Does time management work? A meta-analysis

Brad Aeon, Conceptualization , Data curation , Formal analysis , Methodology , Software , Validation , Writing – original draft , Writing – review & editing , 1, * Aïda Faber, Methodology , Validation , 2 and Alexandra Panaccio, Validation , Writing – review & editing 1

Brad Aeon

1 Concordia University, Sir George Williams Campus, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Aïda Faber

2 FSA Ulaval, Laval University, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada

Alexandra Panaccio

1 Concordia University, Sir George Williams Campus, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Abstract

Does time management work? We conducted a meta-analysis to assess the impact of time management on performance and well-being. Results show that time management is moderately related to job performance, academic achievement, and wellbeing. Time management also shows a moderate, negative relationship with distress. Interestingly, individual differences and contextual factors have a much weaker association with time management, with the notable exception of conscientiousness. The extremely weak correlation with gender was unexpected: women seem to manage time better than men, but the difference is very slight. Further, we found that the link between time management and job performance seems to increase over the years: time management is more likely to get people a positive performance review at work today than in the early 1990s. The link between time management and gender, too, seems to intensify: women’s time management scores have been on the rise for the past few decades. We also note that time management seems to enhance wellbeing—in particular, life satisfaction—to a greater extent than it does performance. This challenges the common perception that time management first and foremost enhances work performance, and that wellbeing is simply a byproduct.

Introduction

Stand-up comedian George Carlin once quipped that in the future a “time machine will be built, but no one will have time to use it” [1]. Portentously, booksellers now carry one-minute bedtime stories for time-starved parents [2] and people increasingly speed-watch videos and speed-listen to audio books [3–5]. These behaviors are symptomatic of an increasingly harried society suffering from chronic time poverty [6]. Work is intensifying—in 1965 about 50% of workers took breaks; in 2003, less than 2% [7]. Leisure, too, is intensifying: people strive to consume music, social media, vacations, and other leisure activities ever more efficiently [8–11].

In this frantic context, time management is often touted as a panacea for time pressure. Media outlets routinely extol the virtues of time management. Employers, educators, parents, and politicians exhort employees, students, children, and citizens to embrace more efficient ways to use time [12–16]. In light of this, it is not surprising that from 1960 to 2008 the frequency of books mentioning time management shot up by more than 2,700% [17].

Time management is defined as “a form of decision making used by individuals to structure, protect, and adapt their time to changing conditions” [18]. This means time management, as it is generally portrayed in the literature, comprises three components: structuring, protecting, and adapting time. Well-established time management measures reflect these concepts. Structuring time, for instance, is captured in such items as “Do you have a daily routine which you follow?” and “Do your main activities during the day fit together in a structured way?” [19]. Protecting time is reflected in items such as “Do you often find yourself doing things which interfere with your schoolwork simply because you hate to say ‘No’ to people?” [20]. And adapting time to changing conditions is seen in such items as “Uses waiting time” and “Evaluates daily schedule” [21].

Research has, furthermore, addressed several important aspects of time management, such as its relationship with work-life balance [22], whether gender differences in time management ability develop in early childhood [23], and whether organizations that encourage employees to manage their time experience less stress and turnover [24]. Despite the phenomenal popularity of this topic, however, academic research has yet to address some fundamental questions [25–27].

A critical gap in time management research is the question of whether time management works [28, 29]. For instance, studies on the relationship between time management and job performance reveal mixed findings [30, 31]. Furthermore, scholars’ attempts to synthesize the literature have so far been qualitative, precluding a quantitative overall assessment [18, 32, 33]. To tackle this gap in our understanding of time management, we conducted a meta-analysis. In addressing the question of whether time management works, we first clarify the criteria for effectiveness. In line with previous reviews, we find that virtually all studies focus on two broad outcomes: performance and wellbeing [32].

Overall, results suggest that time management enhances job performance, academic achievement, and wellbeing. Interestingly, individual differences (e.g., gender, age) and contextual factors (e.g., job autonomy, workload) were much less related to time management ability, with the notable exception of personality and, in particular, conscientiousness. Furthermore, the link between time management and job performance seems to grow stronger over the years, perhaps reflecting the growing need to manage time in increasingly autonomous and flexible jobs [34–37].

Overall, our findings provide academics, policymakers, and the general audience with better information to assess the value of time management. This information is all the more useful amid the growing doubts about the effectiveness of time management [38]. We elaborate on the contributions and implications of our findings in the discussion section.

What does it mean to say that time management works?

In the din of current debates over productivity, reduced workweeks, and flexible hours, time management comes to the fore as a major talking point. Given its popularity, it would seem rather pointless to question its effectiveness. Indeed, time management’s effectiveness is often taken for granted, presumably because time management offers a seemingly logical solution to a lifestyle that increasingly requires coordination and prioritization skills [39, 40].

Yet, popular media outlets increasingly voice concern and frustration over time management, reflecting at least part of the population’s growing disenchantment [38]. This questioning of time management practices is becoming more common among academics as well [41]. As some have noted, the issue is not just whether time management works. Rather, the question is whether the techniques championed by time management gurus can be actually counterproductive or even harmful [26, 42]. Other scholars have raised concerns that time management may foster an individualistic, quantitative, profit-oriented view of time that perpetuates social inequalities [43, 44]. For instance, time management manuals beguile readers with promises of boundless productivity that may not be accessible to women, whose disproportionate share in care work, such as tending to young children, may not fit with typically male-oriented time management advice [45]. Similarly, bestselling time management books at times offer advice that reinforce global inequities. Some manuals, for instance, recommend delegating trivial tasks to private virtual assistants, who often work out of developing countries for measly wages [46]. Furthermore, time management manuals often ascribe a financial value to time—the most famous time management adage is that time is money. But recent studies show that thinking of time as money leads to a slew of negative outcomes, including time pressure, stress, impatience, inability to enjoy the moment, unwillingness to help others, and less concern with the environment [47–51]. What’s more, the pressure induced by thinking of time as money may ultimately undermine psychological and physical health [52].

Concerns over ethics and safety notwithstanding, a more prosaic question researchers have grappled with is whether time management works. Countless general-audience books and training programs have claimed that time management improves people’s lives in many ways, such as boosting performance at work [53–55]. Initial academic forays into addressing this question challenged those claims: time management didn’t seem to improve job performance [29, 30]. Studies used a variety of research approaches, running the gamut from lab experiments, field experiments, longitudinal studies, and cross-sectional surveys to experience sampling [28, 56–58]. Such studies occasionally did find an association between time management and performance, but only in highly motivated workers [59]; instances establishing a more straightforward link with performance were comparatively rare [31]. Summarizing these insights, reviews of the literature concluded that the link between time management and job performance is unclear; the link with wellbeing, however, seemed more compelling although not conclusive [18, 32].

It is interesting to note that scholars often assess the effectiveness time management by its ability to influence some aspect of performance, wellbeing, or both. In other words, the question of whether time management works comes down to asking whether time management influences performance and wellbeing. The link between time management and performance at work can be traced historically to scientific management [60]. Nevertheless, even though modern time management can be traced to scientific management in male-dominated work settings, a feminist reading of time management history reveals that our modern idea of time management also descends from female time management thinkers of the same era, such as Lillian Gilbreth, who wrote treatises on efficient household management [43, 61, 62]. As the link between work output and time efficiency became clearer, industrialists went to great lengths to encourage workers to use their time more rationally [63–65]. Over time, people have internalized a duty to be productive and now see time management as a personal responsibility at work [43, 66, 67]. The link between time management and academic performance can be traced to schools’ historical emphasis on punctuality and timeliness. In more recent decades, however, homework expectations have soared [68] and parents, especially well-educated ones, have been spending more time preparing children for increasingly competitive college admissions [69, 70]. In this context, time management is seen as a necessary skill for students to thrive in an increasingly cut-throat academic world. Finally, the link between time management and wellbeing harks back to ancient scholars, who emphasized that organizing one’s time was necessary to a life well-lived [71, 72]. More recently, empirical studies in the 1980s examined the effect of time management on depressive symptoms that often plague unemployed people [19, 73]. Subsequent studies surmised that the effective use of time might prevent a host of ills, such as work-life conflict and job stress [22, 74].

Overall, then, various studies have looked into the effectiveness of time management. Yet, individual studies remain narrow in scope and reviews of the literature offer only a qualitative—and often inconclusive—assessment. To provide a more quantifiable answer to the question of whether time management works, we performed a meta-analysis, the methods of which we outline in what follows.

Method

Literature search and inclusion criteria

We performed a comprehensive search using the keywords “time management” across the EBSCO databases Academic Search Complete, Business Source Complete, Computers & Applied Sciences Complete, Gender Studies Database, MEDLINE, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, PsycINFO, SocINDEX, and Education Source. The search had no restrictions regarding country and year of publication and included peer-reviewed articles up to 2019. To enhance comprehensiveness, we also ran a forward search on the three main time management measures: the Time Management Behavior Scale [21], the Time Structure Questionnaire [19], and the Time Management Questionnaire [20]. (A forward search tracks all the papers that have cited a particular work. In our case the forward search located all the papers citing the three time management scales available on Web of Science.)

Time management measures typically capture three aspects of time management: structuring, protecting, and adapting time to changing conditions. Structuring refers to how people map their activities to time using a schedule, a planner, or other devices that represent time in a systematic way [75–77]. Protecting refers to how people set boundaries around their time to repel intruders [78, 79]. Examples include people saying no to time-consuming requests from colleagues or friends as well as turning off one’s work phone during family dinners. Finally, adapting one’s time to changing conditions means, simply put, to be responsive and flexible with one’s time structure [80, 81]. Furthermore, time management measures typically probe behaviors related to these three dimensions (e.g., using a schedule to structure one’s day, making use of downtime), although they sometimes also capture people’s attitudes (e.g., whether people feel in control of their time).

As shown in Fig 1 , the initial search yielded 10,933 hits, excluding duplicates.