Tools for Thought

I’ve written several times in passing about inherent flaws in what’s usually called “time management,” particularly about the central assumption that controlling time is synonymous with increasing productivity. The time-and-motion model of productivity is an Industrial Age artifact that springs from the need for lockstep coordination of tasks on the assembly line. When cranking widgets requires a fixed-rate throughput, the need for doing most things at set times is absolute.

This model breaks down in knowledge work, where new inputs are typically experienced as interruptions. Without the ability to capture incoming work, or to suspend current work in a way that allows it to be resumed without woolgathering, only predefined work is deemed important. To reinforce the emotional investment in each predefined task, the time management adherent assigns arbitrary start and end times. This does two of three things:

• It defers the task, even if there’s no reason it couldn’t be done sooner
• If too little time is allocated, the person experiences resistance to the unrealistic demand and procrastinates
• If too much time is allocated, the person paces the task to fill the excess

None of these problems are fatal. On the contrary, there are times when the liabilities are outweighed by the benefits. For tasks requiring sustained periods of deep concentration, blocking out one or more hours makes more sense than chipping away at them in smaller increments.

The real problem with scheduling happens when a calendar is used as a to do list. I recently wrote about this in the post, Reclaim Time by Unscheduling Arbitrary Tasks. Unlike most home-based workers, office workers have to deal with frequent but irregular inputs. There are only so many calls someone can allow to go to voice mail, so many requests from bosses, customers and coworkers that can be tolerably dismissed.

Some workers who complain about the number of meetings that are cluttering their calendar are unaware of the further clutter they add to their calendar by scheduling tasks with no authentic time dependencies. When these scheduled tasks are interrupted, they either have to be resumed within the remainder of the originally committed slot, or rescheduled into a future assumed to be less free of interruptions.

The consequences of elevating When over What

In response to the post, Francis Wade of the 2Time Management System blog wrote a thoughtful examination of advanced time management practice. By implication, the rescheduling problem I pointed to was merely symptomatic of trying to maintain an inflexible schedule. When a more proficient user has her schedule interrupted, it’s understood that best laid plans will be disrupted from time to time. Rescheduling is a realistic part of the process.

The following excerpt illustrates the consequences of overscheduling better than I possibly could:

. . . those who decide to upgrade from Yellow to Orange Belts are often users who must deal a high volume of time demands.

They follow the Yellow Belt system of scheduling only the hard-edged appointments. In the typical 12 hour day, let’s imagine that they schedule an hour or two per day of activity.

The remaining 10 hours in the day are also scheduled… but only in the mind of the user.

The key difference between the Yellow and Orange Belts is that the Orange Belt takes the extra step and translates their mental schedule into one that is kept in writing, usually in Outlook or some other similar software.

Notice the “typical 12 hour day” cited. This norm in knowledge work results from piling the residue of yesterday’s scheduled work onto today’s, heightening the sense of urgency. Because the worker feels obligated to rivet each task to “today” in order to feel productive, he remains at work well past 5:00, until the backlog is completed or rescheduled, or the guilt from missing his family compels him to break the cycle of busyness.

Chronic overtime exemplifies what sociologists call eversion, where a behavior pushed to its extreme leads to the opposite of its intended outcome, like fasting leading to binging. The 12 hour day that results from socially approved cramming of Outlook calendars leads to counterproductivity. Attempting to control time through micromanagement creates a culture where time flies out of control.

Overtime acts as a safety valve for discursive busyness. As long as the evening is available to catch up on activities that were interrupted today and carried over from the day before, a shorter workday is unimaginable.

Of course, the 12 hour day wasn’t the point of the argument that was quoted. The alternative to transcribing a mental schedule into a written one is recognizing that an array of tasks with no external time dependencies is a list, not a schedule. The closer these tasks are stacked to each other on a calendar, the greater the domino effect when interrupted. The specific interruption won’t recur the next day, but general pattern of interruption throughout the day will.

Bookmarking

Without schedule clutter to deflect interruptions, the worker instead uses bookmarking. If he allows the interruption, he collects the material of his current work and puts it into his in-basket (if it’s email, he simply returns to the last message after handling the interruption).

The worker is writing up a purchase order. The boss walks up, asking if he has a minute. The worker throws the PO in his in-basket, then takes notes on whatever the big cheese has to say. When the boss leaves, the employee processes these notes, or delegates any embedded actions, then returns to the bookmark of where he left off on the interrupted work: the PO sitting in his in-basket. No time or focus is lost to regrouping.

Focus on managing tasks, not time

As mentioned, scheduling an action necessarily defers it. In contrast, an item on an action list should be done as soon as possible. “As soon as possible” doesn’t mean this very moment; it just means as soon as possible. If there’s a window of uncommitted time in your calendar, take advantage of it and work from your action lists.

Some actions will require more time and concentration, so schedule those if necessary. As with meetings, an excess of scheduled tasks will create time famine, so schedule things on an as-needed basis, without deliberately allocating too much or too little time. A little scheduling goes a long way.

(Photo credit: jpfinley)