Countless drab and lengthy books have been written on the subject of time management and it’s role in stress reduction. The exact titles of these books don’t matter because what is written inside them is always the same. That’s why I am doing a bulk review of all of the time management books that have ever been written, which makes the review itself an exercise in time management.
You may have, as I once did, turned to one of these books in search of help in better managing your time to create less stress about getting things done. What I have discovered from these books is that reading them is a good way to waste the time you are supposed to learn how to manage. I discovered this pretty much from just skimming through their tables of contents.
Books on time management invariably advise you to break down large tasks into a series of smaller steps and tackle them one at a time. This is poor advice, as it does nothing to address the root problem, which is that you have to do all the tasks.
The real solution is obvious. The easiest way to reduce your stress about getting things done is to not do them. If more people did less things we’d be a lot happier as a society. Think about your job, assuming you have one. When you are assigned a project at work it creates stress. Consider what it is about the project that creates the stress. It’s that you have to do it. It’s all those pesky deadlines and meetings and drafts and re-drafts and updates and reports.
Time management books tell you that there is a wonderful sense of accomplishment in finishing things. Don’t fall for this lie. When you finish things, it doesn’t make you happy – it makes other people happy – like your boss or your significant other.
Let’s say you finish a gargantuan project you were assigned at work. Who did you do it for? Yourself? No, you did it for your employer. And what was your reward when you finished it? Did they send you on a paid, month-long trip to the Bahamas to lie in a hammock on the beach and recover from the horror of it all and promise you you’ll never have to go through that nightmarish experience again? No – they probably said something like “Impressive job, Sheila – you handled that so well I’m going to give you something you can really sink your teeth into,” and assigned you an even more time-consuming project with more steps, more reports, more meetings, and more deadlines.
Back when I didn’t know any better and gave my all to those projects at work, they pulled that trick more times than I can count. I felt like I was climbing an endless series of Mount Everests. With every summit, another, larger peak loomed in the distance. I learned the hard way that hard work gets you nothing but harder work.
After years of these endless mountain treks with far too few hours spent in the idyllic village below, I stumbled onto the real secret to time management and here it is:
The key to managing your time better is to have as few things as possible to spend your time managing, and the key to reducing the stress associated with getting things done is to stop doing things before they are done.
Having made this discovery, I gave up my former job and went to work in a government bureaucracy. Bureaucratic jobs are low-stress because bureaucrats rarely, if ever, get anything done. Bureaucracy builds non-accomplishment right into the system. I’ve been amazed at how many projects I can let fall by the wayside, knowing they will get scrapped sooner or later anyway due to a “shift in priorities”, a “redistribution of resources” or a “reorganization.” The elimination of tedious projects at work means I can spend more time doing the stress-free things I really enjoy, such as coming up with mottoes about not doing tedious projects at work like “Well done is never begun.”
That would make an excellent title for a book of my own on time management, though It’s unlikely that I would ever finish writing one, and it would be hypocritical to finish a book about the importance of not finishing things. I would be like a hip-hop artist writing a song about the struggles of life in the hood from a poolside lounge chair in my McMansion in Dubai. I came up with the idea for the book and, from just that, I have achieved a wonderful sense of accomplishment, but endured no stress whatsoever to get it.
I have decided it’s better to stick to blogging, which is like starting on a Chapter One of a book with each new post, but without stressful deadlines or the need to ever get around to Chapter Two. So, fear not, dear readers, I won’t be abandoning this blog – which I know would be a devastating blow to you – to write a time management book. Go ahead and breathe a sigh of relief and put that little bottle of pills back in the medicine cabinet. Talk about stress reduction!
In keeping with the theme of this post, I am ending it here with no intention of finishing my review of books about time management after veering off on a tangent about writing my own book on the subject.
Until…whenever
Lazy and Hazy