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ARTICLE
TIME MANAGEMENT
Time Management Is
About More Than Life
Hacks
by Erich C. Dierdorff

This document is authorized for use only by JEREMY ZACHARY ([email protected]). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact
[email protected] or 800-988-0886 for additional copies.
 TIME MANAGEMENT

Time Management Is
About More Than Life
Hacks
by Erich C. Dierdorff
JANUARY 29, 2020

MAURIZIO CIGOGNETTI/GETTY IMAGES

Project creep, slipping deadlines, and a to-do list that seems to get longer each day — these
experiences are all too common in both life and work. With the new year resolution season upon us,
many people are boldly trying to fulfill goals to “manage time better,” “be more productive,” and
“focus on what matters.” Development goals like these are indeed important to career success. Look
no further than large-scale surveys that routinely find time management skills among the most
desired workforce skills, but at the same time among the rarest skills to find.

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 So how do we become better time managers? There is certainly no shortage of advice — books and
blogs, hacks and apps, all created to boost time management with a bevy of ready-to-apply tools. Yet,
the most frustrating reality for individuals trying to improve their time management is that no matter
how effectively designed these tools might be, they are unlikely to work. Simply put, these tools
presume a person’s underlying skill set, but the skills comprising time management precede the
effectiveness of any tool or app. For example, would anyone seriously expect that purchasing a good
set of knives, high-end kitchen equipment, and fresh ingredients would instantly make someone a
five-star chef? Certainly not. Similarly, using a scheduling app without the prerequisite time
management skills is unlikely to produce positive time management outcomes.

Fortunately, there is a wealth of research that delves into the skills that undergird time management.
Here, time management is defined as the decision-making process that structures, protects, and
adjusts a person’s time to changing environmental conditions. Three particular skills separate time
management success from failure:

• Awareness: thinking realistically about your time by understanding it is a limited resource.

• Arrangement: designing and organizing your goals, plans, schedules, and tasks to effectively use
time.
• Adaptation: monitoring your use of time while performing activities, including adjusting to
interruptions or changing priorities.

Of these three skills, arrangement is probably the most familiar, especially considering that the
majority of apps and hacks deal with scheduling and planning. However, there isn’t the same
widespread recognition of awareness and adaptation skills. This raises key questions about how
these skills play out from a developmental perspective: Are they equally important? Are some more
difficult for people to master? And, are some rarer than others?

Measuring Time Management Skills

To answer these questions, I examined the results from more than 1,200 people who participated in a
30-minute microsimulation designed to objectively assess time management skills. Participants were
given the role of a freelance designer, and they had to manage tasks and relationships with clients
and colleagues within a communication platform complete with emails, instant messages, cloud
drive files, and so forth. Problems they had to confront included dealing with scheduling conflicts,
prioritizing client demands, and deciding how to use (or not use) their time.

The evidence revealed several compelling findings.

First, all three skills mattered equally to overall time management performance. Therefore, only
improving one’s scheduling and planning (i.e., arrangement skills) ignores two-thirds of the
competence needed to effectively manage time. This might explain why it’s so disappointing to try a
new tool and then feel like we’ve never really moved the needle toward being great overall time
managers.

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 Second, people struggled the most with awareness and adaptation skills, where assessment scores
were on average 24 percent lower than for arrangement skills. This evidence suggests that awareness
and adaptation are not only rarer skills, but are more difficult to develop naturally without direct
interventions. Additionally, awareness skills were the primary driver of how well people avoided
procrastination and adaptation skills were the primary driver of how well they prioritized activities.

Third, the results ran counter to popular admonitions of either the virtues or the detriments of
multitasking. A survey after the simulation asked how respondents felt about multitasking. The
evidence revealed that their preferences for multitasking (what academics call “polychronicity”)
were actually unrelated to time management skills. How well or poorly people managed their time
had nothing to do with their preferences to multitask. Thus, the extensive attention so often given to
multitasking by those offering time management tricks is unlikely to yield any real success.

Fourth, the evidence was crystal clear that people are not at all accurate in self-evaluating their time
management proficiency. For example, less than 1% of people’s self-ratings overlapped with their
objective skill scores. Moreover, self-ratings only accounted for about 2% of differences in actual time
management skills. These results echo previous work on people’s lack of accurate self-awareness
regarding their competencies and how this impedes change and leadership development.

How to Improve Your Time Management Skills

So how might people best prepare themselves to become better time managers? Doing so first
requires figuring out where to focus. Taking a deeper dive into your current skill levels is the only
genuine way to answer this question. There are three steps you can take to prime your improvement
efforts.

Build accurate self-awareness of your time management skills. This can be accomplished by using
objective assessments like a microsimulation, seeking feedback from others like one’s peers or boss,
or establishing a baseline of behaviors against which gauge improvements.

Recognize that preferences matter, but not how you think. Self-awareness of one’s preferences or
personality related to time management, such as multitasking or being proactive, can deepen an
understanding of where you might struggle as your change efforts go against existing habits. But
remember that skills, not personality, are the most malleable personal attributes and provide the
greatest ROI on self-improvement efforts.

Identify and prioritize the skill you need to improve. Although this sounds obvious, the key point
here is to avoid self-improvement that is an “inch deep, but a mile wide,” where efforts are spread
too thin across too many needs. It is best to prioritize your skill development, focusing on the most
pressing skill need first and then moving on to the next.

There are a number of evidence-based tactics for enhancing time management skills. Below are some
examples. Again, it is critical to understand that tactics are for developing your underlying skills,

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 which will ultimately improve your time management. Simply implementing these tactics is not the
end-goal.

Developing awareness skills. Effectiveness is different than efficiency, with effectiveness being about
doing things well and efficiency being about doing things fast. Both are critical. Pursuing efficiency
for its own sake is counter-productive.

• Find your peak performance time. Break your typical day into three to four time slots and, over the
course of a week, rank-order these slots from your most to least productive (most productive is
peak performance).
• Treat your time like it’s money. Create a time budget that details how you spend your hours during
a typical week. Categorize time into fixed time (“must do’s”) and discretionary time (“want to
do’s”).
• Try timing-up. Record how long you’ve spent on tasks with very clear deadlines, rather than how
much time you have left.
• Evaluate how realistically you assess time. After finishing a project, evaluate how long you
thought it would take and how long it actually took.
• Take a “future time perspective.” Think about how the tasks you are doing right now will help or
hurt you in the future (e.g., how do today’s project tasks impact next week’s tasks?).
• Avoid “sunk cost fallacy.” When you think you might be spending too much time on an activity,
step back and evaluate its importance (e.g., how valuable is the outcome, who will be affected if it’s
finished or not finished, etc.)

Developing arrangement skills. Unfamiliar but important tasks often have steeper learning curves
and more unpredictable time requirements. Developing arrangement skills is not about organizing
your work to better control your life – it’s about taking control of your life, then structuring your
work around it.

• Prioritize activities and obligations. It’s not enough to simply list out your tasks, to-do lists, and
meetings.
• Avoid the “mere urgency effect.” Urgency and importance are related but distinct concepts; urgent
tasks require immediate action, whereas as important tasks have more significant and long-term
consequences. Tasks that are both urgent and important should be done first.
• Use a calendar app. Record due dates for tasks and appointments — and do this immediately when
they are planned or requested. Label or color-code entries (e.g., work, school, life, etc.).
• Schedule protected time. Make calendar appointments with yourself to ensure uninterrupted time
to dedicate to your most important projects.
• Reduce underestimation errors. When forming plans, ask a neutral party for feedback about your
forecasted time requirements.
• Try half-sized goals. When struggling to attain a goal that seems to be too challenging, set a less
difficult version of the goal.

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 Developing adaptation skills. These skills are tested and developed in situations that naturally
involve high pressure and sometimes even crisis – the challenge is to handle such situations without
getting upset, anxious, or distracted.

• Try “habit stacking.” Tie your time management behaviors to habits you already exhibit (e.g.,
track daily progress every evening when you sit down for dinner).
• Use short bursts of effort. When tasks seem overwhelming, put forth maximum effort for 15- to 30-
minute intervals to help avoid procrastination.
• Experiment with time-tracker or checklist apps. Remember benefit must exceed cost when using
these tools. Gains should outweigh the time spent using the app.
• Don’t be a “reminder miser.” Reminders should have detailed explanations or descriptions, not
one or two words that fail to describe the task’s importance, expected quality, and so forth.
• Create contingency plans. Think about best case/worst case scenarios when you outline possible
outcomes of your plans.
• Seek to reduce time wasters. Create do-not-disturb time slots and block social media sites during
critical work time.

In this season of personal introspection, why does improving time management remain such a
persistent, perennial goal for so many of us? The irony is that we need to become better time
managers of our own efforts to improve time management — to prioritize our developmental efforts.
This path begins with turning away from the alluring quick fixes and instead toward assessing and
building our underlying time management skills before another new year’s resolution reaches its
dissolution.

Erich C. Dierdorff is a professor of management and entrepreneurship at the Richard H. Driehaus College of Business at
DePaul University and is currently an associate editor at Personnel Psychology.

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This document is authorized for use only by JEREMY ZACHARY ([email protected]). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact
[email protected] or 800-988-0886 for additional copies.