Speaker 1: Have you ever tried to implement strategies for managing your
Speaker 1: time better? If you're listening to How I Work, I
Speaker 1: imagine that the answer is yes. But can you become
Speaker 1: happier in your job simply by being better at time management?
Speaker 1: And could that actually plead to you being happier in
Speaker 1: life in general. Well, that's exactly what we're going to
Speaker 1: look at in today's show. My name is doctor Amantha Imber.
Speaker 1: I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science
Speaker 1: consultancy Inventium, and this is How I Work, a show
Speaker 1: about how to help you do your best work. Almost
Speaker 1: three years ago now at Inventium, we designed a program
Speaker 1: called our Workday Reinvention Program, which was all about helping
Speaker 1: people work more productively and teaching them to engage in
Speaker 1: more deep work and prioritize deep work over shallow work,
Speaker 1: and work to the Krona type and a lot of
Speaker 1: the sorts of things that I talk about on the podcast.
Speaker 1: The program is still running and it's probably the most
Speaker 1: popular program that we do now at Inventium. The productivity
Speaker 1: increases that we can get over a five week period
Speaker 1: are huge. They're generally over twenty percent, but here's what
Speaker 1: I found interesting. I remember in our very first pilot
Speaker 1: program that we did with a big law firm, the
Speaker 1: thing that increased the most was not actually productivity, but
Speaker 1: job satisfaction. So what we found is that simply by
Speaker 1: changing the way people approach their job, as opposed to
Speaker 1: changing their job in any way, they actually became a
Speaker 1: whole lot happier with what they were doing. Our last week,
Speaker 1: one of the organizational psychologists on my team, Charlotte, sent
Speaker 1: me some research that's just been published that mirrored this finding.
Speaker 1: So in a meta analysis published in Plus, Brad Aon
Speaker 1: from Concordia University and colleagues were keen to explore the
Speaker 1: impact of good time management. They looked at one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty eight different research papers that had been published
Speaker 1: over the last four decades that had measured time management
Speaker 1: and looked at what it led to. So, just so
Speaker 1: we're clear about what time management is, it's assessed through
Speaker 1: asking questions like do you have a daily routine, do
Speaker 1: you find it hard to say no to people? And
Speaker 1: do you evaluate your daily schedule? Now, not surprisingly, they
Speaker 1: found that good time management had a positive impact on
Speaker 1: work performance, or be it a moderate one. But what
Speaker 1: really surprised the researchers was that the strongest link they
Speaker 1: found was between good time management and well being. So
Speaker 1: the effect of time management on life satisfaction was actually
Speaker 1: seventy two percent stronger than what it was on jobs.
Speaker 1: At a faction, time management also reduced feelings of distress.
Speaker 1: So overall, the research shows that time management does indeed work,
Speaker 1: But contrary to popular belief, it's our well being, how
Speaker 1: good we feel on a day to day basis, that
Speaker 1: has impacted the most as opposed to our work performance. Now,
Speaker 1: work and well being are obviously clearly linked. You know,
Speaker 1: we spend a third of our waking hours at work,
Speaker 1: so if you're having a crappy time at work, you're
Speaker 1: probably not going to be super happy in your life.
Speaker 1: But what's really interesting is that the results suggests that
Speaker 1: wellbeing is not simply a byproduct of a successfully managed
Speaker 1: work life, but can be a direct result of good
Speaker 1: time management. So for me, when I kept reading these
Speaker 1: results in our research at Inventium, through the Workday Reinvention
Speaker 1: program and then in this matter analysis, it really made
Speaker 1: me reframe how I think about time management and productivity.
Speaker 1: Tips ultimcgain is bigger than just work performance. What can
Speaker 1: actually be achieved is better life performance, and who doesn't
Speaker 1: want that? How I Work is produced by Inventing with
Speaker 1: production support from Dead Said Studios. And thank you to
Speaker 1: Martin Nimber who did the audio mix and makes everything
Speaker 1: sound awesome. And that is it for today and I
Speaker 1: will see you next time. Passssssssssssssssssss