Why So Many People Struggle With Time Management Skills
On the surface, time management is a straightforward concept. You have a task to do and a pre-determined deadline to accomplish the task by. Utilizing your time efficiently will allow you to easily meet the deadline — whether it’s self-imposed or set by an employer, instructor, client, etc.
So why is it that despite being such a simple concept, so many people struggle with meeting deadlines? Well, despite being one of the most common skills listed on job seekers’ resumes, time management is a difficult practice to master.
In fact, a recent study in the United Kingdom found that fewer than 1 in 5 people use any sort of formal time management system. People rely on pinned emails in their inbox, a messy day planner, a few dozen sticky notes, or any number of self-designed “systems” to keep them on track. A quick web search will reveal thousands of tips, tricks, or hacks to stay on task and motivated.
So, generally speaking, we are quite aware of the value of time. Countless successful CEOs have talked about how they rise well before the sun to maximize their day. But for the average person, it’s far too easy to chalk up a string of unproductive days as it just “being one of those weeks” or “the way it is.”
The reality is that poor time management isn’t just “the way it is” — it’s an issue that costs businesses millions of dollars a year globally, and results in serious mental health issues in millions of average employees in the form of heightened stress levels, poor sleeping habits, changing attitudes toward employers, and burnout.
Poor time management habits like procrastination have even been found to have a direct link to lower incomes.
Understanding why time management can be so difficult can go a long way toward improving personal and employee habits — and as a result, helping businesses succeed.
The Planning Fallacy and Time Management Skills
Strong time management skills don’t come naturally to everyone, and even those who are blessed with that inner timer still have to work at keeping their skills sharp. It comes down to habits and awareness — time management isn’t something that can be learned in an online course, tacked on to a resume, and considered mastered. It takes work and practice.
It’s easy to consider time management a matter of motivation or ambition — and to some extent it is those things — but it can also be a psychological battle that often goes unnamed. According to some scholars, the Planning Fallacy is people’s “tendency to underestimate the time required to complete a project [or task], even when they have considerable experience of past failures to live up to planned schedules.”
This can be true about much of our daily lives, but as many of us know, it is especially true in the workplace. For example, a writer could set aside an hour or two to write an article on Time Management for Stormboard’s weekly blog and expect to finish before the end of the day, even though the last three articles took a full afternoon to complete…
The Planning Fallacy is an issue that once understood, can be tackled head-on. This is where those tips, tricks, and life hacks for making the most of your time come in.
It’s great to block time off in your calendar or put your phone in airplane mode to avoid distractions and focus on work, but unless you recognize those subconscious tendencies to underestimate time needed for a specific task, you still won’t be able to maximize your efficiency.
Not Understanding the Real Value of Time
As much as we might like to wish it was, time is not a renewable resource. In an average day, we may have 8 to 10 hours to dedicate to work. The explosion of social media over the past decade or so has given us an escape from mundane tasks, but it also provides an easy distraction.
Those 2.5 hours that the average person spends on social media each day are taking away from time that may be better spent being productive. If you think about the old expression “one hour of planning can save you 10 hours of doing,” then it’s easy to see how that time spent browsing social media can have a huge impact on your work day — not just the time spent actually on the web.
Social media isn’t all to blame though. Time management is a complex thing, and no single factor can explain why it’s such a difficult skill to master. With the recent shift to remote and hybrid workplace models, people are finding it more and more difficult to separate work and personal time, which can lead to a whole new set of problems and distractions.
When a person finds themselves removed from a traditional office setting, it can be difficult to keep track of what’s important and what’s urgent — and even more difficult to separate the two.
Efficient time managers are able to prioritize tasks and allocate their time in a manner that leaves them able to react to urgent or unplanned tasks without throwing their entire schedule into a state of chaos.
Thinking about time as a resource can be an effective way to shift your mindset and improve time management skills. Rather than simply committing to any given activity, consider not only the time that the activity may take (and remember to account for the Planning Fallacy!), but how that time spent will affect a schedule moving forward.
A Lack of Tools and Improper Use of Technology
Thanks to technology and the vast resources on the internet, time management is both easier and more difficult than ever before. We have access to more digital tools than ever, that are specifically designed to help manage workloads and time. However, we also have countless technology outlets that present avenues of distraction making it hard to stay on task and focused.
If you are using the right tools — that is, the tools that properly fit your workflow and specific needs — time management becomes far less of a mental struggle, and more of a habit or daily activity that turns into second nature.
Enter Stormboard — a digital workspace that, through a list of robust integrations and one-of-a-kind features — helps teams manage their workflow, plan their time more efficiently, and eliminate redundant or inefficient tasks and meetings.
You might be wondering if one tool can really solve all of your time management problems, and the short answer, of course, is no. No digital, or analog, tool is going to force you to focus, put down your phone, and get to work.
But, the longer answer is a bit more nuanced. Intelligent features and bi-directional integrations make Stormboard a time-manager’s best friend, integrating seamlessly into your daily workflow and improving everything from daily meetings to less-frequent PI Planning sessions. This tool cuts your planning, meeting, task management, and transcription time in half, freeing up more time in your day to be productive.
With the ongoing shift in the workplace and the increased popularity of remote and hybrid models, it’s more important than ever to ensure that teams are connected, communicating, and collaborating to avoid crossed wires, mis-communication, and needlessly repeated work – all of which compound some of our most common time management struggles and result in time wasted.
Interested in Using Stormboard to Improve your Team’s Time Management?
If you’d like to find out more, sign up here for a demo and see how Stormboard can help you dramatically improve your processes to help you manage your time and have a more productive team.