
Why time management is ruining our lives - eoin_murphy
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/22/why-time-management-is-ruining-our-lives
======
torpfactory
Some thoughts on time management:

\- Understanding that you will probably not accomplish everything on your to-
do list was an important insight that I discovered a few years into my career.
Some things will fall off the list, and that's OK. It's best to make explicit
decisions in this regard: I will NOT work on that task / project because it
just doesn't have the priority. You may be asked for this sort of reasoning
later.

\- The company always wins. If you're a salaried employee, the company will
almost always demand more time than you want to provide. If you're lucky, they
will be flexible, but don't expect them to value your time in any meaningful
sense. Protect it for yourself in the most graceful and diplomatic way
possible.

\- If you are an individual contributor on a tech / engineering team: Keep in
mind that you are only partially credited for being responsive to email and
other requests. Your technical and intellectual contributions are often far
more important than keeping your inbox at "zero".

\- The best manager I knew had a very light touch with time management. He
didn't keep his inbox at zero, he often said no to requests, and he didn't
employ any real time management framework at all. He always kept in the
forefront of his mind whatever the most important task were for the business.
If his team were barraged with corporate bureaucratic junk (useless training
classes, etc), he would stand in front of management and say "no, fuck that,
that's useless". He was quite successful and could "get away" with this
behavior, though I suspect it was this very behavior which had something to do
with his success.

~~~
bootload
_" he would stand in front of management and say "no, fuck that, that's
useless". He was quite successful and could "get away" with this behaviour,
though I suspect it was this very behaviour which had something to do with his
success."_

Your manager gets what Merlin Mann could not, the most important tasks are the
ones you need to do ^right now^, to completion.

It's interesting that Bethlehem Steel is mentioned. Charles R. Schwab, the
Bethlehem Steel boss, someone who Thomas Edison described as a ^hustler^,
engaged Ivy Ledbetter Lee to improve productivity at Bethlehem for managers.
[1] What is not mentioned is the fact Lee was a business owner of an early PR
company and approached Bethlehem for business. His hack to Bethlehem
management, set aside 15 minutes at the end of a day and specify six tasks you
need done tomorrow;

* Prioritise them, one to six;

* Do each task, in order, till finished;

* Work your arse off;

* Left-over tasks are added to tomorrows list;

* Repeat;

I coin this, JIT task task management [3] and that simple behaviour your
manager shows reflects this simple idea. I Merlin Mann totally misses this
fact. [4] I was so impressed with Lees idea I wrote an article and some
software to explore this idea.

References

[1] James Clear, _" The Ivy Lee Method"_ ~ [http://jamesclear.com/ivy-
lee](http://jamesclear.com/ivy-lee)

[2] "Zero Tasks: Maximum Six. Add new tasks to leftovers. Prioritise. Kill one
task at a time. Repeat.", [http://seldomlogical.com/2016/NOV/19/zero-
tasks/](http://seldomlogical.com/2016/NOV/19/zero-tasks/)

[3] A month ago: _" To-Do Lists Are Not the Answer to Getting Things Done"_ ~
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12999565#13002833](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12999565#13002833)

[4] Merlin Mann, _" Inbox Zero"_ (July 23, 2007) ~
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9UjeTMb3Yk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9UjeTMb3Yk)

~~~
noir_lord
The best boss I ever had back when I worked retail used to walk the store
every morning, write down all tasks for that day and then prioritise them, he
then gave that to me and I just worked the list until finishing time, I asked
him once if he minded I didn't get them all finished every day and he replied
"Nope, I don't expect you to", it was incredibly unstressful, I always knew
what I should be doing, communication overhead was low and the list was a
measurable measure of progress over a day.

Last I heard he was senior management in the whole company so well deserved
I'd say as a former sub-ordinate.

~~~
bootload
_" I always knew what I should be doing, communication overhead was low and
the list was a measurable measure of progress over a day."_

It's no accident, and I'm really getting to see why this technique works. It's
simple. Given you have a days work, working from a short list is do-able. If
the tasks are prioritised things get done.

The bit I've found hard: when things interrupt, the old list is useless and a
new one can be made to reflect this. It really is a great hack and hearing
stories from people who have worked with this is a real confirmation that it
can work.

~~~
beachstartup
we manage entire projects with a simple milestone list and a constantly
updated list of current tasks and who is going to do them (action items, in
mba blogspeak).

'make a list and then do it' is way too simple for a lot of people to
understand. most people are looking for either shortcuts, or magic solutions
like special software.

------
elihu
A good book about time management is Momo, by Michael Ende. It's a children's
novel about a time-saving bank that comes to town and provide a service
whereby any time their customers save can be deposited in an account to be
paid back later with interest.

The townspeople become more hurried and efficient and remove the things from
their lives that give them meaning, and pretty soon everyone is rushing around
and miserable, because they don't have any time for anything. The bank of
course is a ponzi scheme.

(reposted from my reddit comment a few days ago on the same article)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momo_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momo_\(novel\))

~~~
PhilipRawson
This was made into a German film released in 1986 — you can watch it on
YouTube with English subtitles:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q_JYYcBP2Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q_JYYcBP2Q)

~~~
elihu
Oh good, they included Beppo the roadsweeper's monologue:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q_JYYcBP2Q#t=15m05s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q_JYYcBP2Q#t=15m05s)

This was something that's stuck with me ever since I read that book. Very good
advice on how to get stuff done without burning yourself out.

------
austinl
> “This topic of productivity induces the worst kind of procrastination,
> because it feels like you’re doing work, but I was producing stuff that had
> the express purpose of saying to people, ‘Look, come and see how to do your
> work, rather than doing your work!’”

Outside of email, I often get carried away with _setting up a system for doing
work_ instead of actually doing work. If I know I have a lot to do, I'll spend
time thinking about how I might organize it in a list and track my progress.
Sometimes I even open the App Store and look through more to-do apps!

Something I've settled on now is making a list (usually in an app called
Clear), then going through it once a day and putting it on my calendar.

Putting things on my calendar has helped a lot. I think, "this is the time
I've set aside to get this thing done. I'm not going to focus on anything else
but this for the next 30min/1hr". It also makes me feel less guilty about
relaxing when I've got nothing scheduled.

~~~
sjg007
I take the top 3 most important things and do those.

~~~
greglindahl
Which is similar to Kanban:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_(development)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_\(development\))

------
rauljara
My favorite quote from the article:

> One of the sneakier pitfalls of an efficiency-based attitude to time is that
> we start to feel pressured to use our leisure time “productively”, too – an
> attitude which implies that enjoying leisure for its own sake, which you
> might have assumed was the whole point of leisure, is somehow not quite
> enough.

~~~
Negitivefrags
I see this attitude fairly pervasively in hacker news when it comes to
consuming media.

When famous tech people like Bill Gates post lists of books, there is almost
never any fiction on there.

It's like reading is frowned upon as a waste of time unless it's non-fiction.
You can get away with literary fiction but only if it's high-brow enough that
it still feels like learning.

Can I not just read a fantasy book because I find it entertaining?

~~~
vizeroth
American adults read so little that this attitude only comes from a minority
of the minority. For the most part, people see it as a waste of time because
they may only read 1-4 books a year, so they might feel those books should
have some meaningful purpose in their lives (or they only read a book because
it is supposed to be great or have some use they can apply to their lives).

Read more, worry less about what others think. I read an average of a book a
week (and I'm a slow reader), and most people find that to be argument enough
to read whatever I want.

~~~
braveo
I don't read as much as I used to, and when I really think about it I get
regretful. I definitely read more than 1-4 books/year, but I just don't have
the time to devote to it anymore.

I strongly prefer actual books, but I've been doing a lot of reading on my
iphone over the past few years due to being able to read when I have spots of
downtime (waiting on oil change, for example).

------
saycheese
Tolstoy, 1885:

\- Most important time is now;

\- Most important people are the ones you're with;

\- Most important task is helping them. __

Lots of people focus way, way too much on a past the may have never been, or
at the least, will never change - and a future that may never be, or will feel
different when it finally arrives as reality.

~~~
andyidsinga

        > - Most important time is now;
    

I've been thinking about this occasionally -- it never quite sat right with
me.

Then, recently on a podcast (I think it was Marc Maron, can't remember the
guest) they were talking about this, but suggested instead of living in the
now, one should ONLY live in both the past and the future -- "those who suffer
from dementia and similar diseases live in-the-now and its terrible".

In a certain sense the past and future are all we have to interact about as
_now_ can be pretty illusive. So, with that in mind, the question becomes how
to make it constructive and interesting.

~~~
saycheese
Sounds like something someone would say that has no idea what dementia is;
feels comparable to saying a savant is a genius.

Being in the present is a skill that is learned, not a disorder.

~~~
rdiddly
Since children have it, I don't think it's a learned skill. But I think the
bad habits of drifting off to another illusory time are learned, and then have
to be unlearned.

~~~
hinkley
when the child is doing fine, they get to live in the moment, and are often
left alone to do what they are doing. When we don't like what they're up to we
often talk to them about 'not yet' or 'not anymore' and time becomes something
they have to contend with.

And then we start doing fucked up things like asking five year olds what they
want to be when they grow up. How much pressure is that? they don't even know
what grown up is yet, except that people stop telling you what to do all day
(oh, if only they knew, they would never grow up)

~~~
Broken_Hippo
You miss the point in the last question.

It isn't stress: Most children will do things that mimic adulthood, including
pretend careers. I mean, look at popular toys: Tools and babies, kitchen
appliances, fire trucks, police, and army men. Heck, there are "lawn mowers"
that blow bubbles and pretend vacuums. Asking that sort of thing is natural: I
personally think it should be humored even if they want to be the family cat
when they grow up.

The questions also are a good way to get clues on what the kid might be
interested in, so you can encourage hobbies or introduce other fun things.

------
ryandrake
I've never actually achieved Zero Inbox, but I'm pretty close. One thing that
helps is to create meaningful, actionable folders for your E-mails. I have
these:

    
    
        Urgent: Follow-up today in person
        Follow-up today by E-mail
        Follow-up this week
        Waiting for non-urgent response
        Hound (for people who take constant babysitting, I'll send request daily until it's responded to)
        Watch (if thread is replied to, I'll need to be on it)
        Archive (all resolved items)
        Ignored (no interest to me and no response needed)
    

I've got a few others but these are the ones I use the most. My workflow is to
skim my new messages. Reply to the ones that can be quickly addressed, and
file the rest into these folders to be reviewed at an appropriate time
(generally by EOD).

I try to address all questions to me by EOD before I let myself go home.
Because I don't like That Guy Who Doesn't Respond To E-mails, I try to set a
good example and not be that guy.

~~~
kilroy123
What I do is, use a filter for any email that contains the word "Unsubscribe"
from it. Have it skip the inbox and live under a label.

This pretty much filters all non-important emails. It's amazing.

~~~
jackgolding
This is brilliant

------
ilaksh
My solutions: be unpopular, avoid adding appointments, avoid starting new
projects, don't create to-do lists. Instead of long to-do lists I just focus
on prioritizing realistically and try to take care of the next few really
important things in a thorough way. And I try to make sure feedback loops are
relatively tight so I can keep reprioritizing correctly.

The lack of popularity is partly on purpose and partly just works out that way
for some reason.

Another thing I do is I avoid scheduling appointments or starting new
projects.

So the vast majority of my emails are spam that I can ignore.

Obviously many people's lives will make these strategies difficult to
implement.

~~~
nowaq
I love your strategy. I employ similar one whenever I can. "Remove myself from
the equation" is a good mantra to go by.

I'd add that priorities are key to being productive but not overwhelmed.

------
junto
One of my bosses had a good way of dealing with emails. He would only write
one single short replies.

No "Dear/Hello Blah", no sign off, just one single terse sentence that was
straight to the point.

He detested my wordy, time laboured and well formatted emails that looked like
letters. He had a point.

He treated email like a messenger application, whereas many of us still see it
as an electronic replacement for the physical letter. Once you see the
difference the time savings are huge.

~~~
ryandrake
This style breaks down when you ask three distinct questions, and the boss
(who's so busy he can't even form sentences) simply responds "YES". Now you're
guessing. Yes to everything? Yes to only the last question? Now more E-mails
are needed and nobody wants that.

~~~
frahs
I think you're confusing being terse with being bad at communicating.

Original comment isn't talking about giving useless answers, they are talking
about removing flowery language from emails and keeping them as short as
possible while still giving enough info.

------
andyidsinga
I suspect that the notion of managing one's inbox creates a sort of kruger-
dunning effect with the inbox owner in terms of perceived productivity.

I've given up active or structured management of my inbox : I read a few times
during the work day, try to keep up, but don't get worried about missing 40%
of things that come through.

I'm at-ease with the notion that important communications have a way of
finding me (email, slack, skype, sms, phone, twitter ...)

On the flip side of the coin I have a fairly unstructured way of finding the
weird and surprising and personal by management-by-walking-around, going to
the occasional meetup, the dog park, hosting parties at my house, scanning HN
comments and reddit.

~~~
rdiddly
Ah, so you're one of those folks who doesn't answer my emails! Makes me pester
you multiple times, by email, SMS, Skype, and if I'm truly desperate, the dog
park. You're just outsourcing the work of communication onto me. When you ask
for a favor I will pretend I didn't hear it! Winky emoticon.

~~~
ryandrake
Thank you for pointing that out. Not answering one's E-mail is on my list of
"rude things that somehow have become acceptable". It's part of individual
companies' cultures. I've worked places where people can generally be relied
upon to get back to you, and places where you might as well print out the
message and shred it--it's not going to be responded to. The former means your
working relationship with me is going to be smooth and collaborative. The
latter means I'm going to treat you like a deadbeat and come around and nag
you in person.

I actually really hate being that "Hey, didja read that E-mail I sent?" guy,
but if you're not responsive, I am going to have to pay you a visit. And I
have no idea when you're in the zone and when you're just chilling. If you
would just answer your E-mail, then you get to do it at the best time for you.

One thing I've found helpful over the years is: When you are depending on
getting a response, say so. "NEED RESPONSE BY EOD TUESDAY" Make it the very
first thing in the body of the E-mail, or even make it the subject of the
E-mail, since some people only skim the subjects.

Another tip is to state clearly what assumption you will make about their
thoughts if you do not hear back in time: "If I don't hear back by EOD, we
will go forward with the proposal."

EDIT: Another good tip I forgot to mention: If your E-mail is going to
multiple people, and you need one or more of them to respond or take action,
type their Full Name in bold and red then ":" then the specific action the
need to take and by when. This helps people who only scan their E-mails, as
their name stands out.

Most of these tips are actually pretty obvious, it seems silly to even write
them down.

~~~
pmichaud
I like your tactical suggestion at the bottom, but I wanted to say that I
rankle at the top.

Philosophically, I don't think a request for my attention creates an
obligation to give it.

Practically, if I responded to every email I received, I'd spend all my time
doing nothing but responding to email, then I'd still fail by running out of
time.

It's actually pretty stressful. I've outsourced a lot of my email to a couple
people who work for me, but there are still some that just go unanswered
because the system isn't airtight. But it feels unfair to impugn me as rude
for not being able to do a thing that becomes impractical to do at a certain
point.

~~~
sambe
If your company pays you to give your attention when requested then it kind of
does create such an obligation.

I'll grant you that if they have to choose, they probably choose total
productivity over all emails answered. However, clearly not every incoming
email requires an answer from every recipient. You are not being asked to
reply to 100% of incoming emails instantly.

Ignoring direct requests for attention is both rude and in my opinion
ultimately toxic. Imagine what would happen if everyone acted that way. It
blocks information flow, holds people up, and ultimately doesn't solve the
problem - you are just forcing someone to follow up some other way. It
actually hides problems. Those can be that you are doing something wrong: poor
at organising your email or your time compared to others; contiually
optimising visible productivity at the expense of other people's time; poor
communication skills. On the flip side, it can be that the company has poor
email culture, suboptimal team structures/dynamics or just too much work for
the number of employees. If your manager met you by the coffee machine when
you were busy and asked you for something you wouldn't just walk away.

None of the best or most productive people I've worked with have been casual
about dropping 40% of their emails.

~~~
pmichaud
It seems like you're imagining a different situation than I am. I'm talking
about a large volume of outside email, the equivalent of fan mail,
essentially. We have other methods of communication for internal stuff, like
Slack.

I stand by my original assertion that your request for attention doesn't
create an obligation to give any to you, though. I think the cultural norms
around it (ie, give attention when asked) make sense at small scales, but
break once you cross a certain threshold of people wanting attention.

~~~
sambe
Maybe, but the employment situation still changes the dynamics. You probably
couldn't get away with this argument if you worked in customer support, for
example.

------
Spooky23
Time management and efficiency is a trap for the striver. Work smarter, not
harder has always been a fundamental truism.

I've seen time and again people working like donkeys, and pitching whatever
they do to exec management. Half the time they eyeroll when the pitch is over
because some buzzword wasn't incanted or the speaker said something that
sounded like a thing that went bad in the previous meeting.

Personally, inbox zero is an impossibly. (I think I'm at 15k unready right
now) I have a gatekeeper for strangers, read emails from about 20 people and
read priorities. The rest either doesn't need my attention, or folks will
figure it out, or it will get bumped in the priority list.

As a result I'm sane and work 40-45 hours a week. One of my colleagues feels
compelled to answer everything. He doesn't realize that he's just enabling
dependency from others and is working 60 hours a week, every week.

~~~
oblio
You can have both. I have 0 unread emails cause the garbage goes to spam, the
unimportant is marked as read and everything else is read every X hours.

The difference is probably ignore vs mass mark as read.

I find it useful cause I have a small diff for each check.

Think of it as Continuous Integration for email :)

~~~
Spooky23
I used to do something like that until I had to testify in a deposition about
such things for a day or two. Never again.

Now I ignore, delete after a set period of time and have a written procedure
in my home directory.

------
coldcode
At work it is routine for people to create long phone meetings, invite 50
people who all are expected to be online, talk for hour with no decision, plan
another meeting for later to talk about it again. People only show up because
if they don't they will be blamed for anything that goes wrong which will
spawn more unpleasant meetings. The actual decision needed could be done in a
couple of Slack messages between two programmers, but the end result is
massive wastage of time where no one can get any work done. Because no work is
accomplished, more meetings must be held to decide what to do to fix it. Of
course as a programmer I am expected to get everything done within a small
window of time which of course doesn't include all the meetings, so I have to
be masterful of what time I have to avoid being called into meetings about why
I didn't get things done on time.

~~~
gedy
Those who can, do. Those who can't, talk.

~~~
blowski
Nice idea, but doesn't work in practice. Without talking regularly with key
stakeholders, you have no idea whether you're building the right thing - and
frequently you won't.

If you define productivity merely as writing lines of code, then sure,
meetings are a waste of time. But if you define productivity as delivering
something genuinely valuable, then talking often makes you much more
productive.

~~~
sambe
I'm not sure you're going to the same kind of meetings as the ancestors. Of
course you need context and feedback. The kind of meetings that often happen
in a certain type of business involve way more people than necessary, most of
whom also lack the context to make informed choices, and prefer to continually
change the subject to draw or divert attention to/from themselves. Product
meetings with savvy stakeholders pulling in a mostly unified direction are
awesome. Even when people disagree, as long as they agree on the rules of the
game and try to work for a win-win things tend to work out pretty well.
Talking in circles offf-topic for 2 hours whilst people play with their social
media isn't productive in anyone's definition.

------
colund
I manage my time by stopping reading after a few sections when I realize that
the article does not contain information that will matter to me for real.

It's actually quite simple. Only do things you really want to do and try to do
it well. Be nice to others and be nice to yourself.

Don't waste time reading stuff which is boring but... "stay hungry... stay
foolish"

~~~
nether
Why should one stay hungry? What about conquering one's insatiability, and
becoming content?

~~~
golergka
Then you lose your drive to move forward. Then zen feeling of being content is
not mush different from being dead.

~~~
hornbaker
Happiness is wanting what you have, not having what you want.

~~~
obstacle1
Delusion is asserting that you've found some objective measure of happiness
that can be generalized to everyone.

------
tedmiston
As I read this well written piece I can't help but to stop and think about the
irony of reading a 22-minute article about priorities and time management
instead of getting back to spending time with family and friends over the
Christmas break.

I will stop and react to one piece:

> In an era of insecure employment, we must constantly demonstrate our
> usefulness through frenetic doing

This is why I started my own company this year. I still do the same type of
work providing dev services vs being a dev employee, but it's freed me from
busy work that involves being present in a chair 9–5 which gets mistaken for
productivity in a traditional office environment.

~~~
iagooar
May I ask you how you did the jump to self-employment? Did you build up your
network while working for a salary and then switch to your own company? I know
I'd love to be my own boss, but it seems tough to find enough clients in order
to pay yourself a salary.

~~~
tedmiston
Pretty much what you said. For client sourcing I just asked a few founder
friends if they would be interested in contracting a part time dev and they
were. That was unituitively one of the easiest parts.

Also, the market rate as a contractor is quite a bit higher than as an
employee which helps cover some of the time that isn't billable.

~~~
ikeyany
> I just asked a few founder friends

Ah. It all seems so simple when phrased like that. To be an insider...

~~~
tedmiston
I wouldn't necessarily say that. I live in a third- / fourth-tier startup
ecosystem and started here from scratch about 3 years ago. Taking a job for a
company still working in the space provided by the accelerator (which happens
to host lots of meetups) was one of the best things to happen to me though,
even if that company ultimately failed.

(I got that first job blindly off AngelList with no connections.)

------
ChuckMcM
I have heard vintners say "water the vine, ruin the wine."

The theory as explained to me was that if the plants have enough water they
make uniform grapes and that makes for a very dull wine. But let them struggle
and the complexity multiplies making for a very good wine.

Scott McNealy at Sun felt that way about engineering. Engineering was always
asked to do more than it could with insufficient time or budget. The effect of
that was a natural prioritizing of what _did_ get budget or time and a lot of
creativity in how the goals might be met. I realized in my own life that if I
don't put a deadline on something, even an artificial one, things can get
stuck. And sit there stuck forever. The deadline forces me to go back and try
a different solution to get it across the finish line.

Yes it is a "lame mental trick" but one that for me is effective.

------
codeulike
This is a much more intelligent essay than you might expect based on the
title. The stuff about Inbox Zero and it's author is very interesting.

~~~
skinnymuch
Yeah for sure. And yes Merlin Mann (Inbox Zero guy) is an awesome person. Very
authentic and real. Didn't keep peddling productivity BS. I've followed him
ever since.

------
ZeroFries
Lifestyle design and time management tend to make people less happy because
they then tend to focus on the past and future, priming the desire/fear based
systems which make you feel like the present moment is not good enough. The
key to improving happiness is learning to guide the attentional system to the
present moment as much as possible. The present moment is full of rich sensory
data, usually inherently pleasant.

------
maxxxxx
Time management is another way how the managing class dominates life more and
more. For somebody who mainly spends his time in meetings it's fine to manage
his time closely. For a lot of engineers it would be better if they solved
only a few very difficult problems instead of many trivial ones as it seems to
be the trend right now.

------
anigbrowl
On a similar note, efficiency is good but if you run a perfectly efficient
operation then you're extremely vulnerable to disruptions. If all you care
about is beating other competitors so as to be #1, then of course you want to
be as efficient as possible, just as a professional athlete orients everything
around the exercise and practice required to excel in competition. That's
great, but it also has pitfalls - specialization can result in inflexibility
in changing circumstances, and if you operate close to the envelope of
capability all the time then a small mistake can have drastic consequences.

------
serb348
"A Short Cartoon about Time" by david firth:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idCFV0KF4uo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idCFV0KF4uo)

------
albertTJames
I am happily surprised that this kind of anti-capitalistic bit got to the top
of HN. Usually, any sort of critic of the current financial system gets hacked
down. Hope still for a better future then.

------
fsloth
The book "Algorithms to live by" by Brian Christian pointed out that as a
society, we've switched in interpersonal communication from 'circuit
switching' to 'packet switching'. I.e nowadays anyone can send anything, and
it's the recipients responsibility to deal with all the messages coming in.
Earlier, e.g. with phone, fax and paper mail, the communication bandwidth for
incoming noise - err, I mean messages - was lower, and the individual did not
need to deal with so much traffic.

------
0xCMP
I find that current time management tools worry about the wrong thing. HN
talks a lot about UX and the psychology of the things we use. For example, how
sticky Facebook or YouTube can be.

I think that time management has in someways had very good ideas, but the
tools needed have never existed. Waiting for the tools has been futile. (i.e A
todo list with swipe-actions doesn't help you get more stuff done. Switching
to all paper can be impractical. Using OrgMode doesn't work well on mobile
cause the app isn't super maintained anymore. etc.)

I have always liked the system of keeping a calendar, a list of things todo,
and making a habit of deciding which of those things to do today. If I have
free time when I should be working I look at the list otherwise: whatever. In
more detail it's a mix of Cal Newport's ideas with some of Zen To Done.

I am working on something that I think will help with this software problem.
Eventually I'll show it on HN. I think many people on here are going to enjoy
it a lot even in the early form I will first release it in.*

* And even if they didn't. It's what I wanted anyways so I still win!

------
tomphoolery
GTD and Inbox Zero never felt like "time management" strategies to me, they're
more like methodologies for very specific use cases like your email and to-do
list. While they do help you manage the email flow coming in and what you have
to do in your life that might slip by, they don't really teach you how to
manage the rest of the time that it takes to actually do stuff in your life.

My time management is basically a combination of Inbox Zero, GTD, and "extreme
calendaring". Every (working) morning, I spend about a half hour processing my
email and either replying to/reading messages or delegating replies/reads for
the future. I delegate reading email by moving the messages into a folder
called "Deferred", which I will go through at the end of the day to read
anything that I might not have wanted to get into in the morning due to lack
of time. To delegate writing replies, I will typically archive the message and
start a reply to it in Drafts. I might also remind myself to reply to the
email at a specific time or when I get home.

My "inbox" for GTD is the Reminders list on my iPhone. Using Siri, I typically
tell my phone to remind me to do things at various times or when I arrive at
home/work/the grocery store/etc. Every Sunday, I block out about two hours to
go through this list and do any tasks that aren't scheduled for a certain
time. Reminders that have a schedule are expected to be done at that time, and
reminders set for me to do when I arrive somewhere should be done pretty much
immediately upon arrival.

But the real trick to time management is using the Calendar. I block off time
during the day to do certain things, and by default, I get notified when I
have to do them. I've conditioned myself to just start working on whatever my
calendar tells me to do when I get an event notification, and I attempt to put
in things like travel times and longer/multiple alerts to remind me to get
ready for longer events or for traveling to events. I'm a programmer in my day
job and a musician at night, so I'm already used to being responsive to my
calendar, but the music business doesn't really work like that. I have to put
in all my appointments, like mixdowns, rehearsals, gigs, meetings, etc., in my
own calendar if I want to make it to everything on time and not look like a
space cadet.

So while GTD and Inbox Zero help my calendaring be more efficient, the _real_
secret sauce to me keeping my life together is my calendar.

------
tptacek
Weird tangent:

A couple years ago I had a wicked bout of insomnia, and one of the things I
did to combat it was to scrub all my screens of clocks, so that I couldn't
easily succumb to an anxious urge to check the time when I was having trouble
falling asleep.

I've found that not having a clock in the upper-right corner of my screen
slightly but noticeably chills me out. Like the little red badge on the email
client telling you to stop what you're doing and check your mail, the clock is
a source of tiny little distractions throughout the day.

I still use calendars, of course, and I'm never more than a couple keystrokes
from the time.

~~~
ahh
Is there an easy way to remove a clock from Android? How about OSX?

~~~
newscracker
In OS X, you can go to Apple menu->System Preferences->Date & Time->Clock and
uncheck "Show date and time in menu bar". To bring it back, just check that
option.

[System Preferences has a lot to offer for many things, including custom
keyboard shortcuts and such]

------
nunez
Funny thing about this. I spent what probably amounted of hours of time
looking for the perfect email client for my Surface, namely, one that would
let me snooze my email without requiring Inbox. I also embarked on the same
journey for my iPhone.

I eventually got tired of switching from client to client and went with mobile
Gmail on Safari. It's much less distracting. You eventually realize that if
people REALLY need you, they'll call you!

------
caseysoftware
I got into some habits a few years ago that I'll share here:

\- First, I "write" everything down. Every task goes on my Trello board. (one
personal, one for work)

\- The first columns of my boards are always: In Progress, Next, and Done.
Those are the most important ones. I have other ones for Considering, Learn
More About, and usually project specific.

\- There is never more than one thing on my In Progress board. Sometimes I
have to move another task into it but then the other thing has to move out,
usually to Next.

\- When I finish something, it goes into the Done column and another task
(usually from Next) moves into In Progress.

\- Each Monday morning, I review my Done board from the last week. If it's
really done, I archive all the cards and start fresh. Sometimes tasks move
back into In Progress or Next.

\- I don't set due dates just to have a deadline. Either there's a deadline or
there's not.. less self-imposed stressed.

\- Recurring meetings and tasks never continue past December 31st. After that,
I re-evaluate and recreate the necessary ones.

\- Around Dec 31st, I go through my notes on projects and ideas. If it's still
valuable, I keep it. If not or if I'm not going to work on it, I archive them.
Less self-imposed stress.

------
nowaq
Let's call it #productivityhoax! Great article. I always felt those
productivity systems are missing the point.

The key thing to understand is that there's literally INFINITE number of
things we could be doing. They all compete for our very limited time. There's
only one way to stay sane and productive and it's having explicit PRIORITIES.
That's your shield from the demands of the world. That's where you decide
where you want to go. (I've written a post about it [http://frustrat.com/on-
priorities-and-focus/](http://frustrat.com/on-priorities-and-focus/))

Second - no list is a time-management tool. They're just lists. If you want to
get a hold of the time you need to use a CALENDAR. That's where you "budget"
or allocate the time to do things. The beauty of this is that it shows you
when you _bankrupt_ on time. Ie. when there's too much on your todo list and
you need to remove some of it. The list will not help you do that. Other
benefits of this approach: low stress, low context-switching, feeling of
control, effectiveness (as opposed to efficiency).

It's like DHH says in the tweet: "Secret to productivity is not finding more
time to do more stuff, but finding the strength to do less of the stuff that
doesn't need doing."

Also Rory Vaden is onto something in his "multiply your time" approach:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2X7c9TUQJ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2X7c9TUQJ8)

Another proof of the #productivityhoax is that _we all have the same 24h, yet
our outcomes are so different_. Time is the biggest equaliser. Think about it
:)

------
WWKong
I would like to share this method that I'm experimenting with and have found
good success with.

Last week of each quarter quantify your last quarter and write-up your OKRs
for next quarter. Delete everything in your to-do list and clear out your
inbox. Start from zero. It helps to think about it like you are quitting your
job and starting a new one. I call it Q-boot.

~~~
inovica
You're quite low down in the comments list, but I actually like this and do
something similar. I actually put all my files somewhere else - just in case I
need them I can find them in a search. I then focus

------
justifier
i actively develop time management techniques

the best experience i've ever had was with meeting a reading deadline

i needed to read through a final draft of a book i was writing with friends
before the publication date

i had read the book a thousand times but in pieces

so it was important for me to read it through cover to cover before it was
published

i knew when the deadline was and was putting it off until three days before
the day and i still had 130 pages to read and edit

i decided to dedicate a day to finishing it

130 pages, 1 day.. i could easily pull off 10 pages per hour and effectively
work from 9am, to 10pm

10 pages per hour seems silly but it really is a mechanism to subvert what i
call my reward response

put in the time to read 10 pages at the start of any hour and the rest of the
hour is mine to do whatever i want to

stretch, workout, run, eat, context switch, information dope

sometimes those 10 pages would take 5 minutes, woot! 55 minutes to work on
some other project

sometimes i would be so distracted that those 10 pages could take 40 minutes,
so i'd make myself some tea and stare out a window for 10 minutes before the
next hour

reading simplifies this model because you can quickly gauge how many hours you
want to work, how much reading you have to do, and roughly how fast you can
read

it's a bit different for other endeavors

for instance, 10 lines of code can take 2 seconds or 2 years

so instead of hard hour breaks i'll work until i finish a definitive partition
of a larger project and wherever i lie in the current hour chunk determines
the length of the reward, to be limited by the start of the next hour

same game different rules

~~~
jlgaddis
Why do you neglect the SHIFT and punctuation keys yet give the ENTER key so
much attention?

~~~
justifier
time management ;P

~~~
justifier
OK, I'll give a explicit answer: because I prefer to read this way. I wish you
wrote this way. I think ideas are easier to absorb when separated and
simplified in this manner. Why do I think it is easier to absorb this way?
Perhaps it is because I am a mathematician. Or perhaps it is because I am a
poet. Or perhaps it is because I am a programmer. Or perhaps it is because I
am an engineer. Or perhaps it is because I am a visual artist. Or perhaps it
is because I am a chemist. Or perhaps it is because I am a physicist. Or
perhaps its because I like to express myself through everything I do.

------
chiefalchemist
Being efficient is not the same as being effective. Focusing on scheduling for
the sake of filling time is a fool's errand.

Furthermore more, in a given day or series of days, the brain has limits. It
can and does run out of gas. Those times you think "I can't think anymore" are
legit and true.

In terms of true productivity "Your Brain at Work" by David Rock is by far the
best thing I've read. Highly recommended if you want to think better.

------
coliveira
To-do lists don't work because they're themselves bureaucratic work that gets
in the way to real work. After I cut to-do lists from my life I have a much
better time doing real work. Of course I keep notes, but they are not things
"to do", they're just information that I may, eventually, need for the really
important things I do.

------
BN1978
I don't want to be a slave to my to-do list (my way of dealing with time-
management). OTOH, if I don't have a to-do list, in the long run, I am also
not happy, and that negatively influence the quality of my life. I try to find
a balance between the two. Sometimes I am successful in that, and sometimes I
am not. And BTW, I am great Trello fan.

------
tunesmith
Slack (the concept, not the app) is interesting because it can also be applied
personally. Lots of businesses these days talk about wanting to have both
"high autonomy and high alignment" for their teams.

So it's useful to think about having high autonomy, high alignment, and slack
- for one's own individual life.

------
riqwant
For some people like those that suffer from ADHD, good time management is the
only way to lead a productive life

~~~
zpr
What's considered a productive life could be subjective. And why should that
be the ultimate goal anyway?

~~~
quickben
It shouldn't. But choosing to subscribe to established concepts (money will
make me happy, marrying rich will make me happy, etc), is the easiest way to
deal with the question: "what makes me tick, and what makes me happy, and what
should I do in this life"

------
edem
Can someone summarize the point of the article who have read it?

~~~
helloworld
Time management is difficult because work generally expands to fill the
available time (Parkinson's Law), and it depends on the inherent, insoluble
complexity of working with other people.

The author suggests that time-management schemes are a means of distracting
ourselves from the briefness of our lives and the inevitability of death --
the central theme of Ernest Becker's 1973 book, "Denial of Death":

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death)

~~~
edem
Thank you.

------
EGreg
Induced demand from organizations.

Organizations are not people.

That's why we work harder despite being more efficient.

------
rdiddly
My first time hearing about Inbox Zero (a.k.a. how I've done email for 25
years) and I'm pissed I wasn't the one to make a bunch of money selling it to
noobs suffering from email misuse!

------
WhitneyLand
Any tldr offering?

