How to Never Run out of Time

I was twelve. But I still remember my teacher telling us “the single most important thing you need to learn is how to manage your time”. Back then, this sounded highly esoteric. My relationship to time was limited to counting the minutes left till the class bell rang.

Fast forward twenty odd years and I stumble upon this fantastic line from Annie Dillard: 

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.”

But what was I doing “with this hour, and that one”? I wanted to find out. 

I did a week-long experiment. Every thirty minutes, I took notes on what I did and how I felt about it.

Here are my takeaways. 

Know your energy sources

Keeping track of what you’re doing every thirty minutes is tedious. It’s a grueling sprint that I’d recommend doing not more than once every six months. But it’s a great way to find out what gives you energy. 

Tuesday was a low energy day. Wednesday and Thursday were the radical opposite. What did I do differently? 

On Tuesday, I made no plan. Every thirty minutes, I’d make a decision about what to do in the next thirty. At first, it felt invigorating and playful. I’d send a few emails, write a short strategy doc, try to make sense of a bunch of data. But then I caught myself scavenging for things that could be done quickly. The sweetness of morning micro-tasking soon turned into the bitter aftertaste of superficial work. 

On Wednesday, I ditched the micro-task strategy and tried something different. I started my day by writing three things I wanted to accomplish. They all required deeper work over longer periods of time. I easily lost track of time and it didn’t seem to matter. I wasn’t always able to finish but I ended the day with a deep sense of accomplishment .  

On Wednesday night, I planned a 6am run for the following morning. At 7am on Thursday, I felt like I was starting the day at the top of the mountain. The rest of the day felt like a downhill run. 90% of the momentum you have for the day is determined by how you spend your first waking hour. Your 6am brain is not exactly a great decision-maker however. So the secret sauce for me was to lock in whether I’d be  writing, running, reading or meditating the night before.  

Time your to-do list

I’m a “to-do list” kind of person. I always have one lying around. The problem is that my to-do lists are full of zombies; tasks that keep reappearing the next day and never seem to want to die. 

Instead of just drawing up a list of things I knew I needed to get done, I noted how much time it would take me to complete each task. Turns out, what I thought was a reasonable workload didn’t fit into a 12-hour day. With a trimmed-down and time-bound list, I now had my battle plan for the day. 

Time what you need to get done and you get to a more realistic plan for the day. And when you have a realistic plan, you feel an increased sense of duty to get it done.  

Time is Energy  

We often think that we need more time to do the things we want to do when what we need is more energy. You can have all the time in the world but without the energy to get things done you’re as good as a sailboat without wind. If you identify what gives you energy, you’ll never run out of time.