Time Management in the Workplace: Methods and Tips

February 1, 2024

Time management: Is it really possible?

Developing a strategy aligned with company values, change management, recruitment, delegation, annual reviews, public speaking, facilitating meetings, problem-solving methodologies, conflict management: throughout these articles, we’ve covered a wide range of topics related to managing your team.

And perhaps some of you, at one time or another, have thought to yourselves that all of this sounds great, but that you also need better time management to put these tools into practice. Yet time for work is a very scarce resource in the corporate world.

But at the same time, when you really think about it, time IS at the heart of all management tools. And it couldn’t be any other way. After all, what is management, if not the art of explaining to those who sell us seven hours of their time every day—our employees—how we want them to make the best use of that time?

Do you need help managing your time?

But if we want to explain to our employees how we expect them to make the best use of their time, shouldn’t we first make the best use of our own, just to set a good example?

Time and Priority Management: How Does It Work?

We cannot waste time, because no day will ever last only 23 hours. Similarly, we cannot gain time, because no day will ever last 25 hours. The five main categories of resources we have at our disposal to successfully complete any project are:

money,
information,
the equipment,
human resources,
and, of course, time.

If we agree that “managing” means setting aside or saving a resource when we have a surplus of it or when we don’t need it, so that we can retrieve it from its “storage place” when we decide to spend or use it, then yes, we can manage money, because we can store that resource in a bank.

Similarly, we can manage information because we store it in books or on servers. We can manage equipment because we have service providers who store it for us (car rental agencies, home improvement stores, etc.).

Even though it feels awkward to talk about “stockpiling” human resources, that is exactly what temp agencies and France Travail (formerly Pôle Emploi) do.

On the other hand, it’s clear that we can’t save up time. There’s no such thing as a virtual wallet where we can store the half-hour we’ve wasted in a traffic jam, for example.

But if you can’t store a resource, you can’t manage it either. And so it’s impossible to talk about time management. QED!

How can you improve your time management?

Let’s suppose that this morning we woke up at the exact same moment as the wealthiest emir in Dubai. Of course, in terms of the first four resources, he was far wealthier than we were. But when it came to time, he and we were on perfectly equal footing. He and we were equally rich in time. He and we each had 24 hours of time at our disposal. The whole question is how we were going to use that time. And so, in fact, time is the only one of these five resources that we cannot manage, but only use. Time is the only resource that we can only consume. When we say we want to manage our time well, what we really mean is that we want to use it well. But “well” and “poorly” are very subjective and relative concepts—don’t you agree?

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