Do Less, But Better
How to stop managing time and be truly productive
The concepts of time management and productivity are closely linked, but are they really the same thing? Are productive people simply those who manage time well, and does managing your time always result in you being truly productive?
The obvious answer is no.
You can schedule every minute of your day in a flawless time management system and still end the day not having actually been productive.
That’s because productivity isn’t actually about doing stuff. It’s about producing stuff. The clue is right there in the word.
So we should be measuring productivity in terms of what we produce, not what we do. It’s possible to be doing things all day, without producing a single thing.
Then there’s the question of whether we can actually ‘manage time’, at all. Many would argue that time is not really a manageable asset.
Time is what it is. There are 24 hours of it in a day. 365 days in most years. About 70–80 years in most lifetimes (if you’re lucky).
Time can be used wisely or badly, but it can’t really be managed, at least not in the way many of us understand the term time management.
