Time Management: What's the Real Issue?

You can't manage time. Time just is. Time management is really managing what we do, during time. But it's easier for executives to say that time is what needs to be managed, rather than themselves. Time management is really agreement management. Sleep is not a waste of time if you think you need it. A trait of sophisticated executive leadership is the ability to take risks. Because a healthy sense of self is required to take those risks, as you graduate in levels of responsibility it becomes increasingly important that you trust yourself. One of the greatest saboteurs of that self-trust is broken agreements. Obviously if those agreements are not kept with others - staff, customers, stakeholders - the ability to garner their support is automatically diminished. Nothing takes the wind out of your sails more than not keeping your agreements with yourself.

Most executives probably consider themselves relatively trustworthy. But commitment management is way more complex, subtle, and challenging than most people realize. The most basic agreement is to show up at a designated location at a specific time (appointment). Those projects are driven by ten to fifteen key areas of responsibility in their job (strategic planning, asset management, staff development, liaison with the board, etc.) and in their life (health, relationships, career, money, etc.) The next needed physical actions (allocation of personal resources) required to execute on all of those commitments - emails to send, phone calls to make, conversations to have, documents to draft, proposals to read - number often in the hundreds.

All of these agreements must be incorporated into the commonly touted best practice of "setting priorities." And if any one of those multiple horizons of "work" has not been adequately captured, clarified, organized and reviewed, there will be to some degree a lack of trust in your own behavior.

Because this huge self-management challenge was obscured and oversimplified with the concept of "time management," the training, methods and tools for dealing with it have been woefully inadequate. If time were the only beast to be tamed, a clock and a diary (and some efficiency) were all you really needed. Handling commitments was relegated to a simple little best practice - have a daily to-do list. The real best practices of self-management for high-performing professionals now need to include a thorough capturing and clarifying of all commitments - little, big, personal and professional - into a seamless system. And in addition to the obvious high-level outcomes that must be defined and reviewed (purpose, values, vision, goals, strategies) there must be an equal rigor with deciding and tracking the much larger number of projects and actions required to get things done - all with appropriate boundaries to ensure a sustainable balance in life and work.

It's time to put time management behind us.