Time Management is Mind Management

In 2011 I gave a presentation to colleagues at the BBC covering this content, and I hope you find it of value.

Time is perceived in your head, and is a unique, personal experience. What's not so obvious is that it follows that a key way to control time – or more specifically, your time – is to manage your mind.

Each of us has certain tendencies and limitations that stem from the way our brains are wired. Here's a three-step approach to turning them to your advantage:

Acknowledge – understand and accept that a given tendency or limitation applies to you. This may be as simple as becoming aware of it.
Notice – spot how and when it affects your behaviour, especially as it's happening.
Manage – take action to manage your behaviour, and hence your time, based on what you've noticed.

Let's apply this approach to three examples.

1) The Butterfly Mind

The butterfly mind is a concept from Buddhist meditation – a metaphor for the fleeting nature of the mind. Like a butterfly flitting from one flower to the next, the mind doesn't settle for very long, always in search of the next fresh experience.

To become fully aware of this, try a simple exercise: sit comfortably in a quiet place, breathe naturally through your nose, close your eyes, and focus on the sensations of your breathing. You'll notice your mind wander away from that intention almost immediately. In meditation, this isn't a problem – the practice is simply to notice when it happens, and bring your mind back to the breath.

Another way to picture it: your mind is like a kitten placed in the middle of a rug. The kitten wanders off in a random direction, and you gently pick it up and place it back in the centre. That's your mind. No wonder it's a challenge to stay focused on one thing until it's done – and other aspects of our personalities can magnify the problem. Meditation reveals the internal distractions; daily life piles external ones on top. We also allow distractions – rarely taking steps to minimise them, especially in an open-plan office – and even welcome them, taking a certain pride in how swiftly we can turn attention to a colleague's interruption and then snap back to our own focus.

Taming the butterfly mind:

Be aware of your thoughts and thought processes – "watch the thinker." Not as easy as it sounds, but a great way to build self-awareness and take control of the moment. After all, time is just a single continuous moment.
Practice meditation – it's a great way to train "watching the thinker" and improve your powers of concentration. Just five minutes a day of breathing meditation can sharpen your focus within two weeks.
Notice when the butterfly mind wanders from its intended focus, and bring it back to the task at hand. Place the kitten gently back in the centre of the rug.
Say no to others, politely but assertively. Help your mind focus by asking people if you can get back to them later, or pointing them to someone else – in the nicest possible way, of course.
Get in the zone – music on headphones, a quiet space, even booking a meeting room for a meeting with yourself. With your own mind.

2) Procrastination

Procrastination comes from psychology – most notably, Freud's Pleasure Principle: the tendency to avoid discomfort and prefer pleasure. Who doesn't? Any activity perceived as uncomfortable tends to get deferred in favour of one that brings pleasure (or non-activity that brings none of the discomfort).

The 5-Minute Rule. When faced with a choice between a pleasurable activity and a less pleasant one, tell yourself you'll spend just five minutes on the unpleasant one – tidying a room, starting a proposal, writing that letter. That doesn't seem so bad. After five minutes, you're more than likely to keep going until the job's done: the thought of a task, especially next to more pleasurable options, is usually worse than the reality, and once you've started you become absorbed, and those other options simply fall out of mind.

Kiss the Frogs First. When you notice yourself deferring unpleasant tasks in favour of pleasant ones, remember: the deferred tasks will hang over you until they're done, adding even more unpleasant sensations on top. So do the unpleasant ones first – get them out of the way, then take full satisfaction from the pleasurable tasks, which you can even frame as a reward for tackling the frogs first. Try it next time you look at your list for the day ahead.

3) Working Memory

Working memory comes from cognitive psychology and neuroscience: your thoughts run on short-term memory, which – unlike long-term memory – is very limited, holding around seven "chunks" of information (plus or minus two) at any one time. Beyond that, it overflows, and information is lost, possibly forever, if it was never committed to long-term memory. (Think of memorising an 11-digit phone number – you have to break it into chunks just to hold onto it.)

Acknowledging this limitation naturally raises the question: is it realistic to get through even a short meeting – full of conversation and interruptions – and expect to remember every point and action that came up? That's wishful thinking. It's clearly worth recording points and actions as they arise, before your seven chunks overflow. And even then: will you remember where you recorded it, and remember to look?

Working memory needs an upgrade:

Extend your memory with some external storage, paper-based or digital.
Capture a key point or action immediately, before it falls out of your internal memory.
Make sure that extended memory is a reliable source.
Make sure it can't be overlooked – build it into your daily routine, as close to being an extension of your internal memory as possible.

Conclusion

By acknowledging aspects of mind, you become aware of how your tendencies and limitations shape your behaviour. That awareness helps you take more effective control of your behaviour – and therefore your time. It can also lead you to formulate techniques that actually work for you, rather than simply applying off-the-shelf time management advice that may not. Lastly, I hope these examples resonate, and fuel your curiosity about the workings of your own mind. Mind how you go.