I’m a time-management heretic

Tasks take as long as they take, if they’re to be done correctly. The idea that a top-flight executive can spend 11 minutes researching a new market, then 14 minutes negotiating a breakthrough deal, then 17 minutes digesting a complex report, is crazy.

Time can’t be managed. It can’t be tamed, improved, cajoled, or negotiated with. It pays no attention to you. The day’s 24 hours slip through your fingers at a fixed rate of 60 seconds per minute. You can only give time away by doing more, or win it back by doing less.

Time management’s false promise is that it will help you do more than you can do.

So the more urgent goal is to stop doing things you shouldn’t be doing.