Take Charge of Your Time

Ashley Whillans: I define "time affluence," which is the feeling of having enough time to do all of the things that you both want to do and have to do.

Rachel Salaman: That's Ashley Whillans from Harvard Business School. She told me about valuing time as highly as money – maybe even more so. For her, it's the feeling of being in charge of time that's key.

Ashley Whillans: And I define time affluence in this way because, very interestingly, there's been this disassociation over the last couple of decades where we're actually working fewer hours – as compared to the 1950s or 60s – but we feel more time stressed than we ever have before.

So that's why I look at time affluence, which is really focused on the psychological feeling of having enough time, because it's such a powerful predictor of happiness, even above and beyond how much time people actually have available to them.

Rachel Salaman: Daniel Harkavy is a CEO, executive coach, and the author of "Living Forward." He agrees that it's essential to take charge of time – as long as we don't see it as just another chore.

Daniel Harkavy: It's not adding something to your already busy life, it's bringing clarity to your already busy life. It's going to help you to be mindful of what matters most.

Rachel Salaman: For Jeffery Combs, author of "The Procrastination Cure," it's vital to start with the right terminology. He really doesn't like the phrase "time management."

Jeffery Combs: If you look at your clock in your office, you can't manage that clock. That term "time management" is a misnomer. You have to be able to manage yourself in time.

Time is the most valuable commodity that we possess. Every day we are given a gift: it's called time. And success in any endeavor isn't so much about what you do – because you can "do" and be busy, or you can also learn how to be productive.

Rachel Salaman: Productivity is something that many of our experts focused on. Take Chris Bailey. He devoted a whole year to trying out different strategies for being productive. And he realized early on that it's less about making extra time to do things, and more about using the time you already have to the full.

Chris Bailey: There's no difference in socioeconomic standing between somebody who wakes up early, and somebody who wakes up later. It's what you do with the hours of your day after you wake up, that make the difference in your productivity. But productivity isn't about how much you produce, it's about how much you accomplish.

You know, one of the biggest findings and most surprising things that I found, in the experiment, was when I looked at how much I actually accomplished in the 90-hour weeks and the 20-hour weeks. I only accomplished a tiny bit more working 90 hours a week than I did working 20 hours a week. It blew me away when I saw that result. And it was because my work expanded to fit, and accommodate, how much time I had available for it in the 90-hour weeks.

Rachel Salaman: Chris Bailey, author of "The Productivity Project." So why is it so easy to let work spread out to fill all the time we've got? Several of our guests blame multitasking – trying to get more done by doing several things at once.

Dave Crenshaw: And the brain is just not able to handle multiple active tasks at the same time.

Rachel Salaman: That's Dave Crenshaw, management expert and author of "The Myth of Multitasking."

Dave Crenshaw: So what we're really doing is switching back and forth very rapidly. It's why I call multitasking "switch-tasking" instead of "multitasking."

Rachel Salaman: And Chris Bailey told me about why "single-tasking" is so much more effective.

Chris Bailey: Single-tasking is one of the best ways, in the moment, to bring more attention to what's in front of you – and not more time. Productivity is the process of working more deliberately.

Rachel Salaman: With so much change and uncertainty at the moment, and so many potential distractions, it's perhaps no wonder that many of us waste time and energy by switch-tasking.

But according to Dave Crenshaw, there is a form of multitasking that's actually good for us – maybe even essential in times like these. He calls it "background-tasking."

Dave Crenshaw: Switch-tasking is when you're trying to do two or more tasks that require effort and attention simultaneously. Background-tasking, though, is when you do something mindless or mundane in the background, that doesn't require your attention while you perform another task.

A few examples may be running the copy machine on a large print job while you answer email, or perhaps even jogging on the treadmill while you're watching TV. Background tasking can be a very effective way to use your time.

The problem is most people aren't making a conscious decision about whether they're background-tasking or switch-tasking, and most of the time when they refer to multitasking they're really referring to switch-tasking.

Rachel Salaman: So a big theme among our experts is the need to be deliberate in how we use time. Here's Ashley Whillans again.

Ashley Whillans: A really simple strategy for finding time is to document all the ways in which you spend time on an everyday basis. And then you ask yourself, "Did I find this activity pleasurable, or did I find it meaningful? Could I have a better and happier time if I delegated that work task to someone else, so that I could spend more time engaged in activities that do bring me pleasure and meaning, like hanging out with my family more?"

So, one very simple strategy for finding time is to be more intentional about the way that we're using time.

Jeffery Combs: We're conditioned to have big goals, to write our goals down, get a vision board and write down 100 goals, 200 goals, 500, 1,000.

Rachel Salaman: That's Jeffery Combs again, someone who knows the importance of planning time realistically.

Jeffery Combs: But it's a lot more important that you get goals, you write goals that are achievable or you attract goals that are achievable, and then you build on a compounded effect. You have to have a system, a method.

So there's really three keys to that: that's a 90-day game plan, a daily method of operation, and then, most specifically, this item – clearly defined, short-term goals.

Rachel Salaman: In fact, everyone I spoke to about time agreed that we need both short-term and long-term goals. But there were different views about which of these to prioritize. Jeffery Combs was very clear about focusing on 24 hours at a time.

Jeffery Combs: Success or transformation isn't what you do, it's about what you do daily. You have to take the action today – not tomorrow, not next week, not next month.

Rachel Salaman: And Ashley Whillans told me that some of us need to give ourselves permission to focus on the here-and-now – to make the right decisions about how to spend our time.

Ashley Whillans: This sense of goal conflict – this idea that I feel like I should be working when I'm hanging out with my family, or I should be hanging out with my family when I'm working – these feelings of goal conflict are one of the drivers of time poverty.

I feel this way and I've shown this in my data, that scheduling in proactive time makes me feel more in control of my time: more time affluent, more productive, happier. But, also being more deliberate about small moments of free time that we often waste – the gaps in between meetings where we'll just answer emails as if they were urgent but maybe not pick up the phone and call a friend.

Rachel Salaman: Ashley Whillans, on making every moment count. But some of the other people I spoke to emphasized the bigger picture – and the need to work to a much longer-term time plan.

Daniel Harkavy: I think the benefits are having peace of mind.

Rachel Salaman: Daniel Harkavy again.

Daniel Harkavy: You have more confidence and more clarity. The bottom-line result of having a clear life plan is that you fill your days with more proactive and intentional decisions, instead of reactive and unintentional.

What that does is that enables you to, basically, live a life that is going to be more rewarding, more fulfilling, and, as I said earlier, definitely a lot more intentional.

Rachel Salaman: And champion athlete Patricia Walsh told me that she needs a long-term plan to get the short-term things done. Patricia's been blind since the age of 14, but she's always had the bigger picture in mind – which for her is the aim of changing the landscape for sportspeople with disabilities.

Patricia Walsh: So by mapping my day-to-day activities to something that is a higher-level goal, something that I sincerely care about, it enthuses my every day with inspiration and motivation and accountability towards making the most of my own life and of my own opportunities to change an industry in a way that I deeply care for.

There's not a moment where I will stop caring about changing the industry and, now that I've tied that to day-to-day opportunities, I'm now infusing my everyday mundane tasks with a higher level of ambition and excitement and being my best self every day.

Andy Core: One of the most common problems that I see in hardworking, busy adults is that they just don't have enough regeneration time – recharge time – in their lives.

Rachel Salaman: That's performance coach Andy Core, who wrote, "Change Your Day, Not Your Life."

Andy Core: There's some amazing research on how people that don't recharge in the evenings, how their level of engagement and motivation and productivity at work drops.

Rachel Salaman: Andy says that we won't have the energy to use our time well if we only give ourselves the occasional holiday to recharge our batteries.

Andy Core: There's some really cool research too on [how] vacations are really important and they really work – but for only about four or five days!

I want people to think about how do they really recharge. They are typically working a lot of junk hours: hours that they're at work, but they're not really getting as much work [done] as they could, and that creates a vicious cycle.

Rachel Salaman: As an athlete, Patricia Walsh needs to be in the opposite kind of cycle – one that helps her to get more and more from her time and effort. That's why she keeps her eyes on the long-term prize.

Patricia Walsh: Where we all struggle – that's the day-to-day tasks. So from my worldview, the day-to-day tasks are the everyday workouts. For example, I had to be at the pool this morning at five-thirty in the morning. It would be remarkably easy to give myself an out.

But, since I have that day-to-day mapped to something I honestly care about, all that I have to do is on that eighth day when I'm feeling fatigued and I'm exhausted and I'm burned out and I don't want to do it anymore, I have to wake up and I say, "These are the tasks that are going to help that intrinsic goal, that goal that I care so deeply about. This is what's going to move the needle to make that happen." It's the consistency over time.

Rachel Salaman: Patricia Walsh, author of "Blind Ambition." And productivity-experimenter Chris Bailey has also learned to connect his present with his future.

Chris Bailey: So if you imagine what your life will be like – what you'll look like in front of a mirror if you ate a smoothie every morning instead of bacon and eggs – simple changes like that are more likely to stick, if you connect your present-day self with your future self. Even writing a letter to your future self – what your life will be like – and imagining that.

Rachel Salaman: Patricia Walsh described it to me as caring about the future today. She'’s determined to use her time well, so that other athletes with disabilities can have a better start than she did.

Patricia Walsh: It gets me very excited. The fact that I could help someone else not experience that helplessness and not experience that despair because they have some role models. In six months, I'm excited about it; in a year, I'm excited about it. Because I honestly care about the goal – aligning my intrinsic motivation with my day-to-day tasks.

Rachel Salaman: Daniel Harkavy gave me some personal examples about how he prioritizes his time – including how he improved his relationship with his wife.

Daniel Harkavy: So it's Monday afternoon dates with her. It's 30 minutes of eye-to-eye, ear-to-ear, no TV, no interruptions, just connecting at the end of the day. It's our monthly getaways. They're so important that I'll schedule them, so that I'm reminded of them continually and have the ability to intentionally add value to an account that is really important to me.

Rachel Salaman: For Chris Bailey, time planning is also a personal thing – but for a different reason.

Chris Bailey: Not all hours of the day are created equal. So there are some hours of the day when we have a disproportionate amount of energy, relative to others. And this is dependent on our chronotype, which is related to our circadian rhythm. And the thing is that everybody is wired differently. And so, some people have more energy in the morning. Some people have energy late at night.

Rachel Salaman: Dave Crenshaw told me another practical way to stay in charge – and to keep doing the important things.

Dave Crenshaw: Most people allow the email to dictate to them the pace of their day: if you're checking your email multiple times per hour, you're not in control, the email is controlling you.

And so a great place to start is to first establish a set time and a set place when you're going to check that email. And I would say a cousin to that is just turn off email notification altogether.

Rachel Salaman: So once again the message is to respect the value of time.

Dave Crenshaw: Start to become aware of what are your most valuable activities and how much time do you really spend on them. Most business leaders spend less than 30 percent of their time on their most valuable activities. They're really missing out on so much more that they could be doing if they were focused on just one or two things that they were very, very good at.

Ashley Whillans: Become more aware of the ways in which you waste time or engage in unpleasurable activities.

Rachel Salaman: That's Ashley Whillans again, on not wasting a moment.

Ashley Whillans: And then enquire – why do you engage in those activities? Is this something you can change? How might you change it? Changing your behavior in five-minute, ten-minute, thirty-minute, one-hour increments – and then scaffolding up from there.

Rachel Salaman: And Andy Core agrees about being intently focused in our use of time, and taking control in small steps.

Andy Core: I want people to take the pressure off themselves and say, "I don't have to change my life – I only have to change my day." I want them to take one thing at a time in their day, plug it in, and don't give up and don't let yourself be distracted until you get that one thing integrated.

Because I mentioned behavioral momentum. I'll rephrase it a different way: it's that motivation is really just momentum in disguise.

Rachel Salaman: Everyone I spoke to emphasized that time is precious, and that we'll be happier and more successful if we treat it as such. We need to decide what's valuable to give time to, and what's not – and nurture our ability to tell the difference.

Right now we have so many things calling for our attention, but also some new choices about how we shape our days. And, whether or not we need a long-term vision to work toward, it's how we choose to spend our time in the present moment that really counts.

Daniel Harkavy: The more we focus on what matters most, then our brain shuts out the stuff that's not as important. But we need a system for our mind to be focused on what matters most.

Jeffery Combs: The only time you possess is now. You don't have yesterday, that's gone, that's history. Tomorrow hasn't happened, that's a mystery. What you have is the present, that is: now.

Ashley Whillans: It's small decisions around the margins, even small mindset shifts, that can have huge downstream consequences for our time use and our happiness.

Rachel Salaman: Daniel Harkavy, Jeffery Combs, and Ashley Whillans ending this episode of Mind Tools Expert Voices: "Take Charge of Your Time."

So now, why not invest the time to listen to in-depth interviews with some of the people you've heard here? There are hundreds more conversations with leading writers and thinkers in our Expert Interviews collection in the Mind Tools Club.

Meanwhile, I'll be back soon with another episode of Expert Voices. I'm Rachel Salaman: thanks for listening.