I tried to use a time management application to work less

Reading time: 8 min

A few months ago, I was on the phone with a friend and we exchanged our aging grievances on our work exhaustion as well as the advice of our respective therapists.His had recommended a time management application to him, to be taken as a kind of awakening against overwork and rest permission.

If, for example, at the end of your Thursday, you notice having already worked 38 hours this week, maybe you can let go of a little ballast on Friday and go earlier from the office.If, at 6 p.m., you think you can still respond to seven professional emails before disconnecting to consult your personal messages, maybe an application telling you that you have already accumulated 9 hours of work would remove your scruples to put backYour reception box see you tomorrow.For my friend, it had worked, so why not try me too?

It actually seemed to me a pretty good idea.I had already used time management tools, especially when I was freelance and I juggled between different times.Not to mention that I was desperate - notably during the pandemic.Each non-full moment came to arouse devouring anxiety and guilt, which makes it impossible to move away from the computer before 7 p.m. or ignore an email appearing on my phone at 9 p.m..In particularly difficult moments, I got into the habit of responding to e-mails to the toilet, a place where my partner, endowed with a much better sense of limits between professional and private life than me cannotsee.

To read also these people who prefer to resign than to give up telework

So I downloaded and started using an application called ATRACKER, a sort of virtual spot.It can then generate daily, weekly and monthly relationships.Every morning, I open the application, I start the chronometer and I try to get the most out of my time, now carefully counted.

And it didn't go so well.It turned out that Autcker generated many dilemmas.What happens, for example, when someone rings at the door with a package, and I have to go down and go up three floors (and then, obviously, open this package))?How should these minutes be counted?What happens when I take two and a half minutes to stare at the microwave before taking my meal, carrying it to my desk and watching, once again, fixed my computer?How to count the seven minutes spent praising on the Gmail application before leaving my bed in the morning?

A march of shame

Seeing my time so clearly spread out in front of me, every minute categorized and recognized, intensified the pressure already felt to exploit each hour of watch with insight, and each hour of work with productivity."I spent an hour and seven minutes to work.What did I do during this time? ”I asked myself.The application also became a source of challenges: what if I went from eight to ten on Monday?I would certainly feel more relaxed on Friday...Until Friday arrives with his own crises requiring immediate attention.What if I worked forty-five hours this week, just to do a little more?Just to have something to show, in an emergency, to prove that I am a zealous and deserving employee?

Above when I started using the Application Application, I paid attention to an advertisement that I had to hear dozens of times in The Daily.It was an argument for clickup productivity software that, worrying information if there is one, we would spend 40% of our time at work to do "non -professional tasks".Statistics come from a 2016 infographic produced (ironically)) by a competing productivity software company, SCORO, and the advertisement has all the air of shame.After all, what is a non-professional task?Take your post in the existential obsession with the pandemic and climatic disasters that are constantly intensifying?What part of our time outside of work do we devote to professional tasks?Why don't we feel guilty of this?

ATRACKER and CLICKUP both part of a vast ecosystem of productivity technology, fueled by the conviction that we can optimize life.This ecosystem thrives thanks to the value that we have attached to productivity, itself linked to self-esteem.It promises to make us less exhausted and more effective - a promise so attractive that real results may seem secondary.

Before going further, I must confess that I am a white woman, valid, with a comfortable job, where I sit behind a desk most of the time.I have paid leave, sick leave and health mutual.I like my job, I find a meaning and I have a boss who supports me and understands me.I have no children or other dependents.My decision to manage my working time aims to prove myself something to myself than to someone else, which is not the case with many workers.

Read also what if you hate your job?

Anyway, the "knowledge workers" are frustrated, exhausted and work at an unbearable pace.We also resign, from the pandemic, at an unprecedented pace.We are stuck between two stories nourishing each of our frustration - the first composed of books, articles and messages on social networks advocating self -care, and the second full of books, articles and messages onsocial networks saying that, if we feel so bad, it is because of economic and political systems built on purpose and on which we ultimately have little control.Both are not used for much.We continue to respond to emails on Saturdays and to cock.

Also, when I heard Laura Vanderkam assert in her Ted conference that "time is a choice", what to say "I don't have time" actually means "it is not a priority", I havefrowns.Who chooses these priorities?What if they were too numerous for it to be impossible to choose less?

Vanderkam wrote several books on time management and productivity and, in so doing, analyzed "thousands of time jobs" of very busy people.She has also religiously recorded hers, by thirty -minute slices, on a spreadsheet in the past six years.

Make active decisions

A large part of Vanderkam's work starts from the principle that a week has 168 hours, which means that, on the basis of eight hours of work, five days a week and eight hours of sleep per night, we have "72 hoursawake, not worked ".If you are wondering where these hours are going, this is what time management tools are used.

Vanderkam recommends noting your time by thirty -minute slices for a week.You don't need to be very precise, she says, just describe what you do.At the end of the week, you can examine the main categories that emerge and think about what can or must be changed."We tell ourselves stories about time," she said.It is worth knowing if they are true.»»»»

Vanderkam fait valoir que «même les personnes les plus occupées ont une certaine marge de manœuvre sur leurs journées»»»» et qu'une meilleure information permet de prendre de meilleures décisions. Par exemple, que faites-vous des temps morts entre les activités? Travaillez-vous réellement autant que vous le pensez? Quelle part de votre temps libre passez-vous à «tourner en rond»»»» –c'est-à-dire à essayer de trouver ce que vous allez faire ensuite– plutôt qu'à vous adonner à des «loisirs utiles»»»», qui vous permettent de vous ressourcer? Si vous aimez glandouiller, faites-le, mais vraiment! L'essentiel est de prendre une décision active, selon Vanderkam.(Here, it should be remembered that social class, race, gender and physical capacities often determine what decisions are really on the table.))

Also read these employees live 24 hours a day and 7 days a week with their bosses

When I told Vanderkam of my discomfort with regard to time management-Liée to the fact that measuring time often amounts to measuring productivity, and that productivity too often becomes a variable of the esteem ofSoi -, she did not go there by four paths."Time is made to take advantage of it and it is you who will have to make decisions to get there.»»»»

Elle m'a également rappelé que, même si j'avais très envie que mon application de gestion du temps soit l'ennemie parce que a)) elle ne résolvait pas tous mes problèmes et b)) elle me faisait me sentir mal dans ma peau, elle n'était finalement qu'un outil."You don't have a hammer just for the pleasure of having a hammer, you have a hammer to do something.»»»After talking to Vanderkam, I started to understand my relationship with ATRACKER differently.What was this hammer for me?What if the few minutes were only a source of information, not a value judgment?It was a premise that I was not quite ready to accept, but I was at least ready to think about it.

Professional discomfort

In doing so, I had the impression that I still lacked a more systemic, overhanging vision, things that I lived.This is where Lonnie Golden intervened.Golden is a professor at Penn State and work economist specializing in schedules, professional flexibility and workers' well-being.One of my big questions for Golden was to know if we really work more today than in the past.According to him, the answer is complex, in part because it has become more difficult to measure working time.

You could say, according to Golden, that white passes and employees work longer per week, but this is not always confirmed by agendas, because if people perform professional tasks during what was in the past personal time, theyAlso perform personal tasks during what was formerly exclusively working time.As when you have a plane ticket for your vacation, you plan a personal appointment from work or when you scrolle on Instagram... «Il y avait autrefois des frontières perméables, et maintenant, il n'y a plus de frontières»»»», résume-t-il.

Golden and other researchers are considering a number of public policy interventions to respond to this erasure of borders and, hopefully, improve work. L'une d'entre elles consiste en une «estimation de bonne foi»»»», postulant que lorsque vous acceptez un emploi, vous devriez être informé du nombre d'heures travaillées que l'on attend de vous.What makes it possible to set expectations and make decisions knowingly, says Golden. En plus de l'«estimation de bonne foi»»»», il y a le «droit à la demande»»»» et le «droit au refus»»»» –un employé devrait pouvoir demander, par exemple, d'être à temps partiel pendant un certain temps ou de refuser de travailler le week-end, sans être pénalisé.

Golden admits that these solutions are far from radical.However, given the professional discomfort ravaging the United States today, when I hear it describe these concepts, they seem not badly radical to me.Or, at least, very European (surprise surprise, what they are)).This is partly because, yes, to a certain extent, the Americans are obsessed with work and success, specifies Golden.But most of the problem is that our systems reward this obsession. «Les incitations sont là, nous devons donc créer des incitations compensatoires»»»», ajoute-t-il.

To read also do what you like does not make work easier (on the contrary))

My time management application is a personal intervention, not systemic.At the beginning, I had the impression that it encouraged me to work more, to push my professional trends already obsessive to their extreme limits.But by continuing to use it, I started to see it as an enemy and more as an instrument of measurement - which it is supposed to be, it seems to me.Sometimes I find permission to take a break.Other times, no.Because time turns.