all daily behaviors are habits. The rest are conscious intentions.
I did a quick search to see how many articles mentioned the original paper and the number came to over 1600 since it was published in 1998. By academic standards, it’s quite popular.
However, it’s interesting to see that very little research has been conducted on conscious intentions, while there has been a great deal of research on habits. That strikes me as odd.
It appears that the average working professional cares more about conscious intentions than habits. By their very nature, habits take care of themselves without much explicit effort. For example, we brush our teeth without thinking about it, day and day out. What we care about are the tasks we must complete each day and the amount of time we have to do them in. We are concerned about these conscious intentions because they are a primary and essential step we take to fulfil every single one of our goals.
This concern may be translated into a question that uses the language of the paper: “How can I effectively convert a high percentage of conscious intentions into positive actions?”
In answering this question, academics seem to have dropped the ball. My research shows that when it comes to conscious intentions, they seem to be more interested in peripheral questions such as “What are the factors that go into creating conscious intentions?”, “Why do people form the goals they do?” and “What are the obstacles people face in fulfilling their goals?”
These questions are important, but there are more basic questions that are not being researched, such as: “How do people process conscious intentions? How do they navigate time limits and due dates?” These are questions that are closer to our concern for converting intentions into action.
Why aren’t these questions being asked and answered by researcher?
A light reading of recent research in fields such as quantum physics and philosophy reveal that there is a growing concern that without human involvement, there is no such thing as time. When the existence of time itself is being questioned, it’s a bit strange to continue exploring “time management” or (even worse) “time control.” Yet, that’s what researchers in the field of time-based productivity have done for years (including yours truly.) Without adequate input of knowledge of other fields, a discussion about “time management” (if taken literally) is actually a bit of a fool’s errand.
The academy’s preoccupation with habits and behaviors isn’t echoed by the public, who only think about changing habits or behaviors now and then – hardly as often as they think about conscious intentions and time limits.
This vast difference of interests has meant that little academic research has made its way to the adult learner, who picks up a book, listens to a webinar and sits in a classroom in order to learn how to navigate an unyielding increase in conscious intentions. The majority of time-based productivity learning makes no reference or use of recent academic research. Most of the content used is based on the experience of one person, plus those who follow his/her advice. This falls far short of research standards: it’s all “anecdata” a term for stories taken as fact mentioned on the Harvard Business Review blog.
The reason for this mismatch between the academy and daily reality may be that there is a lot of funding flowing to habit research due to the high cost of destructive practices like smoking and drug addiction. Getting rid of bad habits actually saves lives, so a breakthrough in this area has high stakes, which attracts society’s attention. Boosting one’s time-based productivity isn’t as fraught with health risks.
Another possible explanation is that academics who study time management (mostly psychologists), are simply not equipped to answer the common questions people have. As I show in Perfect Time-Based Productivity, in the moments after a conscious intention/time demand is created, humans follow a defined process, without exception. Although these processes are similar in design, they are also idiosyncratic and unique.
The uniqueness derives from the fact that these processes are self-created. Their effectiveness varies widely between individuals in ways that are barely understood at this time – the research that should give us basic answers just isn’t being performed.
The skills these researchers are lacking do exist, but they are to be found in management or engineering schools in fields such as simulation, Business Process Management (BPM) or Total Quality Management (TQM). They all study the flow of tangible objects in processes and systems – but they don’t routinely study psychological objects like time demands. As far as I can tell, psychologists aren’t taking these classes to learn these skills which are essential to analyzing the flow of time demands in human affairs. By the same token, engineers aren’t flocking to Psych 101 so that they can learn how to model ways in which psychological objects are processed.
Only a multiskilled approach would work. Unfortunately, these are the studies that are the toughest to perform well, often posing huge obstacles to graduate students who must pick a field of study. This is just not the shortest or simplest path to take.
Hopefully, this state of affairs will change and we aren’t completely stuck. The stresses on professionals around the world are increasing, and we need to do more to help them attain the level of productivity they desire.
The idea that “time cannot be managed” has now entered the popular consciousness, never to go away. A brief search on YouTube or Google yields a growing number of bloggers and podcasters sharing the ideas that time management is impossible showing that this particular meme – so rarely heard until recently – is here to stay.
That’s a good thing, because it’s true. The idea that “time cannot be managed’ is a fact that we have conveniently overlooked for decades, to our detriment.
Earl Nightingale, the famous motivational speaker, might have been one of the first to say that “time can’t be managed, only activities can.” He said it often during his career spanning from 1960 to his death in the late eighties. The problem is that no-one took him seriously. The Wikipedia page on time management, for example, doesn’t even raise the question of its existence, let alone quote his statement.
Academics, however, are now echoing Nightingale’s statement. In my upcoming book, Perfect Time-Based Productivity, I quote two researchers on the topic of time management’s definition and existence. Lori-Ann Hellsten wrote a 2012 time management research summary entitled – “What Do We Know About Time Management: A Review of the Literature and a Psychometric Critique of Instruments Assessing Time Management.” It’s a defining article in the field, and in the opening paragraph she states that there’s manifest confusion:
“Lack of time is a common complaint in western society. In response, there has been a proliferation of ‘books, articles and seminars on time management, along with their assertions, prescriptions and anecdotes (Macan, 1994, p. 383).’ But what exactly is time management? Despite the epidemic of time management training programs… there is currently a lack of agreement about the definition of time management and a dearth of literature summarizing time management across disciplines.”
Into the state of disarray steps Dr. Brigitte Claessens, a Dutch researcher, who plainly states in the book “Time in Organizational Research,” that “Of course, time cannot be managed in any sense.”
While Nightingale made the original statement decades ago his statement has been ignored by most. (David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, remains a notable exception.) Perhaps the the repercussions of accepting Nightingale’s the assertion are simply too ground-breaking. At the very least, it would have meant the end of careers and businesses built around the idea that time management is real and the problems people have are not imaginary in the least. In my library, for example, I have hundreds of peer-reviewed articles on time management. None of them would have been written the way they were if this essential premise had been questioned.
It’s not hard to imagine that the real symptoms and challenges people face each day have something to do with the fact that time management is a topic no-one understands, or can understand. If Nightingale, Allen and Claessens are to believed, we have all been on a fool’s errand. Time management 2.0 actually signifies the end of the journey in which we thought that time could be managed.
However, my intention in this post isn’t to answer the question of whether time management exists. The question is one I answer briefly in my new book, Perfect Time-Based Productivity. My plans are to complete a Special Report in 2015 to provide a full answer, bringing physicists and philosophers into the debate. In this post, I only want to examine a single question: what are the implications of the non-existence of time management. So what if time management doesn’t exist? What is the effect of pretending it’s real, when it isn’t?
1. No Research in “Time Management”
It explains why there are no schools for time management in academia, and there’s not single a department in any university. It could be that after some thought, academics decided that the term “time management” didn’t refer to anything real. Unfortunately, this explanation falls a bit short because the topic is so under-studied, according to Hellsten and others who have done literature reviews. A more likely explanation is that, due to its lack of definition, time management is considered to be a multidisciplinary field. Many academics consider the pursuit of such fields as self-inflicted kiss of death – a trap that prevents rising professors from ever achieving tenure or raising funding. As a result, there are only one or two journals on the topic and no regular conferences. The closest you may find is a conference on time use studies, which brings together researchers who collect and analyze data on how we spend our time.
2. No Solutions to Everyday Problems
If “time management” doesn’t exist it would explain why the unwanted symptoms that are so widespread would continue unabated. Because we have persisted for so long in pursuing a non-entity, we have made little progress. I recently gave a seminar to a group of academics on time management and at the appointed time to start, less than 10 percent had arrived. Also, in my book, I share a story of training a group of extremely bright consultants in which one participant couldn’t stop himself from multi-tasking. Our problems in the area of time-based productivity are startlingly elementary even among the highly educated.
There’s an abundance of evidence showing that technology has not helped our cause – having total, 24-7 access to email, for example, does not mean that your Inbox will be any less of a mess. In fact, it probably means it could be worse.
3. Lots of Bad Apps
Believing time management is real has meant that “time management” apps are badly developed. Developers who aren’t experts in a given field must rely on theoreticians to paint a picture of the world they are trying to simulate. When that picture is flawed, or even worse, non-existent, then the software is bound to be flawed. The same applies to time management hardware.
4 No Education in Time-Based Productivity
Not understanding that time cannot be manage has translated to a lack of standards. With no basic definition, there has been no standard productivity instruction leaving teens to develop their own methods without any guidance. The result is that people end up with self-taught systems that are flawed or uneven, the effects of which are felt for a lifetime.
5. Following Self Management – a Non-Substitute
Nightingale and others have tried to substitute “self management” for time management, but that definition hasn’t gained much traction, with good reason. While it’s accurate that time cannot be managed, and that self management is what we do, it’s not a useful explanation. Every form of management is actually a form of “self management” including examples such as weight management, money management or relationship management. While the substitution is technically correct, it’s not helpful as it takes us no further in our understanding of what to do to prevent problems like lateness or overwhelmed email Inboxes.
6. It Stymies Further Research
Believing time management exists without evidence has led us to completely ignore even tougher questions about whether or not time itself exists. Physicists have trouble defining “time” and many claim that it has no reality outside of human existence. Einstein claimed that time is an illusion. Julian Barbour, the brilliant author and researcher, echoed the sentiment.
Philosophers also have trouble defining what time is. J.M.E. McTaggart came up with the idea of two kinds of time which he named the “A” and “B” series. According to Wikipedia, the A-series orders events according to them being in the past, present or future. The B-series eliminates all reference to the past, associated temporal modalities of past and future, and orders all events by the temporal relations earlier and later than.
These fundamental distinctions have divided philosophical opinion and McTaggart’s 1908 paper, “The Unreality of Time” doesn’t help: it argues that time is unreal because our descriptions are either contradictory, circular or insufficient. He says “Our ground for rejecting time… is that time cannot be explained without assuming time.”
These are fundamental questions that phrases like “time management” cover up. They leaves lay-persons having conversations that are superficial because underneath the common, everyday usage of the term there turns out to be little commonality on which to build.
In Perfect Time-Based Productivity, I introduce a viable alternative – a model of what we do everyday. Human beings uniquely create a type of psychological object called a “time demand” – an internal, individual commitment to complete an action in the future. We start creating time demands in our early teens, no long after we discover the concept of time. We try to manage them in different ways using our memory, paper, calendar, smartphone, tablet, laptop, white board, administrative assistant, Gantt Charts and other means; whatever we can use because their completion is vitally important to us both in terms of our survival, and our success in life.
I argue that time demands are an inescapable reality for functioning adults, given our human limits.
While time itself cannot be managed, we certainly do our best to manage time demands before we even know what they are, or before we can explain what we are actually doing. With adult awareness, we can do much more than unconsciously engage. The opportunities for improvement are enormous.
An interesting article from Eric Barker’s excellent blog – Barking Up the Wrong Tree – describes some of the work Dan Ariely is doing to work out the irrational behavior we demonstrate in the world of time management.
Among the great points he makes (all supported by recent research) is the notion that the world and its numerous distractions have made it hard for us to stay focused on our commitments. Some say its a conspiracy. Eric states that “It’s like we’re surrounded by scheming thieves: thieves of our time, thieves of our attention, thieves of our productivity.” They are all working together against our being focused on what we want, in favor of what they want. He concludes: “Not having a plan, goals or a system in today’s world is dangerous because the default isn’t neutral.”
While it might certainly feel as if we are victims of a larger plot, the fact is we need to own up to the monster we have created, albeit unwittingly.
For example, many have written about the benefits of streamlining your smartphone to include only the apps you need. Or opening only one tab at a time when you browse. Or refusing to interrupt a task because a phone happens to ring in the middle of its execution.
These tactics are all meant to preserve your attention and they all make logical sense. However, they remain difficult to implement on a consistent basis. For most people, they are far from becoming routine habits.
Even when we understand this situation fully, we just don’t know how to make the transition from being available to every distraction to limiting ourselves to a single task at a time. Here are some of the things we have to do.
1. Assume Responsibility
In this matter, like many others, we underestimate our agency. We have set things up in our world to be as distracting as they are. This is good news – we can reset them to support, rather than hinder our progress towards our goals.
2. Make Electronic Adjustments
This means carefully refining the “interruptional environment” around us – turning off (or on) beeps, buzzes, vibrations, flashing lights, pop-ups. Our first attempt won’t be successful and it may take several tries. For example, I just switched smartphones and now the old phone still has some strange beeps that I haven’t disabled because I can’t find what’s triggering them.
It takes perseverance to set up the right combination for your needs. Ideally, there should be the capability to turn all of them off, as envisioned by the MyFocus button described on Nathan Zeldes’ blog.
3. Refashion Your Social Environment
The MyFocus button has another purpose, which is why I’m such a fan of the idea behind it. It also serves as a virtual “closed door” to other people. When it’s switched from green to red, it’s a polite signal to other people that you are not to be disturbed. It’s like a closed door to someone’s office – only to be knocked on in emergencies.
Training other people to respect a MyFocus button or even a closed door might take some skillful negotiations, especially if the person outranks you in the company. They may believe they have a permanent right to override whatever you are doing, in favor of the task they have at hand.
In any case, it takes work.
4. Shut Down your Open Office
There’s a correlation between privacy and productivity, much to the chagrin of Office Managers throughout the world who are continually trying to cut costs. In the early 1990’s I attended training conducted by Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister. They established that the most productive programmers had more floor space than their counterparts. With more square footage (which was easy to measure) often came a door, walls and control over their visual and auditory environment. Plus, it meant that you were less likely to be interrupted by someone walking by who happened to remember the score to last night’s game and wanted someone to share it with.
Eric quotes the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain to reinforce the point: “…top performers overwhelmingly worked for companies that gave their workers the most privacy, personal space, control over their physical environments, and freedom from interruption.”
Now, the fact is, you can’t easily build your own office with the ideal mix of space and privacy. It’s the rare company that will even give you a choice. What you can do, however, is start a movement to boost productivity by shaping the physical environment. This will take nothing short of a campaign, and some savvy change management skills. Unless you happen to be the boss, you must use soft power to convince the powers that be that the investment in more privacy is worth it.
All in all, there’s a lot that you can do to take charge of your environment. These elements all add up and can make a profound difference to your daily peace of mind as a professional.