Time management: when should demanding tasks be scheduled?
A calendar shows when a task can be done, but rarely the cognitive conditions under which it will be performed. The management question is specific: should the same time slots be protected for every demanding task and every employee?
What the literature establishes
Mareike B. Wieth and Rose T. Zacks (2011, Thinking & Reasoning) studied problem solving at times that were more or less favourable according to participants’ time-of-day preferences. Performance on problems requiring sudden insight was better at the supposedly non-optimal time; analytical problems showed no comparable significant difference. This finding challenges a uniform rule that would reserve all intellectually difficult tasks for the time when people usually feel most alert.
Feeling alert is not enough
Hans P. A. Van Dongen, Greg Maislin, Janet M. Mullington and David F. Dinges (2003, Sleep) demonstrated experimentally that repeated sleep restriction produced accumulating deficits in neurobehavioural performance. Changes in reported sleepiness did not fully reflect this deterioration. When organising work, feeling able to keep going is therefore no guarantee that performance remains intact.
The hasty conclusion
One might conclude that idea generation should be scheduled when teams are tired. That would confuse a non-optimal time relative to individual preferences with sleep restriction, two conditions that these studies do not make interchangeable. The more cautious conclusion is to distinguish task demands without turning fatigue into a management tool. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What these data cannot schedule
Experimental problems reproduce neither the complexity of pharmaceutical documentation nor the constraints of logistics operations. These studies provide no universal performance timetable, and a stated preference alone is not a diagnosis of circadian timing. Safety requirements, shared working hours and international coordination further limit the scope for moving tasks.
A practical check in Bâle
Within SHR’s “Time Management & Prioritisation” programme, an exercise suitable for a Basel team in pharmaceuticals, life sciences, Rhine logistics or international R&D is to compare two time slots already compatible with operational requirements over a predefined period. For the same category of analytical work that is not safety-critical, record the time slot, duration and proportion of outputs requiring correction at the first review, while documenting case difficulty and time-zone-related demands. Comparing results within the same person rather than across employees makes it possible to look for a more favourable slot without turning time-of-day preferences into an employee ranking. This local observation does not prove a biological effect, but it makes the value of a scheduling change testable. To go further: explore the Time Management & Prioritisation training in Basel, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Time Management & Prioritisation in Basel
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