Time Management Is a Myth
The Radical Power of Time Appreciation for Entrepreneurs
If you’re still chasing the elusive dream of “time management,” it’s time for a wake-up call.
Time management is a myth.
No one controls time. Not you. Not me. Not even Marty McFly or Doctor Who. Time ticks on relentlessly, indifferent to your schedules, your to-do lists, or your frantic attempts to squeeze more hours out of the day.
So why do so many entrepreneurs waste their precious energy trying to manage the unmanageable?
Because they haven’t yet discovered the radical power of time appreciation — a mindset shift so profound it will transform how you work, live, and scale your business forever.
Introducing the #ADDAZERO Time Appreciation Framework
At My TrueNORTH, we don’t just teach “time management.” We empower entrepreneurs to master time appreciation through our award-winning #ADDAZERO methodology — a breakthrough system built on neuroscience, behavioural psychology, and real-world mentoring experience.
Here’s how it works:
A — Awareness: See Your Time with Brutal Honesty
Most entrepreneurs think they know how they spend their time. The truth? They don’t.
Start with a Time Appreciation Audit: track your calendar, apps, and energy levels for a week. Identify where your attention actually goes — distractions, low-value meetings, busywork — and confront the brutal truth. Awareness is the foundation of change.
D — Decision: Ruthless Prioritisation Based on Impact
Forget “urgent vs important.” We go deeper. Every task, meeting, and email must pass the Zero-Based Thinking test: If I had zero commitments, would I choose to do this?
Make decisions that align with your highest-impact goals and values, not just what screams loudest.
D — Discipline: Build Unshakeable Habits Aligned with Your True North
Discipline isn’t about willpower; it’s about designing your environment and routines to make your best behaviours inevitable.
Leverage neuroscience-backed techniques to embed habits that support your time appreciation mindset — from morning rituals to focused deep work blocks.
A — Alignment: Synchronise Business, Values, and Energy Rhythms
Your entrepreneurial success depends on aligning your business goals with your personal values and natural energy cycles.
Plan your highest-value work when your brain is sharpest. Honour your need for rest and reflection. This alignment fuels sustainable performance.
Z — Zero-Based Thinking: Question Everything
Every commitment, task, and meeting should be challenged from zero.
Ask: Does this move me closer to my true north? If not, eliminate or delegate it ruthlessly.
E — Empowerment: Multiply Your Impact Through Technology and Delegation
Use AI, automation, and your team strategically to multiply your time and impact.
Empower others to take ownership of tasks that don’t require your unique expertise.
R — Reflection: Continuous Feedback Loops for Exponential Growth
Regularly review what’s working and what’s not.
Use data, journaling, and mentoring feedback to adapt and improve your time appreciation practice.
O — Ownership: Take Full Responsibility for Your Time and Results
No excuses. No blaming the clock.
Own your choices, your energy, and your outcomes. This radical ownership is the ultimate freedom.
Breakthrough Stories: Entrepreneurs Who Transformed Their Time
Take Sarah, a tech startup founder I mentored. She was drowning in endless meetings and emails, feeling burnt out and stuck. After a brutal Time Appreciation Audit, she eliminated 60% of her calendar commitments using Zero-Based Thinking and aligned her work with her peak energy hours. Within 3 months, her productivity doubled, and her stress halved.
Or James, a creative agency owner, who used the #ADDAZERO framework to build deep work rituals and delegate effectively. He reclaimed 15 hours a week, which he reinvested in strategic growth and family time, proving that appreciating time is the ultimate business hack.
Debunking Productivity Myths That Keep You Stuck
-
Myth: Multitasking boosts productivity.
Truth: It fragments attention and wastes time. Deep, focused work is the only way forward. -
Myth: Busy means productive.
Truth: Busy is a distraction from being effective. Appreciate time by focusing on what moves the needle. -
Myth: Work-life balance is a fixed goal.
Truth: It’s a dynamic dance of alignment and adaptation, rooted in time appreciation.
Your Breakthrough Action Plan: Radical Time Appreciation Exercises
-
Time Appreciation Audit: Track your time and energy this week with our downloadable template.
-
Zero-Based Task Elimination: Challenge every task and meeting with our radical prioritisation worksheet.
-
Neuro-Habit Builder: Use our brain science-backed habit formation guide to embed new routines faster.
When it comes to time appreciation, it’s often the simple insights that are the most powerful. And, when it comes to managing a managing director’s time, perhaps the most important.
I therefore recommend we manage our time by looking at our activities through four key stages.
Goal clarity
The first phase is the importance of goal clarity; of being clear about your goals and priorities. This applies to you as a whole person; not just to your business world so consider your objectives in four key parts of your world:
• yourself
• your home and family
• your business and career; and
• your community and the wider world
I won’t cover this tip in any more detail now, as we shall be looking further into goal setting shortly.
There is a critical linkage between having this goal clarity and the “Important vs Urgent” time management matrix made popular by Stephen Covey in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and explained briefly here. It’s simply that you can’t analyse activities as to whether they are important or simply urgent unless you have some structure to define what is important!
Effectiveness = Doing the right things
Phase two is about planning and prioritising based upon those clear goals. In addition to reminding us all of the “Important vs Urgent” matrix, the need for a proactive approach. How annual and monthly or weekly plans help, and how ending each day by identifying 3-5 key items to prioritise the next is really helpful. So phase two is all about being effective by doing the right things.
Efficiency = Doing things right
Having focused on doing the right things, phase three is about doing things right.
• “Chunking”, the idea that setting aside blocks of time to do important activities is critical in our business lives.
• Email distraction. Don’t switch on your emails until you’ve completed the one most important thing you need to do today.
• Interruptions, and the recognition that, however much we might believe we are good at multitasking, there is significant evidence that productivity is higher when we focus on one key task at a time.
• Education: the need to educate those around us to avoid our productivity being damaged by them.
Sanity breaks
The final stage of time management thinking is to include in our schedule sanity breaks. Regular micro-breaks throughout the day, or macro breaks when we take time out to think strategically, regain our clarity of focus on what is important, and recover from the stresses of the day.
TIME MANAGEMENT FOR ENTREPRENEURS
However, the chances are that at some time in your life, you’ve taken a time management class, read about it in books, and tried to use an electronic or paper-based day planner to organise, prioritise and schedule your day. “Why, with this knowledge and these gadgets,” you may ask, “do I still feel like I can’t get everything done I need to?”
The answer is simple.
Everything you ever learned about managing time is a complete waste of time because it doesn’t work.
Before you can even begin to manage time, you must learn what time is. A dictionary defines time as “the point or period at which things occur.” Put simply, time is when stuff happens.
There are two types of time: clock time and real time. In clock time, there are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year. All time passes equally. When someone turns 50, they are exactly 50 years old, no more or no less.
In real time, all time is relative. Time flies or drags depending on what you’re doing. Two two-hour delay at the airport can feel like 12 years. And yet our 12-year-old children seem to have grown up in only two hours.
Spring-Cleaning for your Business
Which time describes the world in which you really live, real time or clock time?
The reason time management gadgets and systems don’t work is that these systems are designed to manage clock time. Clock time is irrelevant. You don’t live in or even have access to clock time. You live in real time, a world in which all time flies when you are having fun or drags when you are doing your taxes.
The good news is that real time is mental. It exists between your ears. You create it. Anything you create, you can manage. It’s time to remove any self-sabotage or self-limitation you have around “not having enough time,” or today not being “the right time” manage your current business better, or to invest in personal development to manage you better!
There are only three ways to spend time: thoughts, conversations and actions. Regardless of the type of business you own, your work will be composed of those three items.
As an entrepreneur, you may be frequently interrupted or pulled in different directions. While you cannot eliminate interruptions, you do get a say on how much time you will spend on them and how much time you will spend on the thoughts, conversations and actions that will lead you to success.
And that is the true beauty of being an Entrepreneur.
When it all goes well…..its all your fault!
Likewise
when it goes terrible,…..it’s your fault.
Isn’t it time you got a grip on time?
Top Time Management for Entrepreneur Tips for a FAR MORE Productive Day
Carry a schedule and record all your thoughts, conversations and activities for at least one full day, preferably a week. This will help you understand how much you can get done during the course of a day and where your precious moments are going. You’ll see how much time is actually spent producing results and how much time is wasted on unproductive thoughts, conversations and actions. I’ve got a simple yet powerful method of how to do this, just drop me an email if you’d like a copy?
Any activity or conversation that’s important to your success should have a time assigned to it. To-do lists get longer and longer to the point where they’re unworkable. Appointment books work. Schedule appointments with yourself and create time blocks for high-priority thoughts, conversations, and actions. Schedule when they will begin and end. Have the discipline to keep these appointments.
Plan to spend at least 50 percent of your time engaged in the thoughts, activities and conversations that produce most of your results.
- Schedule time for interruptions. Plan time to be pulled away from what you’re doing. Take, for instance, the concept of having “office hours.” Isn’t “office hours” another way of saying, “planned interruptions?” I certainly know I can get a day’s work done if I come in around 90 minutes before everyone else.
- Take the first 30 minutes of every day (or even better, the final 30 minutes of the previous day) to plan your day. Don’t start your day until you complete your time plan. The most important time of your day is the time you schedule to schedule time.
- Take five minutes before every call and task to decide what result you want to attain. This will help you know what success looks like before you start. And it will also slow time down. Take five minutes after each call and activity to determine whether your desired result was achieved. If not, what was missing? How do you put what’s missing in your next call or activity?
- Put up a “Do not disturb” sign when you absolutely have to get work done.
- Practice not answering the phone just because it’s ringing, and e-mails just because they show up. Disconnect instant messaging. Don’t instantly give people your attention unless it’s absolutely crucial in your business to offer an immediate human response. Instead, schedule a time to answer email and return phone calls.
- Block out other distractions like Facebook and other forms of social media unless you use these tools to generate business.
Remember that it’s impossible to get everything done. Also, remember that odds are that 20 per cent of your thoughts, conversations and activities produce 80 per cent of your results.
If you have enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy:
Why saying NO is good for business
How to make busy people say YES
What is stopping you from SCALING your business?
Furthermore, I was recently interviewed by SystemHub.com on the importance of Standard Operating Procedures! You can find my answers here:
https://www.systemhub.com/standard-operating-procedure/#jay-allen