Have Time Management Techniques Been Shown To Be Effective

Question

This might be too vague of a question, but I've been trying to determine the effectiveness of time management systems. There is a lot of information on various time management systems....all of which explicitly or implicitly claim to save you time or increase your productive output.

http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/0142000280

Allen's premise is simple: our productivity is directly proportional to our ability to relax. Only when our minds are clear and our thoughts are organized can we achieve effective productivity and unleash our creative potential

http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/faq/

The Pomodoro Technique® is a time management method. This Technique helps you transforming time into a valuable ally by helping us accomplish what we want to do and charting continuous improvement in the way we do it

http://www.franklincovey.ca/FCCAWeb/aspx/train_focus.htm

Help every individual in your organization focus and execute on your top priorities.

https://processpolicy.com/posec-method-of-time-management.htm

Time Manager ensures the use of best practices to manage employee time and effective management of employee's time. Time Manager improves employee efficiency and productivity and ensures compliance by accurate working time recording.

The number of time management systems is actually quite overwhelming....

I feel like there are enough people claiming that these various systems are effective that it constitutes a notable claim. But I've been unable to find any evidence to support or deny the idea that people who implement these systems are more effective than they would be otherwise.

Can anyone shed some light on the subject?

Answer 1

It is difficult to give a single answer to this, as there are many techniques, and any one of them might be much better than the others. It may make a difference whether these skills are discovered by experience, trained or come naturally to the individual.

There are also a lot of different measures by which time management skills could be measured (e.g. quality of work, timeliness of work, productivity per hour, reliability of productivity, stress, job satisfaction, etc.) and a lot of different fields (manufacturing, software development, creative writing, retail, etc.).

Here are some pertinent results.

Good Time Management helps college students

• Britton, Bruce K.; Tesser, Abraham, Effects of time-management practices on college grades. Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 83(3), Sep 1991, 405-410. doi: 10.1037/0022-0663.83.3.405

This was a moderately small study of 90 college students. They were asked about their time-management practices and a model was produced to explain their GPA.

Regression analyses showed that 2 time-management components were significant predictors of cumulative GPA ( R–2 = .21) and accounted for more variance than did SAT scores (increment in R–2 = .05). It is concluded that time-management practices may influence college achievement.

This is not the same as saying "training someone who is poor in time-management practices will help them." It may be another confounding factor.

Good time management makes you happier, not better

Macan, Therese Hoff, Time management: Test of a process model. Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol 79(3), Jun 1994, 381-391. doi: 10.1037/0021-9010.79.3.381

They surveyed 353 workers and their supervisors, and came up with a model to explain them.

Examination of the path coefficients in the model suggested that engaging in some time management behaviors may have beneficial effects on tensions and job satisfaction but not on job performance. Contrary to popular claims, time management training was not found to be effective.

Another study of college students concurs that time management skills lower stress.