Back when I was an intern, there were always these almost mythical stories going around between coworkers.
Somewhere in this city, at one of the top companies in the industry, people were supposedly in meetings until midnight and still showed up at 6:30 the next morning, no matter the weather, to do group exercise before work.
At the time, my reaction was simple: no matter how prestigious that company was, I wouldn’t want that life. If the pay were unbelievably good, maybe I’d go for a year, make the money, and leave.
There used to be other legends too—about people like Bill Gates or Charles Zhang, and how little they supposedly slept each day. Every now and then, stories like that would get me fired up for a while. I’d try to become one of those highly disciplined people who sleep early, wake early, and live with perfect self-control.
But in the end, things always settled back down. Life kept moving much the same as before.
That said, I have nothing against disciplined people. If you can really live that way, good for you.
What changed my thinking was having to handle more and more things myself. Once you’re personally responsible for enough tasks, it starts to feel like there simply isn’t enough time in the day.
That’s when a lot of people start believing in the old line that time can always be "squeezed out" if you try hard enough.
But most of us are ordinary people, and ordinary life comes with endless small messes and practical burdens. Most people do not have a support team clearing away the trivial but necessary parts of living. We have to pay attention to gas prices. We have to watch our mobile data so we don’t go over the limit. And sometimes it doesn’t take much for all of that to pile up and push us toward an emotional breakdown.
So little by little, I’ve come to feel that time management—at least for me—isn’t especially realistic.
What feels more useful is emotional management.
When I’m exhausted, sometimes the better choice is to stop forcing it and just let myself slack off for a while. When I’m in a bad mood, I might spend the whole day indoors playing games and not pretend that I’m in the right condition to be productive.
Then, once I’ve adjusted and my state of mind is back, I can throw myself into work with much better efficiency. In the end, that efficiency may even make up for the time I seemed to waste.