“Turn that music down! I can’t focus!” “Well then put some ear plugs in because I can’t focus without it!” Does background music help you focus? That question has been the root of many family, roommate, and coworker quarrels. This week, I had an interesting realization about how music affects my thinking, and I’m curious if you’ve had the same experience.

My Neighbors

Over the weekend, my neighbors threw a loud, late, outdoor party. (One that sounded like a college frat house, but these guys are in their 40s. Life choices people, life choices. But I digress….) Anyway, in order to sleep, my husband suggested that we turn on some music. I never sleep with music, but I was desperate to drown out the noise, so I agreed.

He turned on some classical music and was asleep within minutes, but I was wide awake. Now, it wasn’t the party keeping me up, it was the music! It was so distracting! I found myself listening to the melodies, becoming startled at a sudden volume change, and becoming more awake instead of more tired.

Background Music and Time Management

I thought a lot about how this applies to time management. When I do workshops for college students and their parents, I’m usually asked to weigh in on the whole “should they or shouldn’t they listen to music when the study” debate. My experience this weekend just reinforces how I always answer that questions:

…it depends.

It depends on whether or not the music is distracting to you. Some people enjoy music as a focus tool. Others don’t. It depends on the person. So remember, there is no right or wrong answer to this question and we all need to be open to other people’s working style.

Connect with The Time Diet for more time management tips

Have you felt burned out recently? It happens to the best of us. We often think it’s a time management problem, but a blog I read recently made me think differently and gave me some good ideas on how to address this persistent problem.

One of my college friends is a science writer and she recently published a blog about burnout called “Battling the Burnout Monster” that really got me thinking. Does burnout happen because we are doing too much? Or because we’re doing too much of a stressful thing? Or because we need a change? Perhaps it’s a combination of all of the above.

Either way, we too often address burnout as though it’s a time management problem, and I don’t believe that’s entirely accurate. Burnout may be the result of a time management problem, but burnout itself ends up being more of a motivation management problem. I know when I’m feeling burned out it’s not because I’m suffering from a lack of time management strategies, it’s because I’ve lost the motivation to figure out how to apply them.

If I try to address the time problem before the motivation problem, I find my burnout only gets worse. A new calendar, to-do list, or email process won’t magically solve your burnout woes before you take a step back and reassess your big picture goals and priorities. Katie’s blog offered numerous good ways to do that including: unplugging, organizing, exercising, and journaling.

What do you do to take a step back? How do you address burnout?

Connect with The Time Diet for more time management tips

Everyone seems to be talking about mindfulness lately. “Be in the moment,” “live in the now,” I’ve seen these phrases grace the covers of so many magazines and self help books that I’ve started to feel a bit inadequate that I’m so BAD at being “present.” If you, like me, are constantly thinking three steps ahead, I figured out how we can be crazy planners and “mindful” at the same time.

Being too “present”

I realized good time management is a balance of being intensely focused in the moment and thinking ahead and predicting the future. If you’re always living in the present, waiting until tomorrow’s problems become today’s problems to solve them, you’ll end up procrastinating. You risk being late, missing deadlines, and being derailed by stressful periods of the year you haven’t planned for.

Too much planning

If you’re too much of a planner, you can’t focus on what you’re doing because you’re constantly thinking “what am I doing next?” You’ll end up with a beautiful calendar and to-list, but a heap of half-completed tasks because you never see things through to completion without getting distracted. This is especially detrimental when it’s time to relax and you simply can’t because you’re thinking of all the work you have to get done tomorrow.

The right balance

No, to have good time management you need to have a balance of living in the present and living in the future. You plan your tomorrow carefully so you can enjoy today when it gets here. Don’t worry planners of the world. We can still be “mindful…” we’ll just have it scheduled a week in advance.

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