How can you manage your time better?

Most time management advice focuses on short-term strategies like time blocking, to-do lists, and habit stacking. These are useful ideas, but they only help you manage your day.

If you want to produce Great Work, you must also learn to manage your time with long-term strategies.

One of the clearest ways to do this comes from programmer Patrick McKenzie. The idea is simple: every decision you make today is either a Time Asset or a Time Debt.

Time Assets are decisions today that save you time in the future. Code is a good example. You write a program once, and it runs on autopilot each day after. An upfront investment of time pays off over and over again.

Time Debts work the opposite way. They are decisions today that cost you time in the future. Email is a good example. Each time you send one, you commit to reading or responding later. You create a small debt that you will have to pay back.

Some of these debts are worth the price you pay later. Many times, they are not.

Low-quality work is the clearest example of a debt that isn’t worth it.

• If you skip editing an essay, you’ll have to revise it later.
• If you rush through a workout, you’ll end up sidelined for weeks by an injury.
• And if you launch a poor product, you’ll sink more time and money into marketing and rebuilding.

In each case, the time you saved up front was borrowed from the future. Low-quality work is time debt you have to pay back. To quote basketball coach John Wooden:

“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”

So choose your Time Debts with care, because each one will come due. And give more of your hours to building Time Assets, because they keep giving your time back long after the work is done.

That is how you manage your time for the long run.