With due respect that all authors and promoters who teach, sustain and believe that time is a resource and therefore can be managed deserve, and they express it in books, workshops, talks and articles; I have decided to express, in the first person, what I think about the subject and some of the conclusions that I have come to generate based on the investigations that I have carried out in relation to the subject.
The first thing to ask yourself is what is a resource? According to the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy, a resource is a “set of elements available to solve a need or carry out a business”. Among them are "natural, hydraulic, forest, economic and human resources."
Let's stop at one sentence: "set of available elements."
Again, what should we understand by “available”? The dictionary indicates that it is something “that can be freely disposed of or that is ready to be used or used”.
Very good. Here is my question: Can time be freely used? Is it there ready to be used or used spontaneously? The answer is simple: No. No one can have time per se, or use it freely. Therefore time is not a resource and as it is not a resource it cannot be managed.
Time is a consequence and not a cause. When we talk about time management, it is done under a linear, basic and limited concept that offers the illusion that it is possible to restrict it to precise periods. Nothing more alien to the truth. In reality, it is not talking about managing time but managing tasks, which is something else. You can list the activities you hope to do and imagine the time they will take, but that, although it includes the presence of time, does not alter it at all, nor increase or decrease it, in fact it is only present as a reminder of a personal or imposed goal, like nothing else.
Time could be managed if you could access it like fire or water, imagine something like buying "24 hours with a 6 hour bonus on sale". You would take those 30 hours you have purchased and spend or invest them as you see fit. But it's not like that. It could also be believed that it can be administered if everything you have planned (following the traditional line of thought) depended exclusively on you and no one else and, even so, Murphy's laws will always be present, as you must remember that there are biological agents, physical and subconscious that alter the intended order of things.
It is important to note that time is, in most cases, only a perception, even though in the world of quantum physics and metaphysics it has other connotations. This is another reason why time cannot be managed, since everyone perceives it differently. Do the exercise, ask a minimum of ten people how the day seemed to them, did it go fast or slow? Was the morning or afternoon fast…? or both? and it will have as many similar answers as opposed.
Due to the relativity of time and its unquestionable relationship with the perception of individuals, associated with their states of anxiety or calm, to name a few cases, time can walk in a turtle, as the Greeks once imagined that it happened with the Sun, or a shooting star, even if the period being measured is the same.
Now, the above does not mean that time cannot be incorporated into the administrative exercise, of course it can! But not as a resource but as a tool, teaching users the characteristics that define it and how to make use of it. them according to their state and condition, because, although it may not seem like it, time has properties and characteristics that differentiate and delimit it in various circumstances, it has been precisely the ignorance of such phenomena that has prevented the traditional idea of time from being overcome at this point. time management.
You cannot manage time but you can condition the perception of it and therefore alter the results that this produces in benefit of your goals. They just haven't taught you how to do it yet.
In my book "Inept Managers" you can read in one of its chapters everything related to this topic, the new approaches that time has and its relationship with administration and management and the achievement of personal and collective objectives.
