Time management is a concept not many have ever truly mastered. There are professionals who are ‘good’ at it, but the vast majority of us will never really master time management. For entrepreneurs, time management is especially tricky. We are so committed to what we do that it is hard to simply leave a task and move on to something else. We love what we do, so we sacrifice time for other tasks to feed our passion.

But time management is a concept that is often misinterpreted. We can’t buy more time, nor borrow from the future. What we have is what we have. There are 24 hours in a day, no more yet also no less.

What we can do is simplify our days and prioritize and organize them by tasks that engage us. By allocating time and attention to the tasks we like to do, or want to do, it will go a long way to creating good time management. By paying more attention to the things we like, we will have more stamina to do them also. We will yield the best results from doing this.

What we then need to do is allocate smaller chunks of time from our day to the tasks we don’t enjoy or hate even! By allocating small parts of our day and thereby not procrastinating or even worse, avoiding totally, we still get the stuff we dislike completed.

Doing those tasks in bursts throughout the day, let’s say a few minutes before lunch and a few minutes at the end of the day, means that the task will get done but not become the mental focus of our day. What makes people procrastinate or avoid doing something is that it is the focus of the day. If you can shift the focus away from the negativity and towards the stuff that you love, you will be able to complete everything else much more easily.

We have to remember that procrastination takes a great deal of effort in itself. By making it hard to procrastinate, because you only have to devote a few minutes to something you hate in a day, you can shift your effort over to doing the stuff you love.

Finally, the word ‘adulting’ has made a shift away from Internet memes to our everyday vernacular. If we think about the meaning of the pseudo-word, ‘adulting’ is just a simplification of time management. As entrepreneurs, we know so well what it means to ‘adult’ in our job. In essence, all we need to do is focus more on the tasks that give us childlike glee and switch to adult mode for just a small portion of each day. 

This blog was closely written around a conversation that I had on the Simplifying Entrepreneurship Podcast (Season 3, Ep 1) with Dr Kayvon K. around time management. You can watch the full video of our conversation below.