The Time Management Revolution: Why Your Current System is Probably Rubbish

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I watched a senior manager at BHP Billiton spend forty-seven minutes in three separate meetings last Thursday arguing about whether the quarterly review should happen on the 15th or the 22nd of next month. Forty-seven bloody minutes. About a date that affects absolutely nobody's daily workflow.

That's when it hit me: we're not suffering from poor time management—we're drowning in meeting management disasters disguised as productivity culture.

After seventeen years training executives across Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney, I've noticed something fascinating. The people who swear by elaborate time-blocking systems and colour-coded calendars are usually the same ones working 65-hour weeks while achieving less than their supposedly "disorganised" colleagues who just crack on with things.

Let me share what actually works.

The Myth of Perfect Planning

Here's an uncomfortable truth: most time management advice is written by people who've never managed a team through a genuine crisis. They've never had a major client ring at 4:47 PM on Friday demanding changes to a project that goes live Monday morning. Never dealt with that one staff member who interprets "urgent" as "sometime next week when I feel like it."

The productivity gurus love their morning routines and meditation apps. Fair dinkum. But when you're running a business or managing real people with real problems, you need systems that work when everything goes sideways—not just when you've got your matcha latte and your journal perfectly arranged.

I learned this the hard way during my early consulting days. Spent months perfecting a beautiful project management system with colour-coding and automated reminders. Worked brilliantly until we landed our first major retail client during their Christmas rush. Everything I'd planned went out the window in about thirty-six hours.

The Three-Bucket Reality Check

Forget complicated systems. Most work falls into three buckets:

Bucket One: Stuff that actually moves the needle. Revenue-generating activities, strategic decisions, genuine relationship building. Maybe 23% of what lands on your desk.

Bucket Two: Maintenance mode. Emails, reports, check-ins, minor fixes. Necessary but not exciting. Roughly 61% of your week.

Bucket Three: Complete time-wasters masquerading as work. Those meetings about meetings. Status updates on projects everyone already understands. Forty-slide presentations that could've been a three-line email.

The secret isn't managing time better—it's being ruthlessly honest about which bucket each task belongs in.

I had one client, a fantastic operations manager at Woolworths, who started every week by writing down everything she thought she needed to do. Then she'd cross off anything from Bucket Three before it even made it to her calendar. Revolutionary stuff. Her productivity jumped 34% in the first month just by not doing things that didn't matter.

Why Most People Fail at Time Management

They try to optimise everything instead of eliminating the right things.

Look, you can become incredibly efficient at tasks that shouldn't exist. I've seen people create elaborate tracking systems for monitoring how long they spend monitoring other tracking systems. It's madness.

The real skill is learning to disappoint people strategically. Say no to the right requests. Miss the right meetings. Ignore the right emails.

This sounds harsh, but here's the thing—if you don't choose what to ignore, it gets chosen for you. Usually by whoever shouts loudest or sends the most follow-up messages.

Some practical examples from my own business:

I stopped attending networking events where the primary activity is people explaining what networking events they attend. Time saved: roughly four hours per month.

I implemented a "no agenda, no meeting" policy. If someone can't articulate in advance what we're trying to achieve, we don't book a room. Controversial? Absolutely. Effective? You bet.

I started batching similar tasks instead of switching between different types of work all day. Answering emails at set times rather than constantly monitoring the inbox. Time management courses often cover this principle, but most people resist it because they're addicted to feeling busy.

The Australian Approach to Getting Things Done

We're brilliant at cutting through nonsense when we want to be. Apply that same directness to your workday.

Instead of asking "How can I fit everything in?" start asking "What can I stop doing without anyone noticing?"

Instead of "How do I work faster?" try "Which of these things actually matter to my boss/clients/team?"

I worked with a mining company CEO in WA who revolutionised his effectiveness by asking one simple question in every meeting: "What decision are we making here, and who needs to make it?" If there wasn't a clear answer, the meeting ended.

Sounds extreme? This bloke went from working 70-hour weeks to 45-hour weeks while increasing company profits by 18% in his first year using this approach.

The Email Trap Everyone Falls Into

Email isn't a productivity tool—it's a procrastination platform with better branding.

Most people treat their inbox like a to-do list managed by everyone except themselves. Every email feels like a small emergency requiring immediate attention. But here's what I learned managing projects across multiple time zones: urgency is usually a planning failure disguised as a priority.

Real emergencies are rare. Everything else can wait until you decide to deal with it.

I now check emails three times per day: 9 AM, 1 PM, and 4 PM. That's it. The world hasn't ended. Clients haven't fired me. In fact, response quality improved because I'm not firing off quick replies between other tasks.

The trick is training people (including yourself) that immediate response doesn't equal better service. Thoughtful response does.

Why Technology Makes Time Management Harder

Every productivity app promises to revolutionise your workflow. Most just create new busywork.

I've tried them all: Notion, Asana, Monday.com, Trello, fancy calendar systems with AI scheduling assistants. Know what works best? A notebook and a pen. Sometimes the old ways persist because they actually work, not because we're too stubborn to change.

Digital tools create the illusion of organisation while generating endless opportunities for tinkering. How many hours have you spent customising productivity apps instead of actually being productive?

That said, organisation and time management training can help teams establish consistent systems that everyone actually uses, rather than individual solutions that work brilliantly in isolation but create chaos when you need to collaborate.

The key is choosing tools that disappear into the background rather than demanding constant attention.

The Meeting Disease

Meetings have become the cancer of modern workplaces. Everyone complains about them, but somehow we keep scheduling more.

Here's my radical suggestion: what if most meetings didn't happen?

I started an experiment with one client where we cancelled every recurring meeting for one month. Just stopped having them. The world didn't end. Projects continued. Decisions got made. Communication happened through other channels.

After a month, we only reinstated the meetings that people specifically requested to bring back. About 40% of the original meetings never returned, and nobody missed them.

The meetings that did return were shorter, more focused, and actually useful because people remembered what it felt like to get work done without constant interruption.

Some meetings are essential. Most exist because scheduling a meeting feels like taking action, even when no action is required.

What Actually Works in the Real World

Stop trying to manage time. Start managing attention and energy instead.

Your brain doesn't work at the same level all day. Find your peak performance windows and protect them fiercely. Mine are 6:30-9:30 AM and 2:00-4:00 PM. During these windows, I do the work that requires actual thinking. Everything else gets scheduled around these periods.

Use the phone more often. A five-minute conversation often replaces a fifteen-email chain. More personal, faster resolution, fewer misunderstandings.

Batch similar tasks. All your calls in one block. All your admin in another. Context switching drains energy even when you don't notice it happening.

Learn to delegate properly. Not just the tasks you don't want to do, but some of the tasks you're good at. Effective communication training becomes crucial here—most delegation failures happen because instructions aren't clear, not because people lack capability.

Set boundaries that feel uncomfortable at first. Leave work at work sometimes. Answer emails during business hours. Take actual lunch breaks away from your desk.

The resistance you feel to these suggestions? That's not your work ethic talking—that's your addiction to feeling indispensable.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Productivity

Some of the most effective people I know appear disorganised to outside observers. They don't use complex systems because they've learned to focus on results rather than process.

They understand that being responsive isn't the same as being productive. That looking busy isn't the same as being useful. That working long hours often signals poor planning rather than strong commitment.

The real time management revolution happens when you stop trying to do everything and start choosing what matters.

Most time management problems aren't time problems—they're priority problems wrapped up in the language of productivity. Fix the priorities, and time tends to sort itself out.

That BHP manager I mentioned at the start? Six months later, she'd eliminated 73% of her recurring meetings and started finishing projects two weeks ahead of schedule. Not because she learned to work faster, but because she learned to work on the right things.

Time management isn't about cramming more into your day. It's about creating space for work that actually moves your business forward.

Everything else is just sophisticated procrastination with better documentation.