Constant multitasking has become the norm in every area of life, from consuming content to doing work. This is especially true in the workplace. It’s not uncommon to switch back and forth multiple times between email inboxes, chat channels, video conferences, project management software, and document or spreadsheet files—all within the same 30-minute span. All that swiveling (combined with the occasional scroll on social media) can snowball into a major loss of valuable time at work.
Since the dawns of humanity, people have used the cyclicity of time—sunrise/sunset, day/night—to make it measurable and easier to predict. Because when you know what follows, things are easier to deal with. Back in the day when people lived in caves, they used this known variation to optimize their hunting process. And then slowly, days turned into weeks, months and years. We invented work days and week-ends and now we know when to work and when to rest. Suddenly, at some point in history—most might not know it, but there is a perfectly logical explanation for this—the beginning of a new year has suffered a dramatic transformation. It swiftly became a threshold, a time when you leave the past behind, gaze into the future full of hope, and even make a resolution of some sort.
Time management is one of the skills that everyone is constantly trying to improve. Most people have a difficult time getting ahold of it, but even those who seem to have it all under control could still do better.
Regardless of what priorities and responsibilities dominate our schedules on a daily basis, time is a resource that all of us must learn to manage. How we make the most of each 24-hour cycle determines how much we will accomplish and how productive we can be.
Our modern American culture glorifies busyness. In fact, the Journal of Consumer Research has found that “Those devoting more time to work and less time to leisure are often viewed as having more status.” But even the most packed schedule is not an automatic sign of productivity. A long to-do list might look impressive at first. However, the number of tasks, deadlines and appointments on your calendar does not always mean those obligations are done with excellence.
