Stripping Time Management To Its Essence

One of the most critical skills of the century is time management. In today’s world we are inundated with distractions - things to do, demands from others, so many responsibilities - and those who are the best at making the most of their time are the ones who find success with it. 

But the problem with time management is, and you’ve probably heard this before, you can’t manage time. Time is a constant. You can’t make more or manipulate it. So ultimately, time management is actually more a matter of where you choose to invest your energy and attention in the moments you have.

Time management is energy management.

Where you put your energy is how you spend your time. So you really should be more thoughtful about maximizing the energy you have to do things so that you can fully apply yourself within the time that you have.

But we’re not going to stop there. How do you know where to put your energy and attention? That’s the problem - there are so many things demanding of your energy these days that you could spend a whole day putting it into things that aren’t meaningful to you.

If time management is knowing where to put your energy in the time you have, then energy management is having clarity on what you want to do with your energy.

What’s a worthwhile investment? What’s important to you? What are the things that most directly contribute to the life you want to live?

Put your energy into that!

One of my favorite brands Vuori coined the mantra “Clarity is the ultimate currency”, and I agree. We don’t spend time... We allocate our energy within it. And we maximize our energy by doing the highest leverage thing, the thing that is most likely to create the result that we want.

It’s only when you have clarity that your time becomes incredibly valuable.

Clarity has a few different levels to it. There’s being clear on what you want (the goal). Being clear on the path to getting it (the strategy). And being clear on what you need to do by one to take action on it (tactics).

Clarity is efficiency. The more of it you have, the less energy you waste. And the less energy you waste, the more of it you have left to be channeled into high impact actions.

To demonstrate the connection between time management to clarity, let me ask you an insightful question:

If I gave you 5 extra hours this week to support your biggest goals, do you know exactly how you’d use it?

Answering that question requires clarity. And it dictates what you should do with your time.