Time Management Myths

Ariadne's got a great post at Neat Living Blog called 10 Myths About Managing Your Time that is a must for anybody trying to get themselves more organised and making more productive use of their time. Especially if you're like me and you've come to realise that a lot of time management advice is bunk and that all you end up doing is spending more of your precious time trying to fit your life into somebody else's system.

If you want to read all 10 myths, head over to the Neat Living Blog, but here are a few of my favourites:

4. People need a "Personal Organizer" or other time management system to get organized. People are not organized because they use a time management system, they use a time management system because they are organized. Personal organization involves breaking old habits and forming new, effective ones. It is a state of mind as opposed to a state of the office. Some people are more organized using a 65-cent steno pad than others are using a 65-dollar organizer.

7. The biggest time wasters include telephone interruptions, visitors, meetings and rush jobs. These are not time wasters, they are time obligations -- they come with the job. The biggest time wasters are self-imposed, such as procrastination, making mental notes, interrupting ourselves, searching for things, perfectionism, and spending time on trivial tasks. We are our own worst enemies. Being effective involves managing ourselves, not placing the blame on others.

10. Time is money. Time is more than money, it's life. You can always get more money, but you can never get more time. It's an irreplaceable resource. When time's gone, you're gone.

One thing I've found that's been helping me make better use of my time is a little tool that helps me answer that age-old question "What the hell have you been doing the last six hours?" It's called TimeSnapper and it's a little program (Windows only) that runs in the background and takes screenshots every few seconds (or at whatever interval you choose). Then you can go back and look at them to see just exactly how you spent your time on the computer, and use that information to change your habits if necessary. It's a really cool little program, and it's free for personal use.