16.06.2023

SUCCESS TECHNIQUES: BY HOURS OR BY TASKS? HOW IS IT BETTER TO STRUCTURE YOUR DAY

The first mechanical clocks in the world were those of the clock towers, created in Europe during the Renaissance, somewhere between 1270-1300, and in Bulgaria during the Renaissance around 1700. They had neither a dial nor hands, and the time was announced by the ringing of a bell. You can still hear them in many parts of the world and our country. People at that time had some idea of the time of day, but only in general terms. Bells were mainly used to announce collective events - church services, funerals, town meetings, etc.

In the late 1700s, a new device similar to the one we use today was created to measure time. It determined the time to the hour, minute and second. As a result, people began to behave and organize differently than before. The Industrial Revolution is the best example of how people began to organize their time using clocks while working in shifts on assembly lines. Their arrival and departure marks the working day. Public transport is developed where the clock determines when the train arrives at the station and when it leaves. Overall, the goal was to increase efficiency, and the watch turned out to be a great tool to achieve that. However, dividing the day into hours and minutes also implies that every minute must be accounted for, and this can be very limiting.

A world ruled by clocks

Let's go back in time to 2023. Watches are everywhere - from mobile devices that are always with us to sophisticated sports gadgets that show not only the time, but also the heart rate and the number of calories burned. At the same time, we live in a society that values not only time off from work, but also the very idea of the need for periodic rest for recharging and greater productivity. However, many of us also plan our free time with the help of watches.

It's kind of an oxymoron. Because the most important thing in the rest breaks at work and in the breaks from work itself is not to be efficient or responsible for every second. When someone needs a recharge, they want to stop, think, give themselves to the moment. But by continuing to divide the day into hours and minutes, we only turn our "free time" into another task that needs to be done efficiently and "on time." In a culture obsessed with timeliness, there is no room left for other ways to control our time.

Impact or effectiveness

In the study done by Psychology today, participants were asked to plan their day either by hours and minutes, or by the tasks they had to complete that day. It was then measured how using these two different ways of structuring time affected their sense of well-being and control over their actions.

The results obtained are quite unexpected. The prevailing assumption is that people who are punctual and structure their day based on units of time are more in control of their own actions and are more focused than those who divide their day based on tasks, because at first glance it is not clear when their day starts and ends for them. However, the study produced the opposite results.

Those who planned their day based on hourly units reported less control over their own actions and attributed most of their results to luck or coincidence (eg, "I did well on the exam because I was lucky, it was easy") . Those who planned based on the performance of tasks reported a stronger sense of control and mostly attributed the results to themselves (eg, "I did well on the exam because I studied hard on the outline and knew the answers to most of them ").

Researchers go further and examine how the type of day definition that affects a sense of control also affects those actions of a person that can benefit the environment or society - for example, by contributing to the reduction of global warming or donating money for charity. And again got unexpected results.

Those whose day was organized by hours reported less willingness to sacrifice than those whose day was defined by tasks. Furthermore, participants who use the time and are forced by the researchers to choose a charity to donate to are less interested in its goals (what the money will go to) and more in its results (impact and effectiveness). On the other hand, those who ignore time and strive to complete the task are as interested in the goals of the charities (eg donations for cancer research, fighting poverty, illiteracy, etc.) as they are in their effectiveness.

Back to the roots

People who use watches are likely to be more efficient at tasks, but less in tune with their emotions and ability to be in the moment. Using an external mechanism to control their world also makes them see the reality around them as a random, chaotic place where their efforts have no effect on the outcome, so what's the point of sacrificing if it doesn't change anything anyway?! People who throughout the day are guided by an inner feeling "Is the task accomplished?" Can I move on to the next one?” see more commonality and causality in the world and therefore believe that giving can matter.

Being more efficient and achieving the set goal may have been a strategy suited to the industrial times of the 19th and 20th centuries. But today, special importance is attached not only to the connections between people and the impact on the surrounding reality that the actions of an individual can have, but also to the opportunity to stop and take a breath. All of this is more suited to a world where people use watches less and manage their own sense of time, just as it was before the invention of the first mechanical clock.