Nutshell: How to manage our time

Future Talent Learning’s four pillars of time management help us to focus on what adds value and to make time for deep work, thinking and reflection.

Leadership is about more that what we do: it's about who we are.

It follows, then, that being a good leader starts with knowing ourselves. Understanding how best we can add value – taking the time to plan, reflect and develop ourselves – is an essential part of the role.

This sense of perspective – the time to be – is at the heart of how we manage ourselves and our time as leaders; how we build resilience and create sustainability. In fact, the balance between doing the work and being the leader is perhaps the central challenge leaders face.

We therefore need to be intentional about choosing what we will do and how we show up – which means taking the time to work out what matters most, to avoid getting bogged down in the doing – and, ultimately, to enhance our wellbeing. 

Four pillars of time management

Achieving the elusive balance between ‘doing’ and ‘being’ means managing our time in a way that incorporates breathing space into our days – making room for working and thinking deeply and for resting and reflecting.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that more always means better, but we need to give ourselves permission not to be ‘doing’ every minute of the day, and to give equal value to the moments we spend thinking, self-examining and looking ahead.

It’s a mindset that involves setting aside time to seek out fresh perspectives and experiences that take us beyond the world of routine operations.

• It helps us to achieve what Herminia Ibarra describes as “outsight”, seeking out fresh, new perspectives.

• It encourages us to cultivate serendipity, when we’re open to opportunities that seem to fly in the face of optimisation and efficiency.

• It gives us permission to create a modicum of slack in our schedules.

It's an acknowledgement that in our ‘attention economy’ “busy is the new stupid” (to quote US business magnate Warren Buffet) – a state that often gives little more than the illusion of progress.

To avoid falling into this trap, we need to acknowledge to ourselves that we must become more intentional about making the time to “be” as well as “do”.

So, to enable us to free up time for reflection, while remaining productive and effective, Future Talent Learning has developed the following four pillars of time management.

Together, they offer a toolkit of time management techniques that we can mix and match to meet our own specific circumstances.

Plan

The first stage in our time management process is to understand the challenges of managing our time and to plan accordingly – which involves a healthy dose of self-examination. Being able ‘to see the wood for the trees’ is often challenging when we’re flat out or on the edge of overwhelm.

To plan, we must do the following:

Take a long, hard look at where we currently spend our time, interrogating the results. This involves conducting a time audit, to find out how we actually spend our time and using these insights as a frame of reference for how we might manage our time better in future. 

Understand the personal barriers and biases that get in the way of us using our time wisely. Common time abuses (or ‘P-traits’) include:

• perfectionism (chasing perfection in our work to avoid criticism at any cost).

• procrastination (making endless excuses for not delivering work, to avoid being found inadequate).

• pre-empting (maintaining control by submitting work earlier than necessary and growing out-of-sync with co-workers).

• people pleasing (overcommitting to gain popularity and becoming overwhelmed).

All these can be addressed in practical ways. 

Put in place techniques that will help to keep us on track.

For example, we can create ‘instant habits’ and ‘commitment devices’ to supplement our willpower and set boundaries that improve our focus. 

Prioritise

The second pillar of prioritisation asks us to consider a key leadership question:

“Where and how can I make the most difference, add the most value?” 

We might enjoy spending time on certain tasks, but that doesn’t mean they’re the best use of our time.

To prioritise, we need to tackle three key threats:

• decision paralysis (a complete inability to fix upon any course of action)

• planning fallacy (an optimism bias where we underestimate how long a task will take)

• cognitive bias – such as a tendency to waste time on trivial details rather than getting to the (difficult) heart of the matter or to prefer small, immediate gains today over big wins in the future.

Grow comfortable with saying”no”. This means we can focus on the work that adds the most value. 

Master some simple prioritisation models and techniques. These include the art of ‘satisficing’ (where we settle for ‘good enough’ over ‘absolute optimum’) and using the Eisenhower Matrix to ranks tasks by urgency and importance. 

We also need to understand when prioritisation can actually get in the way, bearing in mind that overmanaging our to-do lists can become a form of inaction in its own right. 

Focus

We live in a world where distraction is all around us, which makes true focus hard to attain.

Taking time out in a place or situation in which we do our best thinking can offer cognitive advantages. But this healthy distraction is not the same as endlessly checking social media to avoid finishing that report or preparing for this week’s one to ones.

To achieve focus, we need to:

• understand what unhealthy distraction is, how it gets in the way and how we can master it.

• manage other people’s expectations and set boundaries that will improve our focus.

• know what it takes to be in a state of ‘flow’. 

  
  

Timing and energy

Making better use of the time available to us is not just a matter of the ‘what’ and the ‘how’; it’s also about the ‘when’.

The science of chronobiology is clear that we need to:

• understand when, during the day, we’re at our most productive.

• manage the times when we’re likely to need a boost.

And while time is finite, another resource available to us – energy – is not. With thought and intention, it can be a renewable source that can help us to feel more in control and able to prevail.

If busy really is the new stupid, we’re going to need all the help we can get to manage the precious resource that is our time – and our energy.

But the rewards are many.

If we can crack the conundrum of balancing being a leader with doing the work – following our four pillars to plan, prioritise, focus and optimise our timing and energy – we’ll be well on the way to becoming the thoughtful, forward-looking and transformational leaders we all aspire to be, while also remaining highly productive.

Test your understanding

• Outline Future talent Learning’s four pillars of time management.

• Identify three common time abuses (or P traits).

What does it mean for you?

• Reflect on the four pillars and the extent to which you’re already managing your time so that you have the space to think and plan as well as “doing”. Which of the four pillars might you need to work on the most?