Why time management inevitably stresses us out 👇
Managing time is like baking cookies with an ingredients list that looks like
• Eggs laid by 2 hens in the last 24 hrs
• Flour from 10 sq ft of wheat grown in the last planting season
• Sugar from one stalk of sugarcane
You’re not going to get the same cookies every time!
We measure time because it’s convenient, not because it’s meaningful.
✅ We always get the same amount of time in a day.
✅ We can measure it continuously and easily.
✅ It’s perfectly well-behaved and reliable.
Measuring time is like a comfort blanket, it makes us feel like we’ve got things under control.
But in the end, the quality and quantity of what we get done depends on things like energy and focus.
Sadly, these are anything but well-behaved. We can’t really measure them. They can fluctuate wildly. We don’t always wake up with the same amount in our “bank”.
There’s no point beating ourselves up about an unproductive afternoon after a poor night’s sleep. We can only do our best to manage energy and focus — without a clock to guide us.
The two biggest actions that seem to work for me are
1️⃣ Limiting caffeine, so I can stay asleep at night
2️⃣ Not eating too many carbs for lunch, to avoid the afternoon slump