My 2 cents about nowadays Time Management concept
I have spent a fair amount of years playing with different management concepts. Invariably, all of them have in their building blocks the concept of managing time. Some call it time management, others treat it as a component of the process cycle. Regardless, there is no management style or concept that does not address the idea that time should be managed.
I think that time management is a much more complex process, that is treated a bit superficial and oversimplified so that it can be standardized and addressed, regardless of educational background, context, personal predisposition. Furthermore, this direction of fitting all that there is about “time” in a very narrow abstract concept creates frustration for many, making them feel unable to “manage their time” like gurus and masters advocate.
It is not my intent to prove time management useless or without ground. On the contrary, in basic form and to certain contexts it can be quite easily applied and pretty helpful. However, it should not be oversimplified and reduced to a very narrow range of situations.
That being said, I would like to tackle this from 2 different perspectives:
- What is the basic unit management?
- Not all situations are equally created and things should be contextualized.
Unit of measure
We measure time in mathematical units. Management is mostly approached as a logical chain of processes, which makes it easy to articulate in a simple formula with basic math operations of adding, extracting and multiplying.
But is for humans time (and abstract concept learned for most during early childhood) a standard unit of measure? As Einstein famously put it: the perception of time is relative or subjective. Humans are not machines to have a standardized way of framing the world and interacting with it. Our relationship with time is more shattered and unique for each of us than time management theory presents it.
An hour waiting for a loved one to arrive at the airport may be way more intense than one hour watching Netflix.
It is an acceptable argument that time is what the device points us to. Devices are complicated mechanisms, standardized across all cultures and every hour has 60 minutes, every day has 24 hours. Nonetheless, ignoring that perception of time is relative and subjective is one error that has implications on how we define the unit of measure, constraining a biological organism to live by a mathematical rule, which many times proves to be wrong. If this would be the case, all children would be born at exactly 40 weeks, and all crops would have an exact time of growth and harvest.
Beside this type of post-modernist way of philosophically tackling the nature of time, what do we measure based on this unit when we allocate it for a process from start to end?
An engineer would argue that it measures the energy required to move an object form A to B, and to power up the machine to transform A in B. Is it not the same for human beings? Don’t we use energy for mechanical or cognitive work?
Hence, is the 60 min. standardized unit of mechanical measure the proper fit for allocating how a task gets done and how many we can complete in a day?
Does one hour of intense muscular effort equals one hour of intense cognitive work? Does it require more energy or less? How about the recovery post process, is it more or less for both actions?
Do we even have a way to frame this notion?
Task A = 400 Kcal per hour effort
Task B = ?? cognitive energy per hour — I could not find a word to describe this.
It could be argued that if 10 people do task A in using an average of time & energy that is the norm, as it can be argued that if 10 people do task B in so much time then this is the norm.
However, this is not science — this is a heuristic approach highly contextualized based on the people involved in that activity, past experience, a certain environment and many other variables that I will debate at point 2.
Projecting the future based on what happened in the past is the way we went on for thousands of years. The longer the history, the more plausible probability of happening mostly the same. But heuristic is not a clear measurement unit and, like everything that is not scientific, tends to variate a lot based on …well pretty much everything.
To make this a bit more interesting let’s get to point 2:
Context
Let’s imagine a simple situation. A plane flies from Barcelona to Amsterdam. We know the distance between the two, the speed of the airplane, so we can accurately compute when the plane arrives, if we know when the plane takes off. There are some other variables that could interfere, but as most of the times they do not, we can have an accurate estimation of the time it takes this mechanical machine to execute the task of traveling high speed through the air from B to A. Also, we know the energy required (gas burn ratio).
If variables occur (bad weather prevents take off), the calculation breaks down, and as soon as we have updates we can easily compute the new units of time — maybe even energy requirements if wind is blowing at high speeds from the opposite direction on the route.
Extrapolating from the example, a given task starts at point A and has an objective at point B. If there is a clear known path from A to B and we know all the variables, we can compute for most of the variables we know of, especially for the stable ones and the ones with a bit higher likelihood of changing.
And here comes the question about most working human environments in a world where cognition and imagination is praised as complementing machines, algorithms and automation: How much do we know about the variables that affect us?
- Are individuals stable environments? Our bodies are subject to many stimuli — external and internal. This is a very complex environment that can change rapidly.
- Do we have in our work environment stability on the processes? What does it even mean to be stable: 90% — 95%?
- In a digital age, where we have multiple communication channels simultaneously, and information comes at us from 3 different screens, how do we define variables affecting ourselves and our work process? It is not a simple matter of isolating and turning off certain mediums, as most of us need to work agile or to make decisions close to real time. Even if this would not be the case, once there is new information on social media about something that has happened it can not be ignored as you have 60% of the new project ready. The very fact that information travels much faster makes the environment way less stable for cognitive work, imagination and decision making.
Any type of forecasting requires a minimum procentual threshold of probability, otherwise any estimation becomes guess work or science fiction literature if well articulated. How can a manager account for these variables?
The answer: a bit of behavior biology for team members, big numbers theory, good knowledge of the past in each environment — and at least clarity of what the cognitive process should produce in a clear standardized defined format.
Be that as it may, humans proved quite unreliable at predicting the future or the products of their imagination. I am not considering repetitive simple cognitive tasks, as machines and algorithms do far better at this than human beings — less energy expenditure, in less time, with almost zero errors.
When traveling an unknown road (which is what cognitive is for most) a more clear perception of what point B arises as one gets closer to it. Sometimes the direction changes, sometimes even the destination changes.
Conclusions
A more scientific unit of measurement would help.
In stable environments allocating time units, combined with a basic evaluation of effort based on past experiences (personal or median numbers) works.
People with some work time under their belt have a basic understanding (formal or informal) of what time management looks like for them. Heuristics work well here. Usually here there is a big improvement opportunity if approached in a structured framework concentrating on obtaining better effects for the energy/time spent.
In an unstable environment, attempting a rigid form of time management results in frustration and inefficiency. It is more of finding a direction, having a glimpse of where B is and start navigating towards.
At a personal level, we are many times in the second scenario and imposing time management is done through discipline, which is the use of cognition to master and constrict reality into the vision of the brain holder. This suppresses imagination and gets into the way of discovering novel means of getting from A to B or exploring C, D and E on the way.
A simple format of time management should be used for what is critical and urgent if we operate in an unstable environment. For the other aspects, a more relaxed approach would create different outputs: something more like a direction than a clear objective. If the objective becomes clear and a stable environment is in sight, things can move to a more structured form of time management.
