Time Management Training: Why Most Courses Miss the Point Entirely

The bloke sitting next to me on the Jetstar flight to Brisbane was frantically scribbling in what looked like his fifteenth planner this year, muttering about "time-blocking" and "the Pomodoro Technique."

I wanted to lean over and tell him what I've learned after fifteen years of watching Australian businesses throw money at time management training: You can't manage time. You can only manage yourself.

But he probably wouldn't have listened. Most people don't want to hear that their productivity problems aren't about finding the perfect app or learning a new system. They're about facing some uncomfortable truths about how they actually work.

Here's my first controversial opinion: Traditional time management training is mostly rubbish. Not because the techniques don't work, but because they're teaching solutions to the wrong problems. I've sat through countless workshops where trainers spend three hours explaining how to use digital calendars to people who can't even decide what's actually important in their day.

It's like teaching someone to drive a Ferrari when they haven't figured out which direction they want to go.

The real issue isn't time management—it's priority management. And priority management isn't a skill you can learn in a workshop. It's a muscle you build through consistently making hard choices about what matters and what doesn't.

I remember working with a mid-level manager in Perth who insisted she needed better time management training because she was "always behind." Turns out she was spending 40% of her day in meetings that had nothing to do with her actual job responsibilities. The problem wasn't her calendar system. The problem was she couldn't say no.

Which brings me to my second controversial opinion: Most people don't want to be more productive. They want to feel busy and important. There's a difference, and it's costing Australian businesses millions.

Real time management starts with brutal honesty about what you're actually doing with your day. Not what you think you're doing, or what you plan to do, but what you actually do. Most people have no idea. They think they're working on important projects when they're actually checking emails, attending pointless meetings, and pretending to multitask.

I've seen managers who swear they're "strategically planning" when they're really just procrastinating on difficult decisions. I've watched teams spend more time planning their work than actually doing it. The activity becomes the achievement.

The most effective time management training I've ever delivered didn't involve a single productivity app or system. Instead, I made participants track everything they did for a week. Everything. Including the time spent looking for files, the interruptions, the "quick chats" that turned into hour-long conversations.

The results were eye-opening. And embarrassing. Which is exactly the point.

One participant discovered she was spending 90 minutes a day looking for documents that weren't properly filed. Another realised he was having the same conversation with different people six times a week because nobody was taking notes or following up. A third found that her "urgent" tasks were actually just poorly planned regular activities.

These aren't time management problems. They're systems problems, communication problems, and planning problems.

The best time management training I've seen focuses on three things that most courses completely ignore:

Energy management over time management. Your brain doesn't work at the same level all day. Figure out when you're sharpest and protect that time like it's gold. Don't waste your peak hours on admin tasks just because they're "urgent."

Decision fatigue is real. The more decisions you make throughout the day, the worse your decisions become. Smart people automate or eliminate as many small decisions as possible. Steve Jobs wore the same outfit every day for a reason—and it wasn't fashion.

Boundaries aren't rude—they're professional. The people who seem to have endless time aren't managing their calendars better. They're managing their availability better. They've learned to say no to good opportunities so they can say yes to great ones.

I used to think I could help people by teaching them better systems. Give them the right tools, the right processes, and they'd naturally become more productive. I was wrong.

The breakthrough came when I started focusing on workplace behaviour change instead of time management techniques. People don't need another app. They need to understand why they make the choices they make, and how to make better ones.

This is where most corporate training programs completely miss the mark. They're teaching tactics without addressing the underlying behaviours that create time management problems in the first place.

For example, why do people check email constantly throughout the day? It's not because they don't know how to use filters or folders. It's because they're addicted to the dopamine hit of new information, or they're worried about missing something important, or they're avoiding more difficult tasks.

No amount of email management training will fix that. You need to address the psychology, not just the process.

The same goes for meetings. People don't attend pointless meetings because they don't understand meeting etiquette. They attend because they're afraid of missing out, or they don't want to seem uncooperative, or they genuinely can't tell the difference between a meeting that needs them and a meeting that just invited them.

Real time management training should feel uncomfortable. It should challenge people to examine their habits, their assumptions, and their fears about what will happen if they stop being available to everyone all the time.

I've noticed that the most productive people I work with have one thing in common: they're comfortable disappointing people in the short term to deliver better results in the long term. They'll skip the optional meeting to finish the important project. They'll let the non-urgent email wait until tomorrow. They'll delegate tasks that someone else could do better or faster.

This isn't about being antisocial or uncaring. It's about being strategic with the most finite resource any of us have.

The best time management advice I can give anyone is this: Stop trying to do everything well, and start doing the right things excellently. Most people's time management problems would disappear overnight if they just stopped doing 30% of what they currently do.

But that requires the courage to disappoint people. And most time management courses will never teach you that.

Of course, there are practical techniques that help. I'm a big fan of time-blocking for deep work, and I think everyone should learn to batch similar tasks together. But these are tools, not solutions. Tools only work when you're clear about what you're trying to achieve.

The companies that get the best results from time management training are the ones that treat it as part of a broader conversation about workplace culture, not a standalone skills course. They recognise that individual productivity is often limited by organisational dysfunction.

If your company culture rewards being busy over being effective, no amount of training will help. If your managers interrupt people constantly and then wonder why nothing gets finished, you've got bigger problems than time management.

I've worked with teams where the biggest productivity improvement came from establishing "no meeting Fridays" or creating "focus time" blocks where interruptions weren't allowed. Simple changes, but they required leadership commitment, not just individual training.

The future of time management training isn't about teaching people new systems. It's about helping them understand their own patterns, make conscious choices about their priorities, and create environments where focused work is possible.

It's about recognising that in a world of infinite distractions, the ability to focus deeply on what matters most isn't just a productivity skill—it's a competitive advantage.

And it's definitely not something you can learn from a guy frantically scribbling in his planner on a budget airline.