Time Management Training: Why Most Courses Are Teaching You to Fail

Connect with us: SB Nation | Doodle or Die | Medium | Pexels | The Old Reader

Here's something that'll probably annoy half the productivity gurus out there: the best time management advice I ever received came from watching a carpenter work on my deck renovation three years ago. No fancy apps, no colour-coded calendars, no "life-changing" morning routines. Just common sense applied with the kind of brutal efficiency that would make most office workers weep.

The bloke—let's call him Dave because that was actually his name—showed up at 7 AM sharp every day for two weeks. Watched him work for about ten minutes on day one and realised I'd been thinking about time management completely wrong for the better part of my consulting career.

See, Dave didn't start each day by checking his phone, reviewing his task list, or attending some soul-crushing stand-up meeting. He looked at the weather, assessed what materials he had on hand, and picked the single most important thing that needed doing that day. Then he did it. Revolutionary stuff, right?

The Problem with Modern Time Management Training

Most time management courses are teaching people to become professional plate-spinners instead of actual achievers. I've sat through dozens of these sessions over the years—both as a participant and as someone delivering them—and the consistent theme is complexity for complexity's sake.

We're teaching people to categorise tasks by urgency and importance, create elaborate project management systems, and somehow squeeze 47 different productivity techniques into their daily routine. It's like teaching someone to drive by making them memorise the entire vehicle manual before they're allowed to start the engine.

The truth that nobody wants to admit? About 73% of workplace productivity issues stem from people trying to implement too many productivity systems simultaneously. I've seen executives with three different calendar apps, two project management platforms, and a notebook system that would make a librarian jealous. And they wonder why they feel overwhelmed.

Here's what Dave taught me that morning, though he probably doesn't know it: effective time management isn't about managing time at all. It's about managing decisions.

Decision Fatigue Is Killing Your Productivity

Every choice you make throughout the day depletes your mental energy. Which email to answer first, whether to take that phone call now or later, what to have for lunch, which project deserves attention—it all adds up. By 2 PM, most people are running on decision-making fumes.

Dave eliminated about 80% of these micro-decisions by establishing simple rules for himself. Weather's good? Exterior work. Materials delayed? Interior tasks. Client changes their mind? Document it and keep working. No agonising, no pros-and-cons lists, no consulting with three different apps to determine the optimal approach.

I started applying this principle in my own consulting work and the results were frankly embarrassing. Embarrassing because it highlighted how much time I'd been wasting on decision-making theatre—that performance we all do where we pretend that spending fifteen minutes choosing between two similar options somehow leads to better outcomes.

The Australian Approach to Getting Things Done

There's something distinctly Australian about Dave's approach that I think other cultures might struggle with. We're generally pretty good at cutting through nonsense and getting to the point. Maybe it's our convict heritage, maybe it's the harsh climate that doesn't tolerate inefficiency, or maybe we just haven't been exposed to as many overcomplicated productivity systems.

Whatever the reason, I've noticed that effective communication training in Australian workplaces tends to be more direct and action-oriented than what I've observed in other countries. We're less likely to spend forty-five minutes in a meeting that could have been a five-minute conversation.

But we're also losing this advantage as we import more and more American-style corporate culture. I've worked with teams in Sydney and Melbourne who've adopted elaborate agile frameworks and daily scrum meetings for projects that could be managed with a simple checklist and weekly check-ins.

Don't get me wrong—I'm not advocating for returning to the days when business communication meant yelling across the workshop floor. Modern workplaces require more sophisticated coordination. But there's a middle ground between chaos and over-engineering that we seem to have forgotten how to find.

What Actually Works (And Why You Won't Like It)

Real time management isn't sexy. It doesn't involve special apps or revolutionary techniques that will "transform your life in 21 days." It's boring, practical stuff that requires discipline rather than inspiration.

First principle: Single-tasking is your superpower. I know, I know—multitasking has been debunked more times than a psychic on national television, but people keep trying to do it anyway. Here's the thing though: when I say single-tasking, I don't just mean avoiding doing three things simultaneously. I mean committing to one priority for defined blocks of time.

Dave would spend entire mornings on one aspect of the deck construction. Not because he couldn't do multiple things, but because switching between different types of work created inefficiency. Measuring and cutting requires different tools, different mindset, different physical position than installing and securing. Each transition cost time and mental energy.

Second principle: Your calendar is a commitment device, not a wishful thinking repository. Too many people treat their calendars like vision boards—filling them with aspirational activities that have no basis in reality. Professional development training sessions I've run consistently show that people overestimate their capacity by roughly 40-60%.

Block out realistic time for tasks, include buffer zones for the unexpected, and stop scheduling back-to-back meetings like you're some sort of productivity machine that doesn't require biological functions or mental processing time.

Third principle: Systems should serve you, not the other way around. If your productivity system requires more maintenance than your actual work, you've lost the plot. I've seen people spend so much time updating project management software and colour-coding task lists that they barely have time to complete the actual tasks.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Priorities

Here's where I'm going to lose some of you: most people are terrible at identifying genuine priorities because they've never been forced to make real trade-offs. In comfortable office environments, we can usually get away with mediocre performance across multiple areas without facing serious consequences.

Dave couldn't afford this luxury. If he prioritised the wrong task on the wrong day, he might lose a day's work to weather, delay the entire project, or create expensive rework. Real constraints force clarity.

The vast majority of workplace "priorities" are actually just preferences dressed up in urgent language. True priorities are things that, if left undone, create cascading problems for other people or derail important outcomes. Everything else is just work that needs doing eventually.

I started asking my clients to identify what would actually break if they didn't complete specific tasks within specific timeframes. About 60% of their "urgent" work suddenly became "important but not time-sensitive." Amazing how that clarifies things.

Why Most Training Fails

The training industry—and yes, I'm part of it, so I'm criticising my own profession here—has a vested interest in making simple things seem complicated. If time management could be taught in a two-hour session with three basic principles, there wouldn't be much market for week-long intensive courses and expensive consulting engagements.

But here's the thing that really gets me: we're teaching people to optimise the wrong things. Endless focus on efficiency when the real problem is effectiveness. Teaching people to do things faster when they should be questioning whether those things need doing at all.

I've delivered time management workshops to teams who spent most of their day in meetings about meetings, updating status reports that nobody read, and coordinating activities that could have been handled asynchronously. No amount of productivity hacking was going to solve their fundamental problem.

The real issue wasn't time management—it was organisational design and decision-making authority. But nobody wants to hear that because it's harder to fix than downloading a new app.

Implementation That Actually Sticks

If you're still reading this and haven't dismissed me as another consultant trying to sell you something (which, fair enough, I probably am), here's what you can actually do starting tomorrow:

Pick one thing that matters more than everything else this week. Not three things, not five strategic priorities—one thing. Write it down. Everything else you do should either directly contribute to that one thing or be absolutely essential to keep the lights on.

Set boundaries around decision-making. Establish rules for common situations so you don't have to remake the same choices repeatedly. What meetings will you automatically decline? What emails require immediate response versus end-of-day handling? What tasks get delegated without discussion?

Create consequences for yourself. This is the part most productivity advice skips because it's uncomfortable. Dave had natural consequences—weather, client expectations, material costs. Office workers usually don't, which is why we can procrastinate indefinitely without serious repercussions.

Find ways to make poor time management hurt a little. Miss a self-imposed deadline? Stay late to complete it instead of pushing it to tomorrow. Overcommit your schedule? Explain to people why you're running behind instead of just showing up late. Small amounts of productive discomfort prevent larger amounts of unproductive stress later.

The Reality Check

Look, I'm not claiming this approach will revolutionise your life or unlock some hidden potential. It's just a more honest way of thinking about productivity that acknowledges the gap between theory and practice.

Dave finished my deck on time and under budget. Not because he had some secret technique, but because he understood the difference between being busy and being productive. He knew what mattered, he'd developed systems that supported rather than complicated his work, and he wasn't trying to optimise every aspect of his day.

Most of us could learn something from that approach. Even if it means admitting that maybe, just maybe, the problem isn't that we need better time management skills—it's that we need better judgment about what deserves our time in the first place.

That's probably not what you wanted to hear, but it's what you needed to hear. Now stop reading productivity articles and go do something that actually matters.