When Time Management Leads to Productivity

I was recently thinking about creating a time management class for people and trying to outline the structure of it. I started to think of useful "action" items that would be great to discuss and teach. The more I wrote these down and thought about them I realized they were more for productivity than time management. The two are tied together at the hip, but are also different and we are going to explore both of them.

Time management is the planning of the most important commodity that we have in life; our time. In a different blog post, I talked about how Warren Buffet views time as the most valuable resource in the world.

Telling our time where we want it to go is as much a discipline in planning as it is in prioritizing. In my time management resource page I provide an example that Warren Buffet (I am a fan of Mr. Buffet, if you can't tell) used with his pilot about prioritization. I strongly suggest reading that because it clearly explains the importance of prioritization. Once we understand the importance of time and the value of it as a resource, then we can start to prioritize our tasks and responsibilities. At this point, we can then plan out our days, weeks, and years. However, without a fundamental understanding of time and prioritization, our plan will leave something to be desired.

It is at this point where the management of time becomes a tool to increase our productivity. When we start to plan and be intentional about our time we are increasing our output, and therefore increase our productivity. Productivity isn't just about doing tasks though, it is about doing meaningful tasks.

One of the productivity traps I plan on discussing in this upcoming class is what I call "output illusion." This is when we are constantly doing things, but actually accomplish nothing. We are just preparing to get something done all day long, and wait until a later date to actually do it. To guard against this, I like to use lists to track my tasks and for each task write down what my next action is to progress it forward. This was a trick that I learned from reading Getting Things Done by David Allen and it has had a profound impact on my productivity. These action steps end up on my calendar, and drive my day, combining time management and productivity.

As my calendar starts to fill up with actionable steps, I can then look at combining like tasks to increase my efficiency, resulting in increased productivity again. This is how it is all tied together. By starting off with a fundamental understanding of time and prioritization, we can then start to plan our days and use productivity tools and hacks to increase our daily output. When we increase our output, we increase our value.