Why Leaders Stop Trying to Manage Time
And start shaping an agenda worth leading
What if I said you’ll never, ever manage time, but can always have the most incredible schedule as a leader? It’s possible, once you stop focusing on time and instead confront your most important choice.
Let me explain.
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Since the Beginning of Time
At least since the beginning of The Leadership Club™, we’ve talked about time management. Our very first Monday mastermind, three different newsletters, and more than a few follow-ups have explored tips, tricks, and routines to use time more effectively.
We’ve discussed prioritization systems, eliminating to-do lists (by placing tasks directly onto your calendar), and analyzing your schedule for wasted time. Our TLC members have offered plenty of tips, too, including:
Prioritizing your tasks to separate the urgent from the important.
Setting daily goals and reviewing them before you start each morning.
Using time blocks to concentrate on one thing at a time, minimizing distractions.
Applying the 80/20 rule—focus on the 20% of tasks that yield 80% of your results.
Limiting multitasking, because you’re not a computer.
Scheduling breaks to recharge throughout the day.
Reflect weekly on what worked and keep refining your approach.
All worthy ways to bring your schedule to your attention, and trick your commitments into being a little less exhausting and a bit more impactful.
It’s (Not) About Time
Except that, in the long run, none of those tricks ever seem to stick. Maybe it’s because they mostly alleviate the symptoms of bad time management. You’re run down, henpecked, frustrated, and discombobulated, so those kinds of tips are like aspirins: They make different pains go away for a little while, but they always come back.
Which means there’s only one explanation for that kind of recurring problem:
Time Management is NOT really about time.
I used to loathe my October schedule
For years (and I mean years), I would complain every September that my upcoming October schedule was going to be exhausting. Every year, I’d say the same thing.
“I have so many events coming up! The travel is crazy. I won’t have a break until Thanksgiving. I can’t believe it; it’s going to be overwhelming.”
At first, my mentor was sympathetic; he offered a few suggestions, and then one day, he uttered the magic words:
“Well, if you hate your schedule again this October, it’s time you talked to whoever sets it up, and either get them to do it right, or fire them!”
And that’s when I discovered the real problem with my time management.
I had an awful schedule because I chose to create an awful schedule.
But I can’t control it!
My initial reaction was to push back. My bad schedule wasn’t my fault.
“I can’t control when people want my help,” I said. “I can’t know when the projects will come in, or when my people will need help, or a client will have an emergency. I have to fit it all in whenever they ask!”
“Do you, really?” he asked. “Aren’t you the leader?”
Once again, I was forced to confront the fact that everything on my schedule is always my choice. After all, it’s my schedule. From simple requests to the hottest emergencies, nothing just appears on my calendar.
I choose to put them there.
The core problem wasn’t when I put them on my schedule,
But whether I put them there at all.
So the Leader’s Secret to Time Management is.
To accept that our use of time is always and everywhere a question of our choices.
And that the wise choice is our responsibility as a leader.
Period.
If your mind immediately thinks of every exception to this rule — you have to be available, you have to be flexible, you cannot control everything — well, you’re right. You do have to be helpful, versatile, and deal with the unexpected.
But in every instance, you will still have to choose.
And since no leader can do everything, we must become good at choosing to do the right things.
And little else.
Your Mission, Should You Accept It
Forget for a moment about being better with time, and instead focus on being better as a leader. As a chooser. Time management is a skill all leaders must possess. And like any skill, we can only learn to do it better if we accept the leader’s responsibility to do it wisely.
Until you do, you’ll be temporarily satisfied with time management hacks. Once you do, you’ll realize you already possess the system to make better choices. No tricks or hacks necessary: Use the same four questions you use for any decision a leader is called upon to make:
If I choose to do this, does it:
Reflect our goals and vision as an organization?
Align with our values and beliefs, and self-image as leaders of our field?
Support the clear priorities and promises we made to our people and clients?
Excite us to achieve it, without adding anxiety or disaster to our days?
Those four criteria work on every decision you make as a leader - from what products and services to offer, to which talent to hire, to how your organization conducts itself in the marketplace. All the big questions are guided by those questions.
And deciding what to spend your time as a leader on is a big question, too!
That’s when you’ll stop trying to control your schedule and find yourself creating an agenda shaped by your intentions, about who and what gets the benefit of your attentions.
At which point, time ceases to be something you try to control and becomes something you can carefully shape. You’ll find yourself no longer trying to “manage” time when:
You start to lead it.
—M
Super post, Matthew! Time is nothing but a series of events...choose those events wisely!