On my way home from work today I listened to another episode of the excellent Hurry Slowly podcast, this one an interview with writer Oliver Burkeman titled ‘Against Time Management‘. I have previously read Burkeman’s book ‘The Antidote’ and enjoy his column in the Review section of Saturday edition of The Guardian newspaper. He writes on topics such as busyness, happiness and leading a productive life.
In the podcast interview I particularly enjoyed a section in which Burkeman and host Jocelyn Glei discussed how the concept of ‘time management’ is a misnomer – you cannot actually manage time, just utilise it as it passes – and their consideration of whether thinking of time as a resource like money (‘time is money’) is a valid concept (it is and it isn’t – money can be invested, banked, spent whereas time simply passes and has to be used as soon as it is gained). Burkeman argued that it is better not to try to manage time but, instead, to try to think in terms of constraints on what activity you can pursue. These constraints include things like space, money, energy and, importantly, time. He admitted that he didn’t really have a term to describe this approach and struggles to fully describe it. As I walked along thinking about this I turned the idea over in my head – was he simply talking about prioritisation, was it managing activities or something else. In the end I came to the conclusion that ‘Action Management’ was a better description and the goal was to become good at managing your action within the identified constraints. For example, at that point in the day I had ~6 hours of time left before sleep, some energy, a high degree of freedom and a range of things I could or wanted to do – go for a run and have a post-run shower, check the tyre pressures on the car, review a job application that my daughter was making, eat tea, watch a couple of programmes on television, put the bin out for collection in the morning, write a blog entry, meditate for 10 minutes and read something scientific and so my task was simply to navigate my way through the actions necessary to accomplish these activities in a smooth and efficient manner. From now on, in this way, I’m going to try to think in terms of managing my action amidst a suite of varying constraints rather than time management as much as I can and see what effect it has on how I feel.
I also really enjoyed Burkeman standing up for the idea of idleness. By this he meant true idleness not, say, relaxation now to enable better performance in the future. Idleness simply for its own sake. This immediately made me recall a second-hand book that I bought years and years ago (~30) when I was an undergraduate student – Jerome K. Jerome’s book of essays titled ‘The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow’. I still have this book on my bookshelves and I am now going to have to pull it out and dip into it in some idle moments. For some reason, I find the idea of being an Idle Fellow rather appealing!
Tim O'Hare 