What I learned about Time Management
Listen, I’ve been banging on about this for the better part of two decades now, and most companies I visit still have their people rushing about like maniacs. Not long ago, I’m sitting in this impressive office tower in Brisbane’s city centre watching a team leader frantically toggle between countless browser tabs while trying to explain why their project deadlines are in tatters. Honestly.
The bloke’s got multiple devices going off, Slack notifications going mental, and he’s genuinely amazed when I suggest maybe just maybe this method isn’t working. This is 2025, not 1995, yet we’re still treating time management like it’s some complicated dark art instead of basic workplace hygiene.
What really winds me up. Every second Business owner I meet reckons their people are “just naturally chaotic” or “are missing the right attitude.” Absolute codswallop. Your team isn’t broken your systems are. And nine times out of ten, it’s because you’ve never attempted teaching them how to actually handle their time properly.
The Real Cost Nobody Wants to Talk About
Let me tell you about Sarah from this advertising firm in Perth. Sharp as a tack, this one. Could make magic happen with clients and had more brilliant concepts than you could poke a stick at. But bloody hell, watching her work was like witnessing a car crash in progress.
She’d start her day reading emails for forty five minutes. Then she’d tackle this complex project brief, get partially done, realise she needed to call a client, get interrupted by someone dropping by, start tackling a another project, notice she’d forgotten about a meeting, hurry to that, come back to her desk totally scattered. Same thing for the entire day.
The worst bit? She was working sixty hour weeks and feeling like she was achieving nothing. Her anxiety were through the roof, her work output was unpredictable, and she was seriously considering leaving the industry for something “less demanding.” Meanwhile, her coworker Dave was cruising through similar workloads in standard hours and always seemed to have time for actual lunch.
What made Dave effective between Sarah and Dave? Dave had learnt something most people never figure out time isn’t something that dictates your schedule, it’s something you control. Simple concept when you put it that way, eh?
The Truth About Effective Time Management
Now before you switch off and think I’m about to sell you another productivity app or some complex methodology, settle down. Real time management isn’t about having the ideal software or creating your schedule like a rainbow threw up on it.
The secret lies in three fundamental things that most training programs totally overlook:
Number one Attention isn’t multiple. Yeah, I know that’s poor English, but hear me out. At any point in time, you’ve got a single focus. Not multiple, not three, one. The moment you start juggling “multiple tasks,” you’ve already fallen into the trap. Found this out the hard way managing a business back in Adelaide during the mining boom. Thought I was being brilliant handling multiple “urgent” clients together. Came close to ruining the Business into the ground trying to be all things to all people.
Second Disturbances aren’t unavoidable, they’re a choice. This is where most Australian businesses get it absolutely wrong. We’ve built this environment where being “accessible” and “responsive” means reacting every time someone’s phone dings. Friend, that’s not effectiveness, that’s mindless reactions.
Had a client this law firm on the Sunshine Coast where the senior lawyers were boasting that they responded to emails within half an hour. Can you believe it! Meanwhile, their productivity were down, client work was taking way longer as it should, and their solicitors looked like extras from The Walking Dead. Once we created sensible email rules shock horror both efficiency and service quality increased.
Third Your stamina isn’t constant, so don’t assume it is. This is my particular interest, probably because I spent most of my thirties trying to ignore fatigue periods with increasingly stronger coffee. Plot twist: doesn’t work.
Some tasks need you alert and concentrated. Others you can do when you’re half asleep. Yet most people distribute work throughout their day like they’re some sort of work android that runs at full power. Complete madness.
Programs That Deliver Results
This is where I’m going to irritate some people. Most time management training is absolute garbage. Had to be, I said it. It’s either overly academic all models and charts that look impressive on PowerPoint but crumble in the actual workplace or it’s too focused on tools and programs that become just additional work to deal with.
Successful methods is education that accepts people are messy, businesses are chaotic, and flawless processes don’t exist. The most effective training I’ve ever delivered was for a group of builders in Cairns. These blokes didn’t want to learn about the Eisenhower Matrix or complex frameworks.
Their focus was practical strategies they could apply on a job site where things change every few minutes.
So we concentrated on three straightforward principles: batch similar tasks together, protect your peak energy hours for critical tasks, and learn to decline requests confidently about it. Nothing earth shattering, nothing fancy. Six months later, their job finishing statistics were up 30%, additional labour expenses had fallen dramatically, and injury compensation cases had nearly been eliminated.
Consider the difference from this high end advisory Company in Adelaide that spent serious money on comprehensive time management software and detailed productivity methodologies. A year and a half down the line, half the workforce still wasn’t using the system properly, and the remaining team members was spending longer periods maintaining the systems than actually achieving results.
Why Most Businesses Get This Wrong
The problem isn’t that business owners don’t recognise the value of effective scheduling. Most do. The real issue is they approach it like a one size fits all solution. Send everyone to the same training course, provide identical resources to all staff, hope for uniform improvements.
Complete rubbish.
Here’s the story of this industrial operation in Wollongong that hired my services because their floor managers were always running late. The MD was convinced it was a skills gap get the section leaders some organisational training and everything would sort itself out.
Turns out the real problem was that head office kept changing priorities without warning, the scheduling software was about as helpful as an ashtray on a motorbike, and the team leaders wasted hours daily in sessions that were better suited to with a brief chat.
No amount of efficiency education wasn’t going to fix systemic dysfunction. We ended up redesigning their entire communication process and creating sensible coordination methods before we even touched individual time management skills.
This is what really gets to me about so many Aussie organisations. They want to treat the effects without tackling the root cause. Your people can’t organise their work properly if your business doesn’t prioritise productivity as a valuable resource.
A Sydney Eye Opener
On the topic of business time awareness, let me tell you about this digital agency in Sydney that fundamentally altered my understanding on what’s possible. Small team, maybe twenty people, but they operated with a level of time consciousness that put large enterprises to shame.
Each session featured a defined purpose and a firm conclusion deadline. People actually came organised instead of treating meetings as brainstorming sessions. Email wasn’t treated as instant messaging. And here’s the kicker they had a organisation wide policy that unless it was absolutely essential, professional contact ceased at evening.
Earth shattering? Hardly. But the results were outstanding. Workforce output was better than comparable organisations I’d worked with. Employee retention was virtually non existent. And service quality metrics were exceptionally high because the output standard was reliably superior.
The CEO’s approach was straightforward: “We hire smart people and rely on them to handle their responsibilities. Our responsibility is to establish conditions where that’s actually possible.”
Compare this to this extraction industry firm in the Pilbara where managers wore their 80 hour weeks like symbols of commitment, sessions went beyond allocated time as a normal occurrence, and “immediate” was the default status for everything. Despite having substantially greater funding than the tech Company, their per employee productivity was roughly half.
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