By HAYDEN FINCH, PhD
Did you take my quiz to assess your time management skills?
If you discovered your time management skills are interfering with your life, you.are.not.alone. I get asked about time management all the time because a LOT of people are struggling to fit everything into their life. Here are some reasons we’re bad with time management.
Causes of Time Management Problems
Part of why our time management is poor is because we routinely misjudge how much time and effort a project is going to take. We either OVERESTIMATE the time and effort and then feel overwhelmed and don’t get started OR we UNDERESTIMATE the time and effort and then end up rushing through and doing an inadequate job.
In addition, certain mental health conditions affect our brains’ ability to effectively manage tasks, including attention-deficit disorders, depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorders, and various other conditions.
ADHD (both the hyperactive version and the inattentive version) is notorious for causing problems with time management. Specifically, it affects your brain’s ability to process behaviors in sequential order (first I need to do this, then I need to do that, and both of those things need to get done before I can finish this other thing), which is essential for timeliness.
Stress is another general factor that affects time management. When we’re stressed, tasks that would normally be easily achievable become overwhelming, so we avoid them, and then they pile up and become legitimately monumental.
With obsessive-compulsive disorders, people tend to get stuck. They have various mental requirements that have to be met before they can move from one task to another. They can get stuck on issues of perfectionism or intrusive thoughts about being fired or humiliated, which can impair concentration.
And in depression, in addition to problems with concentration that are a part of the pathology of the condition, we become less concerned about the consequences of not completing tasks. If we’re feeling hopeless or helpless in general, then it doesn’t seem to matter too much if we don’t get this one project done on time.
“It’s not about getting ALL the things done; it’s about getting the RIGHT things done.”
The reason many people get stuck with trying to improve their time management is they take the approach of trying to add more time in the day. Usually by reducing their sleep. Ask yourself this:
Do I have enough time for ALL of these things:
My work responsibilities
My home, including home maintenance and chores
My social life, including time with my children, friends, and extended family
My personal wellbeing, including exercise, sleep, hobbies, and relaxation
My intimate relationship
My alone time, including time to think and reflect
If you answered “no,” then your urge might be to try to add extra hours to the day. Once you realize you’re stuck with just 24 hours in a day, you might try to prioritize your tasks based on their urgency (usually reflected by their deadlines), without regard to their importance. A lot of people like this approach because it prioritizes task completion and makes us feel productive. We check thing after thing after thing off our list and feel accomplished. This can work in some ways, but you’ll end up neglecting some less demanding but still very important tasks. Things like your colonoscopy, dental checkup, and spring cleaning. These things, which have no hard deadline, get pushed back in favor of more urgent or more satisfying tasks or opportunities. While you might get a lot of things checked off your list, which feels good, you’ll find you’re not leading a balanced life. This creates more stress than it reduces and leads to negative thinking as you neglect some of your responsibilities to meet others.
So we can’t add hours to the day. We also can’t routinely compromise sleep to get stuff done. And prioritizing based on task completion and urgency is ineffective.
So, what then? The goal isn’t to get everything done by just balancing a million work and family responsibilities. It’s about reallocating your time to make sure you have enough time for the things that matter to you. It’s not about getting ALL the things done; it’s about getting the RIGHT things done. Rather than managing tasks based on urgency, we’re going to focus on managing tasks based on values, while also learning to work more efficiently to maximize how you’re using the finite time you have. Stay tuned to learn specifically how to do that. Subscribe to make sure you don’t miss it!
Hayden C. Finch, PhD,
is a practicing psychologist
in Des Moines, Iowa.
