Hey—It’s Toffer.
Let’s get one thing straight: time management is a scam.
Estimated read time: 5 minutes
For years, I thought productivity meant filling every second. Back-to-back meetings. A to-do list longer than EDSA on a payday Friday. Multitasking my way through lunch, emails, and existential dread.
But here’s what actually happened—I got lost inside my own calendar.
I was exhausted. Drowning in busyness. Somehow still falling behind. The more I managed time, the less I had. One fine day (somewhere between a client call that went sideways and forgetting why I walked into a room), I had to ask: Am I running my calendar, or is my calendar running me?
That’s when I re-met the Pareto Principle—the 80/20 Wake-Up Slap.
Turns out, 80% of my results came from just 20% of my work. The rest? Noise. Useless emails. Obsessing over fonts. Adding animations to slides no one would ever watch.
It’s like your closet. You wear the same five shirts on rotation, but you keep 20 others just in case—just in case of what exactly? A sudden 90s-themed party? A reunion with ex-office mates who only remember you for that one purple shirt?
I once spent two hours perfecting a slide deck that only three people saw—two of whom were in the room while I was making it. That’s the kind of nonsense Pareto begged me to stop.
So I slashed my to-do list. Hard.
And for the first time, productivity actually felt productive.
But just when I thought I had it all figured out, Parkinson’s Law kicked down the door.
Parkinson’s Law says work expands to fill the time you give it. Give yourself a whole day to write one email? Guess what—you’ll make it take all day. Give yourself ten minutes? Boom, sent before you can procrastinate.
College taught me this the hard way. Research paper due at 8 AM? Started at 4 AM. Still passed.
That’s when I realized: Deadlines aren’t the enemy. They’re the cheat code.
So I started shrinking my deadlines on purpose. Projects that used to take a week? Finished in a day. When you don’t have time to overthink, you finally think straight.
But even after trimming my list and tightening my deadlines, something still felt off.
My calendar was leaner. My brain? Still mush.
That’s when I saw it—decision fatigue. Should I reply now or wait? Is this task urgent or just loud? Arial or Helvetica? (Spoiler: No one cares.)
Every decision was friction. And friction eats time for breakfast. It’s death by papercut—use bullet points or checkboxes? Type out a full sentence or just hit them with "K"? By lunchtime, you’ve made 37 decisions and none of them really mattered.
So I built my Decision Loop—a simple filter for every task trying to sneak into my day:
Is this something only I can do? Or could someone else (who actually likes this stuff) handle it?
Does this task energize me? Or does it make me want to Google beachfront property in La Union?
If the answer was no and no? Gone. Delegated. Automated. Deleted.
But then there are those days when even choosing between coffee or tea feels like calculus. My brain stalls. My to-do list stares at me, unbothered. That’s when I shift gears and ask myself:
Which one of these tasks, if done, makes everything else easier or irrelevant?
Which one, if checked off, would leave me satisfied with my day?
Which one creates more time for me next week?
Some days, it’s about fixing a broken system so future-you has it easier. Other days, it’s just picking the one thing that won’t make tomorrow suck. Either way, it gets you moving again.
And when even that fails? Gratitude.
If you can’t get what you want, practice wanting what you have. Achievement is great, but when it burns you out, shifting to gratitude resets the system. If my mind is spiraling, I take a breath and remind myself: I’ve already won at things I used to pray for. And that clarity is sometimes the productivity boost I actually need.
At the end of the day, it’s not about doing more—it’s about doing what actually counts.
When work fits who you are, time flows.
So here’s the point: Stop managing time. Start crafting it.
Cut the fluff. Shrink your deadlines. Build systems that remove friction. Focus only on the work that matters—and fits.
Now go reclaim your time. And this time? Make it yours.
Your Friend in Time,
Toffer
P.S. If you want more of this (or just need someone to blame when you rethink your entire schedule), head over to timecraft.ph.