Time Management: The Sisyphean Struggle

If you can remember back to that middle school mythology unit, you may recognize the name Sisyphus. He was punished by the gods to spend all day, every day rolling a boulder up a hill only to have it fall back down of its own weight. He could not stop. He could not rest. He could not win.

Kind of a downer, right? Poor guy. His whole life is spent doing much and accomplishing nothing. Sisyphus’ punishment is one we can identify with easily. Too easily for some. Outside of those who simply worship at the altar of busyness, almost everyone has, at some point, felt like the entire day was wasted only to spend the following day redoing or undoing what they spent their precious time on. It’s moments like these when we could just turn to Sisyphus with our own boulder and say with a sigh of shared pain, “The struggle is real.”

Yet, there is a tool that can defeat the gods of time-wasting. You can smite inefficiency with some simple time-management. You may not know how to explain time management, but you know it when you’re a victim of poor time-management. Think back to the last meeting that could have been an e-mail. It not only wastes money in a tangible way, it is a surefire morale murder. While some swear by planners, alerts on their phones, keeping routines, or the classic checklist, there is the possibility that you’re missing out on the best way to maximize everyone’s productivity and minimize wasted time and money.

Outsourcing activities, whether it’s lead generating, cold calling, copy writing, etc. to a trusted resource frees up time in your employees’ day to focus on the most important tasks.

By limiting the amount of things on the to-do list, more work can be executed exceptionally well.

To put it simply, you can go for quality instead of quantity. The myth of multitasking may not go back as far as Sisyphus, but it certainly has deep roots. Saving and managing time is the antithesis of doing many things at once. A little gets done, but not well. The following day, that boulder of incomplete work will be waiting for you at the bottom of the hill again.