The Time Management Secret No One Talks About

What is the secret recipe to success and achieving it all?

We live in a society that glamorizes working hard and hustling, but these things are exactly what can lead to burnout. In fact, CDC studies show that global anxieties are peaking and still growing, leading to a “burnout generation”. I recently had the opportunity to talk to Adam, a friend new to timeboxing, who shared a story with me that changed the way I view my goals and priorities. 

He told me a story about avoiding burnout 

In early 2017, Adam was juggling a full-time job, side hustle, and struggling to get in shape for a newborn on the way when he rekindled his love for music. 

He set out to intentionally schedule (timebox) a fun activity into his calendar that would let him take his mind off work and decided that taking up the guitar would be the perfect solution. 

After two years of getting the hang of it, he decided to make the goal bigger and aimed to practice for one hour every Monday evening.

But Monday would come around and he found himself choosing to put in an extra hour of work or get some exercise. “I would say to myself, I’ll just practice for 2 hours next week,” he told me. 

In August 2019, Adam sat down to reflect on the first half of his year and realized he had put in no time - zero - on guitar. It was at that moment he realized that this goal was simply not a priority for him at this time of his life. 

So he decided to abandon the goal. 

Abandon the goal? Give up? To me, that sounded like something for quitters, not successful people.  

But I couldn’t have been more wrong. 

Adam understood that to get the most value out of his time, he needed to remove the mental pressure of an unrealistic, low-priority goal and shift his focus towards the things that mattered. He succeeded! That year Adam earned his promotion, made significant progress on his side hustle, got in the best shape of his life, and has enjoyed spending quality time with his newborn daughter every day. 

Here are my 3 takeaways from his story:

1. Think of your life in seasons

In the book Life after College: Ten steps to build a life you love, Tori Ternhube and Betsy Hays talk about the idea that our lives have seasons:

Every sport has a preseason, a season, a postseason, and an off-season before it all starts again. Think about it in whichever way is more fun for you, but focus on the idea that what we can do in the summer we can’t do in the winter, and what you should focus on in the preseason is not what your priorities are in the middle of the season

Thinking about life in chunks or “seasons” of five years, decades, or even bigger sections like post college, pre kids, post kids’ graduation, can help figure out the “when” aspect of your priorities. 

Ask yourself these questions:

• What defines this season of my life? 

• What makes sense to work on right now? 

• What makes sense to work on in the future? 

In Adam’s case, a newborn on the way fueled his need to be physically and professionally fit for her arrival. Understanding the importance of this big change to the seasons of his life made it easy to decide learning guitar was a goal best kept for the future.

By understanding what the defining elements are of each season of your life, you will pave the way for clear, organized thinking of how to set goals.

2. Organize your life by priorities of the season

“When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.” - Karen Martin 

We have all heard, and perhaps even follow guidance on organizing our days by our priorities. We hear tips on creating short to-do lists with our top priorities, tackling the most difficult tasks first. 

What if we thought about the seasons of our lives in the same way? 

When deciding to abandon his goal of playing the guitar, Adam said that learning to play the guitar simply didn’t fall into the list of his current priorities. Adam made this really clear to himself by asking some tough questions and thinking carefully about what goals meant to him:

I asked myself why is this goal important to me? Why is this goal important to me now? I was really honest with myself. I used the Mana app, where I was able to organize my goals by priority level, depending on their importance to me at that moment. It really helped me focus only on the highest priority goals.

To Adam, learning to play the guitar was only medium priority, while his career and family goals were high priority. That convinced him this wasn’t the right season to learn to play the guitar. Without feeling any guilt, he was able to spend time on the goals that truly mattered to him.

When setting any goal, ask yourself the same questions:

• Why is this goal important to me?

• Why is this goal important to me now?

• Will putting this goal off allow me to spend time on things that are more important to me now?

Having too many priorities leads to a big mess when it comes to effective time management. Make those tough choices of putting some things off for another time. By doing this, you will also create something to look forward to! 

3. Don’ t be afraid to say “no”   

“The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say no to almost everything."  - Warren Buffet

Just like we eliminate distractions to finish our daily work, we can eliminate the bigger distractions in our lives that often come in the form of unaccomplished goals or unfinished projects. 

In her book, Outer Order, Inner Calm, Gretchen Rubin, explains:

One source of clutter in our homes, and a significant drain on our energy, is the uncomfortable presence of unfinished projects. 

These projects are often irritating and every time we see evidence of an unfinished project we get a jolt of annoyance or guilt. 

Rubin uses examples of unfinished projects around the house, but Adam experienced the same thing with the guitar: Every Monday evening when the time rolled around for his scheduled 1 hour of guitar practice, he would see the guitar in the living room corner, and just feel immense guilt. The guilt was even stronger since music was important to Adam, and he understood all the benefits that came with it. 

We all know this story. Maybe we set a goal to meditate every day for 20 minutes, or a goal to read for at least 2 hours every week. While these smaller chunks of time seem doable, we usually end up spending those 20 minutes or 2 hours on something else if our goals aren’t current and high priorities in our lives. Or worse, we let the guilt of not reaching the goal eat away at us and prevent us from doing the stuff that actually matters. 

So what do we do? 

Gretchen suggests that the easiest way to complete a project that’s not bringing maximum value to your life is simply to abandon it. Get it off your conscience. Adam understood that what was more important to him was earning the promotion and taking care of his health before the arrival of his daughter. 

So he abandoned the goal and created time value for himself by spending time on the things that were current high priorities in his life.

He’s looking forward to learning to play the guitar alongside his daughter next season.

Got anxiety over something that’s not a high priority right now? Abandon the project or postpone the goal. Don’t let it eat away at your mental space. Recognize it’s not a priority right now and lift the weight off your shoulders.