if you need more time, understand the PAYOFF your brain is chasing!

Time management is an essential skill for any entrepreneur – especially an ambitious entrepreneur scaling a solo venture and hiring a high-performing team. Yet, mastering time management remains consistently high on the list of challenges faced by leaders and teams alike. You might not know that your brain is wired to make managing time particularly tough, especially when the demands of your growing business are high and you’re feeling stressed.
In this post I’ll explain why time management can be so challenging, I’ll use Duhigg’s Habit Loop to help you rethink your approach to time management and then go through 4 techniques you may already know but probably aren’t using!

I won’t suggest another matrix or to-do list – we’ll go deeper than that!

Why Time Management is Difficult?

I speak to a lot of ambitious and high-performing people who find managing their time difficult. Most look outward, questioning what more they can do, perhaps writing a “to-day list” instead of a “to-do list,” plotting their tasks on a matrix expressing what is urgent and important, identifying what can be delegated, downloading another app or reorganising their workload in a whole new way for the twelfth time this year. I want you to look inward because your brain doesn’t perceive time as linear, and it’s influenced by more than a visible timer or ticking clock!

Stress alters your perception of time and affects your ability to organise tasks. The fact is stressed people don’t manage time well, if you’re not intentionally managing your experience of stress, it is likely you’re reactively prioritising tasks, feeling compelled to “hustle,” or work longer hours which is putting you on a hamster wheel of poor time management followed by stress, leading to worse time management and more stress.

Entrepreneurs are typically driven and self-motivated people – these valuable qualities are often accompanied by unhelpful, underpinning patterns like imposter thoughts, a fear of failure or a need for perfectionism. When you’re under pressure to perform and striving to bring your vision to reality, the part of your brain responsible for processing these emotional patterns gets busier in a way that interferes with the part of your brain that handles planning and decision-making, ultimately making it tough to gauge how long a task might take or skewing your view a deadline.

There’s no arguing that scaling entrepreneurs are also experiencing cognitive overload – that means the amount of stuff you have to do exceeds your brain’s capacity to do them all. When you’re constantly on that edge, you’re likely to default everything to “urgent” because it gives you a short, sharp sense of accomplishment but might not be contributing to your long-term goals and it certainly isn’t enabling proactive time management.

Rethinking Time Management

In his book The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg breaks down how we form and break habits using a simple loop: cue, routine, reward. I like to use this model in a variety of ways with my clients because it helps to bring awareness to the cues that motivate your behaviours. When you have clarity on your cues, you get to choose the routines you disable or reinforce with rewards. Here’s how it works:

What is important to remember is that the prize, rewward or payoff is unique to you and typically something your brain deems a payoff, which may be a sense of relief, satisfaction, or even the confirmation of a belief that makes you feel validated. To help clarify what it might mean to be driven by what your brain deems a payoff, let’s look at an example:

• CUE: It’s the end of your workday, and you feel tired or overwhelmed. You’ve booked time at the gym because you know exercise is a healthy outlet after a long day.
• RESPONSE: Instead of exercising, you go home and watch TV – it instantly gives you a sense of comfort and relief.
• PRIZE: Going home and watching TV gave you immediate comfort and relief. The prize isn’t necessarily a healthy outlet nor will it improve your health in the long-term but your brain got the comfort and relief it needed.

Recognising the underpinning experience – your tired, overwhelmed mind is seeking comfort and relief – will give you clarity on where you might start to reward or disable the habit. For example, if you were to reward even 5 minutes of exercise with something other than sitting in front of the TV that still gives you that similar sense of comfort and relief, perhaps a bath or a conversation with a friend, you might find it easier to change the habit of avoiding exercise.

Here’s how you might use it to rethink time management:

TRACK YOUR CUES

Your CUE is the thought, feeling, belief, time of day or situation that prompts the response – your cues could be external, perhaps a calendar notification or internal, maybe that overwhelm creeping in at the end of the day. Spend a week tracking your cues around time management and stress. It might feel confronting to notice that you’re derailing your productivity by doom scrolling on social media or hamstrung by low priority tasks because the urgent, important one feels daunting. The purpose of this exercise is not to judge or criticise yourself but rather to bring your awareness to what is or isn’t working – without awareness we cannot change.

PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR RESPONSES

Your response is the habitual behaviour that follows the cue and it may be conscious or unconscious. As you bring awareness to your responses that are undermining your time management or exaccerbating your experience of stress, consider what you’d like to do instead – the following time management techniques might be helpful to you but what, specifically, will help you manage your time better and reduce your experience of stress?

Clarify the prize

The prize is whatever your brain deems a payoff, the trouble is your brain can’t tell the difference between positive or negative: the payoff for a smoker’s brain is a cigarette. The trick is to understand what the payoff gives you and replace it with a healthier version. Without the cigarette, a smoker’s brain might view stepping away from a screen, taking a breathe and making small talk as the payoff or prize. It’s crucial you work out what the payoff is for your brain.

REVIEW AND RESET

I encourage my clients to think like a scientist – approach this with curiosity, brutal honesty and seek out evidence of your success. Try to stay flexibile, persistent, and open-minded but a willingness to not know the answers and possibly get it wrong a few times. Take away the pressure of perfectionism and try to remember you only ever need to be 1% better than last time.

4 Time Management Techniques you already know but probably aren’t using…

the pomodoro technique

The Pomodoro Technique is simple and effective, the idea is you focus on work 25-minutes and take a break for 5 minutes, each 30 minute block is called a Pomodoro. After every four Pomodoros, you tak a longer 15-30 minute break. Coupled with a to-do list and a reliable timer, this is a great technique that would support anyone battling overwhelm, mental clutter or fatigue. By setting your expectations in advance you’re clearing the need to think, you’ll get more done in a short, sharp session than you will if you have all day to muddle through and the breaks enable present moment awareness which will keep you refreshed.

TIME BLOCKING

Time blocking means scheduling every minute of ever day in advance. Rather than reactively managing your time as things come up, you’re prescheudling a time block to dedicate to a specific task. I like this specific technique because it reduces that overarching pressure to get everything done yesterday and promotes a mindset “there is time” for that which is particularly valuable if you’re blocking time for breaks, self-care and fun! TOP TIP: if you’re likely to have a distractions or emergencies, plan time for them – your brain likes predictability.

The 2 MINUTE RULE

The 2 minute rule is super straight forward: if it will take less than 2 minutes, do it now. Clearing out the 2 minute tasks will free up mental space for the daunting tasks and prevent small, administrative tasks piling up over time. I like to plan a half hour into my day just for 2 minute tasks.

eat the frog

Eat the frog means completing the most hideous task first – whether hideous means time consuming, challenging or daunting, that is the first task of your day. Human beings are brilliant at avoiding discomfort, particularly perceived discomfort. Our avoidance might look like procrastination, missed deadlines or self-criticism for an incomplete task. By committing to eating the proverbial frog first thing, you’re creating predictability for your brain, rewarding your brain and increasing your resilience by doing hard things! Hopefully before lunchtime!

Coaching for Time Management

In this post I’ve explained how you might rethink time management and recommended 4 game changing techniques – if you’re still struggling to manage your time efficiently and you’re finding your experience of stress is getting the better of you – it may be time to consider coaching.

I use a blend of behavioural coaching, neuroscience and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to work through your unique experiences. Together we’ll cultivate self-awareness, enabling you to recognise and restructure unhelpful thought or behaviour patterns. We’ll reframe limiting beliefs and fix your schedule in a way that supports your overall wellbeing and your business! If you’re ready to go beyond surface level time management techniques that fuel stress, schedule a Discovery Call with me today.