Attention Management Is The New Time Management

You should delegate more. You should be more disciplined. You should prioritize things better. You should have plans you don't have to change.  You should be using better time management apps. 

These classic and often unfulfillable time management dictums are naive in the way they exaggerate the kind of control over the world we actually have. As the future remains intrinsically unknowable and change is life's most constant promise, there is a large constellation of things we cannot control.

I continue to argue that doing well is not about time management, but the more profound question of attention management.  

Look at your own empirical evidence rather than treat this as another resolution to try to live by. Think about any time you did well. In what ways were you paying attention to all the right things in that experience?

When you're tempted to fret and obsess over how  demands and opportunities exceed time available, shift to the far more important and functional question of what you should be paying attention to on any given morning, afternoon or evening.