The Matrix and the Marshmallow

Insights into Time Management and Self Management

We live in a world haunted by the twin demons of speed and complexity. Faced with ever
increasing demands on the limited time at his disposal, modern man looks towards
management gurus for solutions. Here we shall look at insights into time management
and self management and the fascinating interplay between them.

Time : A Unique Resource

Cecil Northcote Parkinson was an engineer who, in the 1950s observed the ways
in which business organizations operate. He formulated the well-known
Parkinson’s Law, one version of which states,”Work expands to fill the time
available.” Parkinson’s simple and humorous observation is an undeniable and
stark truth today. Simply working longer and longer hours is no strategy to cope
with the ever increasing complexities of life and work in the 21 st century. Time is
a resource and all resources are limited. Each of us has only twenty-four hours a
day!

Management guru Drucker observes that time as a resource has three important
characteristics. First, everything requires time. Whatever you do or say or think,
requires time. Time is the universal resource. Second, time is irreplaceable i.e., it
has no substitute. Most economic resources have some substitutes, some more
than others. For example, you can easily substitute saccharine for sugar,
machines for labour, many artificial products for natural substances and so on.
There is no such substitute for time. Third, the supply of time is truly limited. No
matter how great the demand for time, the supply will not increase. Yesterday's
supply was twenty four hours and those twenty four hours are gone forever.
‘‘Time waste differs from material waste in that there can be no salvage.’’ (Henry
Ford) You cannot manufacture, mine or harvest time. In the language of
economics, the supply of time is completely inelastic.

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Arnold Bennett, an early writer on time management, wrote: ‘‘Why not concern
yourself more with ‘How to live on a given income of time’ instead of ‘How to
live on a given income of money’? Money is far commoner than time. When one
reflects, one perceives that money is just about the commonest thing there is. The
supply of time, though gloriously regular, is cruelly restricted. We shall never
have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is.’’

Multi-Tasking is No Solution

Here one might ask, ”Cant I virtually stretch the supply of time by doing more
things at the same time?” In other words, multi-tasking – doing several things
simultaneously instead of in sequence. It is the solution often opted for by those
desperately pressed for time. Working on a laptop, speaking on a mobile phone,
glancing through a newspaper and eating something – all at the same time – this
is not an uncommon sight today. But, multi-tasking rests on a fallacy – that you
can actually do two (or more) things at a time. You cannot. You can only switch
back and forth between tasks at a frantic pace, giving the illusory impression of
doing several things all at once. Multi-tasking results in poor performance. Each
of those tasks is poorly done. Overall productivity declines. Worse still, studies
have revealed the hidden psychological and physiological toll of multi-tasking.
Work requires some degree of concentration, which means ignoring external
stimuli to concentrate on the task at hand. But, those who consistently engage in
multi-tasking become vulnerable to external stimuli. They are no longer able to
concentrate fully on one task at a time. Every little change in their immediate
environment draws their attention and distracts them. Drucker writes, “If there
is any one “secret” of effectiveness, it is concentration. Effective executives know
they have to get many things done – and done effectively. Therefore, they
concentrate – their own time and energy, as well as that of their organization –
on doing one thing at at time, and on doing first things first.”

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Making the Best Use of Time

Time management is not about time per se – it is about our lives, what we do
with the time given to us. Those who complain of the lack of time are also,
usually, people who make the worst use of time.

According to management guru Peter Drucker, the major problem is

‘‘fundamentally the confusion between effectiveness and efficiency that stands
between doing the right things and doing things right. There is surely nothing
quite so useless as doing with greater efficiency what should not be done at all.’’

Benjamin Franklin might be regarded as the father of modern time management.

It was he who coined the phrase ‘time is money’. He emphasized the importance
of planning and priorities. He wrote eloquently about this, ‘‘If you want to enjoy
one of the greatest luxuries in life, the luxury of having enough time, time to rest,
time to think things through, time to get things done and know you have done
them to the best of your ability, remember there is only one way. Take enough
time to think and plan things in the order of their importance. Your life will take
on a new zest, you will add years to your life, and more life to your years. Let all
your things have their places.’’

Probably the most successful and well known writer on this subject is Stephen R.
Covey. He advocates a comprehensive system of personal development in which
time management plays a central role. In his very popular book, The 7 Habits of
Highly Effective People, Stephen R.Covey has presented a time management
matrix. It is not enough to be busy. We must ask ourselves: what are we busy
about? This is the question the time management matrix answers.

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The Time Management Matrix

Urgent
Not Urgent

Quadrant I Quadrant II
Important
Crisis, Emergencies Self development issues

Quadrant III Quadrant IV

Some meetings, phone Time wasters,
Not Important
calls, proximate gossiping, trivia, some
pressing matters phone calls

Source: Stephen R. Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

In Quadrant I, you have all those activities that are both important and urgent,
like crisis, deadlines, emergencies. In Quadrant II you put everything that is
important but not urgent, such as self-development issues like physical exercise,
learning, meditation etc. These activities are most closely linked to your ultimate
values and goals in life, but are often also most ignored. Quadrant III contains
urgent but not important activities like certain meetings, most phone calls,
interruptions and so on. These are not really relevant to your values and goals
but even so, they have to be dealt with as they arise. And then some people
waste time doing things neither urgent nor important. Gossiping, internet
browsing, playing video games or reading newspapers – all such time wasters
are in Quadrant IV.

Real personal growth comes by concentrating maximum time and energy

Quadrant II activities. Unfortunately, Quadrants I, III and IV consumes your
time and energy leaving little time for quadrant II activities. The only way you
will get time and energy for doing the important and fulfilling Quadrant II
activities is by reducing the other quadrants. The crisis in Quadrant I have to be
faced and hence you cannot reduce this area immediately. You have to look to

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Quadrants III and IV and try to extract the time sucked into activities which are
only apparently useful or those which are plainly useless.

The matrix tells you to distinguish importance and urgency. Often the urgency
masquerades as importance. Once you identify and isolate important activities
(those which are truly relevant to your ultimate goals and values in life) you
have to devote more and more time to them. But here arises another problem.
Even after identifying your Quadrant II and resolving to concentrate there, you
may find yourself unable to find the motivation to follow through.

There are some who follow a fixed schedule almost effortlessly while many
others are quite unable to stick to a schedule of self improvement for long. They
may start off with all determination to exercise regularly, or learn new subjects,
or meditate, but soon distractions come and the pressures of Quadrants I and III
and the temptations of Quadrant IV sidetrack them.

Why does this happen? For an answer we shall turn to an intriguing

psychological study of pre-school children.

Self Management and Success

A very interesting study on self-control in four year olds was done decades ago
by the eminent psychologist Walter Mischel (and repeated in 2008 by Philip
Zimbardo). The psychologist offered each child a marshmallow and said,”Here is
a marshmallow for you! You can eat it now, or you can wait until I come back,
and get another one. Remember, if you eat this one now, you wont get the
second marshmallow, but if you wait for me to return, then you can have a
second marshmallow. Then you can eat two marshmallows instead of only one!”
Then the psychologist left the room for a short while. When he returned, he gave

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the children who had not eaten the marshmallow an additional one. The children
thought they were alone (this experiment was repeated for each child separately)
but, unknown to them, they were being filmed. These short video clips make for
fascinating viewing; one can see the interplay of temptation and self-control on
the faces of the innocent little boys and girls. The children devised various
strategies – some played little games keeping their attention away from the
tempting sweet in front of them, others simply looked away from the awful
temptation. Still others resisted as long as they could, and then succumbed and
ate the marshmallow. One little boy ate the marshmallow straight away, even
before the psychologist was out of the room!

Walter Mischel went back to those children fourteen years later. He interviewed
them, talked to their parents and gathered data from their school records. The
differences between the children who ate the marshmallow and those who didn’t
turned out to be very sharp. On the average, the children who did not eat the
marshmallow and waited for the second one, did much better than the others in
academics and in a variety of non-academic areas as well. The ability to delay
gratification seems to be the core of self control and it was found to be
significantly correlated with success in later life.

The children with the ability to delay gratification displayed superior self-
management skills in later life. They were the ones who completed their
academic assignments while their more impulsive friends postponed theirs. They
were the ones who worked while others partied. They were the ones who were
disciplined enough to learn and compete successfully in music, dance, art and
sports while the others were not motivated enough. These boys and girls were
seen by peers and adults as being more responsible, co-operative and mature.

According to Zimbardo, children who were unable to control their urges and ate
the marshmallows had a poor grasp on the ‘If-Then’ relation. They had not

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internalized causal relations – that if one does such and such things now, then
one will get specific desirable results in future. In the real world, where nothing
is certain, the causal link is often probabilistic, so that it is not certain but only
reasonably more likely that certain actions like studying regularly will lead to
specific desired results viz., higher academic scores.

Incidentally, this experiment also throws light on the unfortunate deficiencies in

modern education. What the study revealed was that children who already had
better self –management capabilities (due to genetic factors or samskaras: take
your pick), did well at school and college. Those who lacked the capacity did
poorly. In other words, school and college did not make a difference to the innate
capacity for self-management. Modern education simply does not inculcate or
develop the key capacity for self-management. That such development should be
a central objective of education is not widely appreciated today. However, that is
another story.

Matrix and Marshmallow

Its time to put it all together. If we juxtapose the two insights – from Covey’s
matrix and the Mischel/Zimbardo experiment – a new understanding emerges.
It comes as no surprise that the self-development activities in Quadrant II are all
future oriented and require the maximum delay of gratification, but also give the
greatest benefits over the long run. And equally unsurprising is the fact that the
activities of Quadrants I, III and IV provide instant feedback (they are all very
present oriented).

The children who displayed restraint and delayed gratification are likely to grow
into adults who are good at self management and make the effort required to
concentrate on Quadrant II activities and consequently reap the greatest benefits

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in self-development. Children who ate the marshmallow are likely to grow into
adults who spend time in Quadrants I, III and IV activities and keep postponing
Quadrant II activities.

To successfully follow any schedule, routine or time-management scheme

requires delaying gratification, understanding if-then causal links – good self
management in other words. Time management is self management.

From Insight to Practice

Now we have two deep insights into the nature of time management and self
management and the relationship between them is also clear. Yet knowing is not
enough. ‘Insight separated from practice remains ineffective,’ said noted
psychoanalyst Eric Fromm. Benefits follow from practice backed by insight and not
from the one isolated from the other. We have to put the insights to work in our
lives.

Covey’s time management matrix teaches us to concentrate on Quadrant II –

those activities most closely connected with our ultimate goals and values in life.
Those who have a great vision, some great and noble ambition in life, can do this
easily. Consider the lives of great scientists, artists and leaders of mankind.
Einstein, Tagore and Gandhi for example – their lives show how one can live in
Quadrant II. Physics for one, literature for another and the nation for the last
were the overriding passions of their lives. Great spiritual seekers in all religions
have dedicated their lives to the search for God. Thus, one must search for a
great purpose in life and link the self to that purpose alone. The problems of time
management and self management are automatically solved.

Linking the self to a great purpose – science, art, the welfare of mankind or the
search for God, is one way. Another way is to understand the spiritual nature of

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the self itself. Many of our self management inadequacies stem from our view of
ourselves. As long as you consider yourself to be a frail biological creature, a
body or body-mind complex, you will be plagued by the instinctive drives and
weaknesses of this biological machine. Consider yourself to be spirit, inhabiting a
body-mind complex and the whole issue is seen in a new light. You have then
put yourself in a position to command and direct and, ultimately, transcend the
limitations of the body-mind complex.

Spiritual seekers do this in many ways. In Bhakti Yoga, the self is redefined
variously, as the servant of God, as the playmate of God, as the child of God and
so on. In the path of Jnana, the self is understood to be divine, pure
consciousness and the whole experienced world a manifestation of the same
consciousness. Instead of thinking of himself as a human being trying to get
spiritual experiences, the seeker thinks that he is a spiritual being having a
human experience. Redefining the self in these ways, spiritual seekers meet the
challenge of self management intelligently and effectively.

Reference:
1. Stephen R. Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
2. Peter F. Drucker The Effective Exective
3. Ross Jay Time Management
4. Steve Prentice Cool Down

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