Time Mangement Skills
Listen, I’ve been going on about this for the majority of two decades now, and the majority of organisations I consult with still have their people running around like crazy people. Recently, I’m sitting in this shiny office tower in Melbourne’s business district watching a team leader frantically jump between seventeen different browser tabs while trying to explain why their project deadlines are completely stuffed. Honestly.
The team member has got three phones buzzing, Teams messages going crazy, and he’s genuinely amazed when I suggest maybe just maybe this method isn’t working. This is 2025, not 1995, yet we’re still treating time management like it’s some mysterious dark art instead of basic workplace hygiene.
The thing that drives me mental. Every second Business owner I meet thinks their people are “just naturally disorganised” or “lack the right approach.” Complete rubbish. Your team isn’t damaged your systems are. And more often than not, it’s because you’ve never tried teaching them how to actually handle their time properly.
The Real Cost Nobody Wants to Talk About
Here’s a story about Emma from this marketing agency in Perth. Brilliant woman, this one. Could convince anyone of anything and had more creative ideas than the rest of the team combined. But bloody hell, watching her work was like watching a car crash in real time.
Her morning began with her day reading emails for ages. Then she’d tackle this complex project brief, get part way in, suddenly recall she had to phone a client, get interrupted by a Slack message, start working on a something else, realise she’d overlooked a meeting, dash to that, come back to her desk completely frazzled. Rinse and repeat for the entire day.
The real problem? This woman was doing sixty hour weeks and feeling like she was achieving nothing. Her anxiety were through the roof, her work standard was all over the place, and she was planning to jacking it all in for something “less demanding.” At the same time, her teammate Mark was managing similar workloads in regular business hours and always seemed to have time for a proper coffee break.
What made Dave effective between these two? Dave had learnt something most people never discover time isn’t something that happens to you, it’s something you control. Straightforward idea when you put it that way, eh?
What Succeeds vs What’s Total Nonsense
Before you roll your eyes and think I’m about to flog you another productivity app or some fancy scheduling system, hold on. Real time management isn’t about having the perfect digital setup or colour coding your calendar like a rainbow exploded.
Success comes down to three fundamental things that most courses totally overlook:
Rule one Priority isn’t shared. Sure, I know that’s poor English, but listen up. At any specific time, you’ve got a single focus. Not five, not three, one. The instant you start juggling “priorities,” you’ve already lost the plot. I learnt this the tough way managing a business back in Adelaide during the mining boom. Believed I was being brilliant managing numerous “urgent” deadlines simultaneously. Almost destroyed the Business completely trying to be everything to everyone.
Second Interruptions aren’t inevitable, they’re optional. This is where most Aussie workplaces get it totally backwards. We’ve developed this culture where being “accessible” and “responsive” means responding every time someone’s device beeps. Listen, that’s not productivity, that’s Pavlovian conditioning.
Consulted for this legal practice on the Sunshine Coast where the owners were proud that they answered emails within half an hour. Can you believe it! At the same time, their productivity were falling, legal tasks was taking twice as long as it should, and their lawyers looked like extras from The Walking Dead. Once we implemented realistic expectations shock horror both productivity and client satisfaction improved.
Last rule Your energy isn’t unchanging, so stop pretending it is. This is my personal obsession, probably because I spent most of my younger years trying to fight fatigue periods with more caffeine. Spoiler alert: complete failure.
Some work need you sharp and attentive. Some things you can do when you’re running on empty. Yet most people allocate work throughout their day like they’re some sort of work android that operates at constant capacity. Complete madness.
The Training That Actually Makes a Difference
Here’s where I’m going to upset some people. Most time management training is total waste. There, I said it. It’s either excessively complex all systems and charts that look fancy on presentations but crumble in the actual workplace or it’s obsessed on software and programs that become just additional work to manage.
Successful methods is education that acknowledges people are messy, workplaces are unpredictable, and flawless processes don’t exist. The best program I’ve ever delivered was for a team of tradies in Darwin. These blokes didn’t want to hear about the Priority Grid or David Allen’s system.
They wanted practical strategies they could apply on a worksite where chaos happens every few minutes.
So we focused on three simple concepts: cluster related activities, guard your best thinking time for meaningful projects, and learn to say no without feeling guilty about it. Nothing groundbreaking, nothing complex. Half a year down the track, their job finishing statistics were up 30%, additional labour expenses had fallen dramatically, and injury compensation cases had almost completely vanished.
Contrast this with this premium consultancy business in Brisbane that spent a fortune on elaborate efficiency platforms and intricate performance frameworks. After eighteen months, half the workforce still wasn’t using the system properly, and everyone else was spending longer periods maintaining the systems than actually achieving results.
Why Most Businesses Get This Wrong
The problem isn’t that business owners don’t recognise the need for better organisation. They generally do. Where things go wrong is they approach it like a one size fits all solution. Put the whole team through identical programs, hand out uniform solutions, expect the same results.
Total madness.
Let me tell you about this manufacturing Company in Newcastle that called me up because their team leaders couldn’t meet deadlines. The CEO was convinced it was a training issue get the department heads some time management skills and the issues would resolve themselves.
Turns out the real problem was that head office kept changing priorities without warning, the workflow management tool was about as helpful as an ashtray on a motorbike, and the team leaders wasted hours daily in discussions that should have been with a quick conversation.
No amount of efficiency education wasn’t going to solve structural problems. We ended up overhauling their information systems and establishing effective planning procedures before we even touched individual time management skills.
This is what really gets to me about so many Australian businesses. They want to address the outcomes without dealing with the fundamental problem. Your people can’t handle their schedules efficiently if your business doesn’t prioritise productivity as a precious commodity.
A Sydney Eye Opener
Speaking of organisational respect for time, let me tell you about this software Company in Melbourne that completely changed my perspective on what’s possible. Small team, maybe twenty people, but they operated with a level of scheduling awareness that put most corporations to shame.
Every meeting had a specific outline and a firm conclusion deadline. People actually arrived ready instead of treating meetings as brainstorming sessions. Messages weren’t handled like chat. And here’s the kicker they had a Company wide agreement that unless it was genuinely urgent, business messages ended at six.
Revolutionary? Hardly. But the results were outstanding. Workforce output was better than comparable organisations I’d worked with. Workforce stability was virtually non existent. And service quality metrics were through the roof because the output standard was reliably superior.
The founder’s philosophy was simple: “We recruit talented professionals and rely on them to handle their responsibilities. Our responsibility is to establish conditions where that’s actually possible.”
Compare this to this extraction industry firm in Perth where supervisors flaunted their excessive hours like symbols of commitment, meetings ran over schedule as a matter of course, and “immediate” was the normal designation for everything. Despite having substantially greater funding than the digital business, their per employee productivity was roughly fifty percent.
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