Different Ways to Approach Time Management (Part 1 of 4)

Most of the readers from this blog have seen some different (and often conflicting) Time Management approaches and techniques, but in many cases, there are some questions like: How do I mix these different approaches? Is there a way to do this?

And yes, there is a way, but first we have to think about some higher aspects of these techniques (in a strategic way) and that involves some analysis about your thought patterns when trying to achieve a goal.

There are three main different ways of approaching your goal and I'll present the first one in this post: Convergent Way.


Convergent Way

In the Convergent Way of doing activities, you'll try to do many things at once (either in parallel or in a sequential mode) to archieve just one goal. The name says itself, you try to converge many activities into one goal.

There are some interesting aspects about using this time management style:

Pros:

• If you like to do some activities in parallel.
• Between one task and another, you could have some useful insights about the goal itself.
• If some of your tasks do have a natural delay to be completed, you can use this idle time to tackle another task.

Cons:

• You can get easily distracted.
• Too many tasks in parallel creates a considerable tax on your body and mind.
• There are situations where the important thing to do is just act and focus in doing one activity, instead of being "busy" doing lots of tasks.

Try to identify if the Convergent Way is your style, there are two other styles I'll write about in the next posts.