Eulah Nyholm

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The ROI of Time Management Courses for Businesses

 

The Truth About Time Management That Nobody Wants to Hear

 

 

The productivity guru standing at the front of the conference room looked like he'd never worked a real day in his life.

 

 

Here's what nobody tells you about time management training: most of it is designed by people who've never actually managed anything more complex than their own Netflix queue.

 

 

Here's something that'll definitely irritate half the HR departments reading this: most time management problems aren't actually time management problems at all. They're poor leadership, vague expectations, and toxic workplace cultures disguised as individual failings.

 

 

Take the typical "prioritisation matrix" that every trainer loves to pull out. You know the one - urgent versus important, colour-coded quadrants, the whole nine yards. Sounds fantastic in theory. But when your boss interrupts you every fifteen minutes, three different departments need "urgent" reports by COB, and your email inbox is exploding faster than you can clear it, that pretty matrix becomes about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

 

 

Here's what changed everything for me - realising that time management isn't about managing time at all.

 

 

The clock doesn't care about your to-do list, your goals, or how many productivity apps you've downloaded.

 

 

Real time management is about energy management. I figured out this the hard way after burning out spectacularly in my early thirties. Back then, I was obsessed with squeezing every second of productivity from my day. Colour-coded calendars, time-blocking, the Pomodoro Technique - you name it, I tested it.

 

 

The breakthrough came when I started paying attention to when I actually did my best work, rather than when I thought I should be working. Turns out, I'm completely useless after 3 PM for anything requiring deep thinking, but I can power through administrative tasks like nobody's business.

 

 

Most people are the opposite - they hit their stride in the afternoon and struggle with morning focus. Yet every workplace expects everyone to be equally productive from 9 to 5. It's madness when you think about it.

 

 

Here's where most time management training goes completely off the rails: they assume everyone's job is the same.

 

 

A accountant working in deep focus mode has completely different time management challenges than a customer service representative who's constantly interrupted by clients and colleagues. Yet somehow, we're all supposed to follow the same productivity formula.

 

 

The retail sector has this problem in spades. I've seen site managers beating themselves up because they can't implement "time-blocking" in environments where urgent issues pop up every few minutes. It's like trying to schedule spontaneity.

 

 

Once we redesigned her approach around managing interruptions rather than eliminating them, everything changed. Her stress levels dropped, her team became more efficient, and she stopped feeling guilty about not following some guru's perfect daily routine.

 

 

The best time management advice I can give you has nothing to do with apps or techniques.

 

 

Learn to say no. Correctly.

 

 

Not the pathetic "I'm really busy right now" nonsense that leaves the door open for negotiation. I mean the straightforward, confident, guilt-free no that protects your time like a security guard at Crown Casino.

 

 

This is where Australian workplace culture works against us. We've got this ingrained belief that being busy equals being important, and that saying no makes you look lazy or uncommitted.

 

 

Complete nonsense, if you ask me. I've watched talented managers destroy their effectiveness and their mental health because they couldn't bring themselves to decline requests that weren't actually their responsibility. The result? Critical work gets pushed aside while they race to complete tasks that should never have landed on their desk in the first place.

 

 

Now, this might ruffle some feathers: sometimes the problem isn't external demands - it's your own inability to let go of control.

 

 

I see this particularly with small business owners who've built their identity around being irreplaceable. They whinge about being overwhelmed while at the same time micromanaging every detail and refusing to delegate significant work.

 

 

Delegation isn't about dumping tasks on subordinates. It's about developing capability across your team while freeing yourself to focus on what only you can do. The companies that do this well - think Atlassian or Canva - create systems where success doesn't depend on any single person being a superhero.

 

 

But delegation requires letting go of the illusion that you're the only person who can do things properly. For many leaders, that's a harder psychological shift than learning any productivity technique.

 

 

The irony of modern productivity tools is staggering.

 

 

We have more ways to manage our time than ever before, yet we're less focused than previous generations. The average knowledge worker checks email every six minutes and switches between applications over 300 times per day.

 

 

Slack notifications, Teams messages, calendar alerts, project management updates - our devices have become attention-destroying machines disguised as productivity tools.

 

 

I worked with a development squad in Darwin that was spending more time managing their productivity tools than actually being productive. They had separate apps for tasks, projects, communication, scheduling, note-taking, and file sharing.

 

 

Every tool was supposed to make them more efficient, but the cognitive overhead of maintaining multiple systems was exhausting them. We stripped it back to three core tools and saw immediate improvements in both output and stress levels.

 

 

What I've learned from fifteen years of helping people fix their time management:

 

 

Start with energy, not time. Figure out your peak performance windows and schedule accordingly.

 

 

Energy management destroys time management every single time. I've seen managers triple their effectiveness simply by aligning their most demanding work with their natural energy peaks.

 

 

Block that time for your most important work and watch your productivity soar. The afternoon slump isn't a character flaw - it's biology. Instead of fighting it with caffeine and willpower, schedule your routine tasks for those lower-energy periods. It's not rocket science, but most people never bother to pay attention to their own patterns.

 

 

Second, embrace the reality of interruptions rather than pretending they don't exist.

 

 

If you're in a role where people need access to you, stop pretending you can work in uninterrupted four-hour blocks. Build slack into your calendar and use those moments productively when they don't get filled with urgent requests.

 

 

The companies that handle this well create communication protocols that distinguish between truly urgent issues and everything else. At Woolworths, for example, they've developed clear escalation paths so that frontline staff know when to interrupt senior management and when to handle issues independently.

 

 

It's not about being unavailable - it's about being strategically available at the right times for the right reasons. Both are equally important parts of their role.

 

 

Track your time for a week and prepare to be horrified.

 

 

Most people have no idea where their time actually goes. They think they're spending two hours on important projects when they're actually spending twenty minutes on projects and ninety minutes on email, messages, and random interruptions.

 

 

I use a simple exercise with clients: for one week, track everything in 15-minute blocks. Don't change your behaviour, just monitor it. The results are usually eye-opening.

 

 

People discover they're spending three hours a day on activities that add zero value to their work or their company's goals. The revelation isn't pleasant, but it's necessary. You can't fix what you don't measure. Once you see how much time you're losing to pointless meetings and digital distractions, making changes becomes a lot easier.

 

 

Here's the perspective change that transforms everything:

 

 

Most time management problems are systems problems, not people problems. If everyone in your company is struggling with the same issues, the solution isn't better individual time management - it's better organisational design.

 

 

I've consulted with dozens of businesses where the time management crisis was actually a leadership crisis. Poor planning, unclear priorities, and inconsistent communication created environments where even the most organised staff members couldn't succeed.

 

 

The solution wasn't more training - it was better systems, clearer expectations, and leadership that actually understood the difference between urgent and important.

 

 

Don't get me wrong - individual techniques have their place.

 

 

The fundamentals work: understanding your energy patterns, managing interruptions, tracking your time honestly. But they only work when they're supported by sensible organisational structures and realistic expectations about what any individual can actually control.

 

 

After seventeen years in this game, I've learned that the best time managers aren't the busiest people - they're the people who've figured out what really matters and built their lives around protecting that focus.

 

 

True time management wisdom isn't about doing more - it's about doing the right things well, and having the courage to stop doing everything else.

 

 

Here's what I wish someone had told me twenty years ago: it's not about managing time at all. It's about managing yourself, your energy, and your environment to support the work that actually matters.

 

 

Everything else is just productivity theatre.

 

 

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Website: https://timemanagementtrainingau.bigcartel.com/product/time-management-training-perth/

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