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The truth is that time management is nothing of the sort.

Time can’t be managed, in the strictest terms, because a user has no control of this very valuable resource. It has a life of its own, and cannot be affected in the least by anything the user does, unlike other valuable resources such as money, precious metals or people.

What a 2Time user is managing is actually action. “Action management” is what is actually at the heart of the 2Time system. Continue reading “Time Management isn’t Time Management”

Recently, blogger Ben Yoskovitz created a meme to create a list of the 100 best productivity tips, under the title “The Ultimate Guide to Productivity.”

Over 100 people submitted their tips, and perhaps I won’t be too late in submitting my own tip to the list (which I understand is still open).

My tip is a bit different.

Francis’ Ultimate Tip: Ignore All Tips

The problem that most people have with being productive is that they spend too much time on tips, and not enough time on the fundamentals. The problem with the field of time management is that there are millions of tips flying around, but no understanding of the basic, fundamental and unalterable structure of the challenge.

It is little like trying to play basketball professionally by taking all the tips that every coach gives, and trying to make them work together. Here is an example of a basketball tip:

Continue reading “The Ultimate Guide to Productivity Submission”

As explained in the post on Time Demands, each Time Demand is made up of some kind of trigger, plus a commitment. For example, that sock lying in the corner represents a Time Demand with the trigger being a visual sighting of the sock, and the commitment perhaps being the desire to have a clean room.

A Time Demand is the basic element of the 2Time Management system.

The 2Time system is all about recognizing Time Demands for what they are and treating them in a very specific manner. They are the smallest elements of a time management system, but they need to be understood differently from the system as a whole.

In the book “Stumbling on Happiness“, Dan Gilbert states:

“In general, many of us have the mistaken idea that large numbers are like small numbers, only bigger. As such, we expect them to do more of what small numbers do, but not anything different. Continue reading “The Half-Life of Time Demands”

One of the goals of the 2Time Management system is to once and for all separate the tons of advice with respect to time management and productivity thinking, and differentiate what is essential from what is merely useful.

The fact that there is precious little research on time management techniques is a travesty, and one of the results is that there seems to be no disciplined way to think about time management. At the moment, the different individuals that present their ideas on time management seem to be more interested in presenting what they think of as their “final solutions” rather than in understanding the underlying structure of all systems of personal productivity. Continue reading “Giving the questions rather than the answers”