What is Time Management?

At its simplest, time management is a set of tools, approaches, and tricks that are supposed to help people be more productive, get things done, be efficient or effective, show up on time, and do it all easily and efficiently.

That’s the theory.

That’s what the time management “experts” tell you.

So why are there so many people pulling their hair out, suffering a lot of stress and anxiety about not being able to manage their time?

“Time management experts” try to convince us that if we just try hard enough and follow the instructions, we’ll have the dream life we’ve been promised.

Phoooey.

Over here at Time Native, we’re experts in how people learn, solve problems, and create systems that work for them. We’ve been exploring this whole question of time management for a couple of years now, and we’ve found pretty clearly that:

• People we think of as great “time managers” are, in fact, doing something that’s not “time management.” When we ask them how they manage their time, they say they don’t.
• The time management systems – whether courses, books, online classes, or software – work a little bit, some of the time, for some people.
• People who create time management systems and tools aren’t like most people. They tend to have super-structured and logical minds, and have created fairly neat and orderly worlds for themselves. If your brain is wired like their brain, and your world looks like their world, you’re in luck. Otherwise, it probably won’t happen.

Here’s a guess: You don’t want to manage your time. You want what time management promises.

And you don’t want the craziness of time management.

If that’s the case, you may like what we’ve discovered.

We’re glad you’re here.

 

We Time Natives just want a few things:

• We want to get things done that need to be done.
• We want to take stress out of our lives.
• We want to be engaged in what’s meaningful for us.
• We want to spend time with people we love.
• We want to move through life in a way that’s natural and authentic for each of us.

We do use some of the tools the “time management experts” have come up with. We use them when they’re helpful, and when they’re not, we don’t.

See, we start from a very different place. A place thousands of years before anybody thought of “time management.”

Time management has its roots in 18^th century factories,  in 19^th- and 20^th-century misguided ideas of how our brains and minds work, and in management ideas from 1960s insurance companies. It has nothing to do with how we humans are really wired, or with the real 21^st-century world we live in.

We talk at length about this in our free e-book.

To cut to the chase, “time management” is an approach built on a fundamentally flawed foundation, and it has little chance of succeeding for most human beings.

If you download the e-book and spend just a little time exploring how this time management craziness came about and how sneaky and pervasive it is, you’ll start to see where a lot of the stress in your life comes from.

Like a lot of other people who’ve started down this Time Native path with us, you’ll also start to see pathways to deleting the stress, doing what matters to you, and enjoying your life more fully.

 

Stop suffering because you can’t manage your time

Our brains and social structures evolved over a million years, in a world without cars, jobs, smart phones, email, soccer teams or microwaves. Today, we live in a high-speed environment that’s challenging and seductive for the human brain. We’ve become so used to this speedy world that we don’t notice how strange it is. But if you pause for a moment and think about it, you just may notice that today’s world is a little bit alien to us.

This doesn’t mean we can’t learn to thrive here. It’s just that the odds are, with the brain you’ve got, time management isn’t going to be helpful for you.

You can have a more fulfilling, meaningful, well-oiled and enjoyable life, if you’re willing to get curious about a few things you’ve been taking for granted.

You can find what works really great for you, if you’re willing to play and experiment with different ideas and tools and points of view. We don’t know the specifics of your life, and we don’t know how your brain is wired. But we can certainly teach you how to learn to live like a Time Native.

 

Thanks for indulging your curiosity. That’s a great start!