A few days ago, I had a conversation with a wonderful cabin regular. Among other things, we talked about Oliver Burkeman’s view on time management and that we both really value his perspective.
It’s the sort of time management advice we don’t often hear and yet, it’s what our relationship to time should really be based on.
Although his message might not be something we like to hear, it’s the universal truth that we are all eventually facing.
We are mortal beings and our time is finite.
With this in mind, I want to take a closer look at the challenges of traditional time management and what we can do to embrace the precious time we have.
The illusion of mastering our time
Mainstream time management often tells us that the goal is to be ultra-efficient and focused so that we can get all of our tasks done.
But this pursuit is based on the illusion that there will be an endpoint to our tasks or our demands. Yet, there will never be an endpoint. There is always more to do than we are able to do. We are finite creatures in a sea of infinite possibilities.
In fact, the pursuit of efficiency will make us even busier. Let’s take email as an example, becoming more efficient at emails and responding to them quickly is usually going to result in more emails. And before we know it, we will spend a large proportion of our day responding to emails in an attempt to get to ‘inbox zero’.
Another unwelcome side effect of the efficiency trap is that we might be more inclined to pursue tasks that are less important in favour of the ones that require our full attention and deep focus. We are busy working on smaller or shallow tasks to move them out of the way but the paradox often is that we don’t get to the important tasks.
To feel less overwhelmed and to be more content with the things we end up doing, we need to become OK with knowing that we won’t be able to complete everything. And it’s not just me and you, it’s all of us and this might even be a reassuring thought.
Limiting your work in progress
Now that we know it’s impossible to get everything done, how are we going to approach our to do list in the future and make the most of the time we have?
This is where the idea of limiting your ‘work in progress’ (WIP) comes in. Just like in Kanban, a lean method to manage and improve work across human systems, we structure our work and only take a very limited number of tasks and focus on them first before we start anything else.
Here, Oliver suggests creating two lists – an open and a closed list. The open list represents our entire to do list with all of the tasks, projects and things we would like to do. The closed list, on the other hand, consists of 5 to 10 items that are most meaningful to us right now. The next step is to select one task and then work on it deeply. Once a task on the closed list is done, a new item from the open list can be moved to the closed list.
It might also be a good idea to keep an ‘on hold’ list if you are waiting for other people’s input.
This is very likely to be an uncomfortable task but what it will ensure is that we turn our attention to the things that really matter which also means we embrace the time we have with the things that are meaningful and that actually make a difference to us and to the world around us.