Time Management

For any writer, procrastination is just one of the cunning ploys the mind invents to keep us from committing our thoughts to paper. One of my favourite kinds of procrastination is thinking about how I can manage my time more effectively. Irony doesn’t come close.

Having said that, in my previous life as a CEO I took my leadership responsibilities seriously. I understood where I chose to direct my attention was inevitably going to have bearing on what the organisation ended up being focused on, at least to some extent. With so many important competing priorities I began to see time as a commodity.

The more I thought about time, the more I realised time was a very weird construct. You can never truly save time, as it cannot be stored. You can’t decide to use time you haven’t got, and you can’t spend an allocation of time from the future. All you have is now.

As I came to this conclusion, it was also apparent that the one way I had to influence what I did with this moment was to try to wrestle back some control of where my attention was focused. This proved to be much harder than it seemed.

I am not claiming this is any sort of original insight. It’s just when you suddenly understand something, when you really get it, that can be an inflection point. It certainly was for me at the time.

I began to experiment with ways of minimsing distractions. I thought if I could reduce the cognitive drag caused by my monkey brain’s constant flitting about from topic to topic, I might put myself in a better place to choose what I spent my time on.

I discovered quite a few useful tricks, tools and techniques for handling distractions. I also built some workflows that allowed me to exert some control over the avalanche of incoming material hitting my desk every day.

I’m not claiming to be any kind of guru about this. What works for me might not work for anyone else. I still use a lot of what I learnt though.

I’m going to share what I’ve got. You’ll be able to find any time management related posts by search that category.

And if you’ve got any advice for a poet you think might help me become a more productive writer, I’d love to hear from you.