Time management is emotional management: How much of your day is wasted by anger, fear or anxiety?

The secret to time management may well be emotional management.

“So many of us operate inefficiently because we fall prey to waves of fear and other negative feelings. We don’t know how to manage our emotional responses properly as we encounter situations and interact with others, so we feel anxious, depleted and upset, wondering where all our time has gone,” executive coach Neal Schore writes in The 25^th Hour, a title that reflects the time you can add to your day with better emotional regulation tools.

“Our relationships deteriorate. We make poor decisions. And all too often, we fail to achieve our goals.”

He usually begins his coaching with one question he wants his clients to repeatedly ask themselves as they go through their day: “What’s the intent?” of the other person they are dealing with. When somebody asks a question or makes a statement, before immediately responding, pause for a second and ponder why they may be asking that question or making that statement.

You have been mind reading, automatically, for most of your life, sometimes successfully but sometimes not because your insecurities and entrenched assumptions can distort your interpretation. In particular, there is a tendency to react defensively or suspiciously, as if there’s a Devil silently sitting on your shoulder, warping your sense of reality. “In many situations, we hear the Devil telling us to respond by feeling bad, lashing out, doubting ourselves and so on,” he warns.

He recalls recently being told by a client about a meeting that an individual had held without Mr. Schore being invited. “Why didn’t Mitch think to invite me?” Mr. Schore began to think. “Does he not respect me? I thought he valued my contributions, but apparently he doesn’t. Was it something I said?”

Mr. Schore was so distressed, thoughts swirling around, that for about 45 minutes he couldn’t get any work done, not even email. Then it dawned on him: He had been teaching executives at the company to increase their productivity by only inviting people to meetings who will actually contribute.

So ask what’s the intent, but starting from a positive mindset. By assuming positive intent, you can avoid spiraling down into a needless negative funk, and taking others with you. Be curious. Ask clarifying questions, to give you more time in situations to think and understand, rather than saying the wrong thing.

They can be simple, all-purpose probes, such as “I’d like to better understand your thoughts” or “I’d love to understand why that matters to you.” He says in three decades as a leader, he can’t think of a single instance when asking such clarifying questions and follow-ups wasn’t productive.

He urges you to keep track during the day of time lost to worrying and fears and other emotional turmoil. If you’re a worrier, a technique he recommends is to force yourself to methodically review the present situation. What is the biggest, scariest outcomes that might arise? After creating a list, evaluate how likely each scenario is to occur. Is there a 2 per cent chance? Five per cent or 10 per cent? “Most people quickly realize that their worst-case scenarios have a vanishingly small chance of happening and that they’re spending a crazy amount of time and energy worrying about them,” he writes.

Our days, he notes, can be dotted with “ucks,” and it’s important to control your emotions about them. “Uck, I have to attend that update meeting today.” “Uck, I’ll be wasting time at lunch with a client today.”

His advice is first to not pick up the phone and call or text someone to commiserate about it. That just perpetuates the negative contagion. Then name what’s happening – you have a nasty case of the Ucks, a term which may nudge you to chuckle. Then try to control your negative feelings, notably by trying to find some gratitude in the situation or other parts of your life.

It might add an extra productive hour to your day.

Quick hits

• Author Mark Manson says a piece of advice that changed his life was: Stop assuming people know how you feel. Tell them instead – not just when you’re angry or stressed, but also when you’re proud or missed them.
• Productivity expert Laura Vanderkam urges you to take a 5 p.m. walk to boost your energy and reset for the evening. If you don’t finish work at that time or are in a scramble to pick up the kids at daycare, be creative, squeezing in a walk about then or parking far enough from your office for a brisk 10-minute walk.
• Author Jame Clear asks: What are your favourite hours of the day and what adjustments can you make to ensure they are under your control?