What is Time-Based Productivity?
And why it matters today.
For years, I believed that to become more productive, I had to find a better way to organise my to-dos.
That belief started a journey of discovery. I looked for and “tested” every productivity app I found being reviewed on YouTube or in one of my favourite blogs. Surely, this time, I would become more productive and have more time for the things I wanted to do.
Well, that never happened. The problem was I was trying to control the uncontrollable: Tasks and things to do.
We don’t have any control over the number of emails and messages we receive, what our boss, partner, kids or clients/customers will ask us to do, what might go wrong, or what needs our urgent attention.
These are random. It’s the same with our ideas about things we want to do. It’s not like we can turn on a creative tap in our heads, and suddenly, all these fantastic ideas will begin pouring out.
Life is not like that. Life is random and unfair, and sometimes, it feels like it conspires against us.
“The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!”
Rocky Balboa
When you stop to think about it, you cannot control much. With practice, you can control your emotions. You can control, to an extent, what time you go to bed and when you wake up. If you’re disciplined, you can maybe control what you watch and read.
But there is something we can all control: time, or rather, what you do with the time you have each day.
I don’t know how many emails will be in my inbox when I start my day, but I can control how much time I spend responding to them. Similarly, I cannot control what my boss or customers will ask me for today, but I can ensure I have protected some time to deal with most of what comes at me.
You can control your time in meetings each day if you choose to do so.
Depending on your work, you could allow a certain amount of time each day for meetings. Beyond that time, you suggest an alternative day, perhaps tomorrow or the day after, if you have space on your calendar.
This is the essence of time-based productivity: not trying to control the uncontrollable but controlling what you have control over—how you allocate your time each day.
Transitioning from an unsustainable task-based system to a time-based one is tricky. It’s likely you have become conditioned to believe everything has to be done now, and if not now, it must be done before the end of the day. In reality, 90% of those items can wait until tomorrow or even next week.
To know which 10% should be done today takes practice. It also involves consistency; becoming consistent at something requires a little self-discipline. That’s not going to be easy.
But it’s not impossible. Not if you want to escape the daily grind of urgent, low-value tasks and a never-ending stream of messages, emails and requests from others.
How do you begin transitioning?
The first step is difficult and requires time. That is to establish what is important to you. That involves working out what the eight Areas of Focus mean to you. I will cover those in a separate post. (You can start developing your Areas of Focus by downloading my free Areas Of Focus Workbook.)
The second step is easy. Identify the different things you need to do and create categories for them.
For example, you likely have messages and emails to deal with each day. These would fall under the general category of “communications.” You will probably have a few household things to do, such as washing the dishes, doing the laundry, and making the bed. These would come under the category of “chores.”
You will also have a few daily administrative tasks, such as tracking your expenses, chasing up a lost delivery, filing your taxes, and balancing your finances. These would all fall under the category of “admin.”
Beyond communications, chores, and admin, things become more personal. Other categories depend on the kind of work you do.
For example, a part of my job is creating content. This content can be divided into two distinct categories: “writing” and “audio/visual.” I have a category for each of these.
If you are involved in sales, you may have a category for “prospecting” and perhaps “follow-up.” If you are a homemaker, you may have categories for “cleaning,” “repairs,” and “kids.”
Another category you will have is “planning.” Whether you’re planning your week or your next vacation, planning is an important category that requires time. Make it a category.
In all, you will have around eight to ten categories.
Be careful. It can be tempting to break things down into smaller categories. For instance, you might break down your communications category into email, messages, phone calls, etc. Try to avoid this. Too many categories will slow you down and ultimately fill your calendar. Try to be as general as possible.
For example, my writing category includes blog posts, podcast scripts and newsletters. My audio/visual category involves recording my YouTube videos and podcasts.
Once you know your categories, you can then calculate how much time you need for each one per week.
I require six hours to complete my writing tasks and around three hours for my YouTube videos. Knowing this means I can protect the hours on my calendar before the week starts.
If you know you need around four hours a week to write proposals for clients, protect that time. Similarly, if you want an hour a day to prospect new customers, protect that time.
“Hoping” you will find the time is not a good strategy. You won’t find the time.
Time does not like a vacuum.
There will always be something to do, and if you have not planned what you will do, your time will be filled with low-value trivial tasks, other people’s work, and procrastination.
Yet, you need to be careful. Because you do not know what emails, messages, or customer requests will come your way, you should protect some time for the unknowns.
If you try to fill your calendar with blocks for different types of work, you will find yourself stuck. There needs to be sufficient time protected for the unknowns.
Let me give you an example. Imagine you work a typical day of eight hours. If you were to protect two hours for focused work—work that matters for your primary job, an hour for communications and an hour for your admin, that would leave you with four hours for everything else.
If you restrict yourself to two hours of meetings per day, that would leave you with two hours for the unknowns.
This is just an example, but you can see that flexibility can be built into your day. Two hours of focused work each day is ten hours each week. You can do a lot in ten hours.
If you know when you start the week that you have eight hours available for meetings, you will prioritise your meeting requests. You may even start asking if your presence in the meeting is necessary.
If you work in a customer-facing job, you will naturally require more meeting time. For instance, doctors who see patients daily may need six hours of patient time. That leaves them two hours for everything else—admin, communications, etc.
The same would apply if you are in a customer-facing sales role.
Yet, no matter what kind of work you do, you are still restricted by the twenty-four hours you have each day. There is only so much you can do each day. The good news is, though, that time Is the same each day. All you need to do is decide how you will allocate that time for the different activities you have to do.
Over the last fifteen years, we’ve drifted away from these time-tested principles that work. Yes, technology has improved. Technology has given us more tools, and it’s made doing things considerably faster.
Yet two things have not changed: the number of hours you have each day and your ability to process information, which is the same as it was for people 100 or even 1000 years ago.
You can still only read one article and process what you learn at a time. You may be able to have fifty tabs open in Chrome, but you can only read one tab at a time. You may receive 200 “urgent” emails today, yet you can only respond to one at a time.
With Time-Based Productivity, it doesn’t matter how many emails, messages or tasks you have to do. If you allocate one hour to respond to your emails and messages each day and begin with the oldest first, you won’t be far off being on top of your emails each day.
You have a choice. You can continue to look for new ways to control the uncontrollable stuff that comes at you, or you can take control and move towards a more sustainable time-based system. A system where you allocate time for the critical work you do, and, if you have time left, you can spend time on the trivial, low-value stuff that disguises itself as urgent and important (it rarely is).
If you’re interested in being more productive? Sign up for my newsletter for more insights on how to take control of your time.
Get a copy of my latest book, Your Time Your Way: Time well managed, life well lived.