How Many People In Your Organisation Are Very Good at Managing Their Time and Energy?

A discussion article. Part of The Thinking Upgrade.

‍

How many people in your organisation would you describe as very good at managing their time and energy? What would you look for to make that judgement?

A full diary? Fast replies? Long working hours? An impressive number of completed tasks?

Or would you look at whether people are giving appropriate attention to what matters, thinking clearly, making considered decisions, keeping realistic commitments and sustaining their ability to contribute across their whole lives?

Time and energy are precious, limited resources. Time passes whether we use it well or poorly. Energy can be renewed, but we cannot assume that an unlimited supply will be available whenever our diaries demand it. Each person can only do so much in a day. Yet how often do the expectations within our organisations reflect that reality?

Every employee is a whole person, with a whole life.

‍

Behind every job title is someone who needs to maintain their own life. They need sleep, nutritious food, movement, rest and opportunities to relax. They have homes to look after, practical matters to organise and relationships to nurture. They need time to stay informed about the world, learn and develop, and think about their future.

They may also be a partner, parent, family member, friend, neighbour, carer and citizen. Each role brings commitments, hopes and demands. Sometimes those demands are predictable. Sometimes a child becomes unwell, a relationship needs attention or a family member suddenly needs help.

These are the human realities within which work takes place.

We all have twenty-four hours in a day, but we do not have the same freedom over those hours, the same responsibilities or the same available energy. Health, disability, caring commitments, financial circumstances and access to support can make people’s situations very different.

How well does your organisation understand those differences? Can people discuss their capacity honestly without having to reveal private details or fear being seen as less committed?

Consider someone who finishes a demanding day at work and arrives home with almost nothing left for the people they love. That might be understandable during an exceptional period. What if it becomes the normal pattern? What picture of success are we using if being effective in one role repeatedly leaves someone unable to participate meaningfully in the rest of their life?

Managing time and managing energy belong together.

‍

A calendar tells us when something is scheduled. It tells us much less about whether we will have the attention, patience, creativity or emotional capacity to do it well.

An hour spent having a difficult conversation is different from an hour completing familiar administration. Preparing an important decision requires something different from attending a routine update. Someone may have a free slot in their diary while already carrying a demanding workload and considerable mental strain.

Being good at managing time and energy involves understanding these differences. When do I tend to think most clearly? Which activities require sustained concentration? What restores me? What leaves me depleted? How much can I realistically commit to while maintaining the quality of my thinking, conversations, decisions and actions?

It also involves leaving room for life to happen. A plan that requires every task to go perfectly, every meeting to finish on time and no unexpected problem to arise is a fragile plan.

We are constantly making demands on one another’s lives.

‍

Every day, people ask others for time. Join this meeting. Read this document. Review this proposal. Answer this message. Prepare . Could you just take a quick look?

Every request may seem reasonable in isolation. The person receiving it experiences the combined demands.

A one-hour meeting with ten participants uses ten person-hours before preparation, travel or follow-up. A lengthy document sent to fifty colleagues creates a collective reading commitment. An unclear request can generate several rounds of clarification. A delayed decision can leave an entire team waiting, chasing or reworking their plans.

How often do we consider the full human cost before making a request?

Before inviting others to a meeting, could we explain its purpose, the outcome needed and why each person’s contribution matters? Before sending a document, could we make clear what needs attention, what response is required and when? Before asking for something urgently, could we check what it would displace?

Equally, can the recipient say: “I can do this, but it means moving something else. Which matters most?”

That conversation makes the choice visible. Without it, people can find themselves carrying several supposedly essential priorities, with nobody taking responsibility for the fact that they cannot all be delivered within the available time.

Personal organisation can only achieve so much within a poorly organised system.

People can become better at planning, estimating effort, setting boundaries and noticing where their attention goes. Organisations also need to examine the conditions in which those skills are used.

What happens when priorities change repeatedly, responsibility is unclear, approval processes are slow or different leaders make competing demands? What happens when someone’s careful planning is routinely overturned by another person’s lack of preparation?

The effects travel upstream, downstream and across teams. An incomplete handover can create hours of work elsewhere. An unrealistic promise to a customer can become another department’s emergency. One team’s apparent efficiency may depend on transferring effort and pressure to another.

A useful question for every team is: “Where do our ways of working help others use their time and energy well, and where do they make life harder?”

The answers could reveal opportunities that individual time-management training would never reach.

Some of the greatest improvements begin by questioning the work itself.

‍

Before asking how to complete a task more quickly, we can ask why it needs to be done.

Who benefits from it? Is the benefit still relevant? What quality is actually needed? Does anybody use the output? Is there a simpler way? Are we following a habit, routine or process whose original purpose has disappeared?

Perhaps a report can be shortened. Perhaps an approval can be removed. Perhaps a recurring meeting has served its purpose. Perhaps a task deserves more time because getting it right would prevent repeated mistakes.

Good judgement includes knowing where greater care is worthwhile and where further polishing adds little. It also includes protecting time for learning and improvement, so that today’s workload does not permanently crowd out the opportunity to make tomorrow’s work better.

AI Partners could help us make these choices more consciously.

‍

Imagine an AI Partner that, with our permission, helped us bring together our commitments, priorities and realistic estimates of the effort involved. It could help us notice that the day we have planned contains more work than the time available, or that we have placed our most demanding task after several draining conversations.

We could tell it how we feel and ask it to help us reconsider the day. Which commitments are essential? Which can move? What needs a conversation with someone else? Where should we protect time for focused thinking, preparation or recovery?

It could also help us become more considerate users of other people’s time: clarifying a request before we send it, preparing a concise briefing, identifying who really needs to contribute and suggesting whether a meeting is necessary.

At team and group level, appropriately connected AI Partners could help make shared capacity and dependencies clearer. They could highlight overlapping requests, conflicting deadlines, repeated meetings and points where too much work depends on one person. With agreed permissions, they could help coordinate schedules and prepare options for redistributing or renegotiating work.

These are possibilities to design thoughtfully. An AI Partner would need reliable information and human correction; a diary alone cannot tell it how someone feels or what they can manage. Individuals should control what personal information they share. A team may need to know that someone is unavailable, without knowing the private reason.

We should also ask what happens to any time saved. Will it create space for better thinking, learning, relationships and recovery? Or will every saving immediately be filled with more demands? AI-generated documents and messages still require someone’s attention. Producing more of them is only useful when they serve a worthwhile purpose.

Leaders help determine what becomes normal.

‍

What do leaders demonstrate when they constantly overrun meetings, send unclear urgent requests or praise people mainly for being available at all hours? What do they make possible when they set clear priorities, prepare properly, respect agreed boundaries and openly reconsider unrealistic workloads?

Supporting people to be the best possible includes creating conditions in which good judgement is welcomed. Sometimes that means doing more. Sometimes it means doing something differently, agreeing a different deadline or stopping work that no longer deserves the resources it consumes.

At Maximy, we encourage a whole-of-life view of success, wellbeing and positive impact. Time and energy sit at the heart of that view. How we use them shapes our contribution at work, the quality of our relationships and our experience of being alive.

So, how many people in your organisation are very good at managing their time and energy? How would you know? And how much easier could your organisation make it for them?

Perhaps the conversation should begin with a question we can each answer:

Am I helping the people around me spend their precious time and energy well?

‍

Thanks for reading.

Best,

Rob

‍

Developed by Rob Frost from his thinking and ideas, with drafting and refinement support from his AI Partner.

‍

‍