68. The Time Management Trap No One Talks About
Episode 68
In this episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, I break down one of the most overlooked productivity traps: the invisible overhead that comes with every “yes.” Whether you're a student joining one more club or a professional taking on another task force, those small commitments often cost more time than we realize.
I explain what overhead really means, why we tend to underestimate it, and how to protect yourself from hidden time drains. You’ll learn two practical strategies—admin blocks and buffer blocks—that can help you manage your time more realistically.
What You’ll Learn:
Why small commitments often take more time than they appear to
What “overhead” is and how it quietly drains your time and energy
Common invisible tasks you might be forgetting to plan for
How to use admin blocks and buffer blocks to stay ahead of overflow
Why people with ADHD or executive function challenges are especially prone to this trap
🎙️Other Episodes + Resources Mentioned
Episode 03: What’s an Admin Block and Why You Need One
Episode 05: Secrets of a Good Task Management System
Episode 14: How to Use the Pomodoro Technique for School and Work
Episode 18: How to Use the Batching Strategy
Episode 25: 5 Time Management Mistakes You’re Making
Episode 27: How to Get Things Done with a Power Hour
✏️Enroll in SchoolHabits University (Curious? Check it out!)
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The following transcript was autogenerated and may contain some interesting and silly errors. But in the name of efficiency and productivity, I am choosing not to spend my time fixing them 😉
68 The Time Management Trap No One Talks About===
[00:00:00] So how many times have you been in a situation where you have to be in 10 places at once, nine tasks, or do at the same time, and you ask yourself, why did I say yes to all these things? Every listener right now, whether you're a student or a professional, has been in this scenario, the regret of the Yes.
In today's episode, we're talking about time management as we often do, but I am taking a slightly. Different angle. Today I am not gonna [00:00:30] share any clock based time management strategies like the Pomodoro technique or the Power Hour or batching. So if you are looking for time management methods like those, which I have covered before, I will leave the links to those episodes in the show notes.
Also, quick reminder that you can find everything I mentioned today at learnandworksmarter.com/podcast/68. Because this is episode 68. So [00:01:00] instead we're talking about an invisible time management trap that gets even the best of us.
No, I teach time management for a living and I think that my system is pretty dialed in, but even sometimes I forget about this time management trap and I fall directly into it like a fly to honey. Today we are talking about the real cost of doing things, and I do understand that that might sound a little strange or vague, but by the end of the episode, [00:01:30] you're gonna know exactly what that means, why it is so dangerous, not only to our productivity, but also to our stress levels and our peace of mind.
And then of course, how to avoid this trap together. Hello and thank you for being here today, and we are gonna get started.
[00:02:00]
So I'm gonna come right out and tell you what the mistake is that we're talking about today. The time management trap that so many of us fall into is not considering the true cost of things. Saying yes to obligations and commitments and activities and clubs and focus groups, teams, [00:02:30] whatever it is saying yes to these things is far more expensive time-wise than we know.
Here's the deal. Everything that we say yes to comes with overhead, and by overhead I mean invisible time commitments and obligations that are not so obvious upfront. I am not the first person to coin this term or to use this term overhead. Cal Newport, who I'm a super fan of, Cal Newport, if you've ever heard of him, he talks a lot about this [00:03:00] concept of overhead
so I'm diving deep into that today. But I love the terminology of overhead because I think it really does help us visualize what these costs are. Okay? it's saying yes to activities without considering the invisible time commitments and overhead that truly leave us overwhelmed, overworked, and outta time.
In other words, the mistake is thinking that something that we are saying yes to only takes the amount of time [00:03:30] that's obvious. So if we say yes to another activity or another club at school, that's only one hour a week on Wednesdays, our mistake is thinking that this club only consumes one hour of our time on Wednesdays.
If we agree to being on a task force at the office that meets for only two hours once a month, our mistake is assuming that the task force consumes only two hours of our time once a month. My [00:04:00] argument today is that it's the invisible time around these tasks that always gets us in trouble. Now don't worry, I'm gonna share lots of examples throughout this episode so that you fully understand this concept, and I'm hoping that the examples that I share will enable you to look at your own time commitments and see what those are really costing you.
The bottom line here is that we need to stop saying yes to all of the activities
without really thinking about the true time involved. [00:04:30] Even if the activities look good on our transcripts, even if the thing looks good on our resume, even if the job looks good on our college applications, even if the person asking us to do the thing is really, really, really nice. When I've been in that situation, like I don't wanna say no 'cause you're so nice, but whenever we say yes to an activity like an afterschool club or a committee for work, we need to think beyond the obvious time commitment.
We need to consider, so these are some examples of sort of like overhead [00:05:00] costs and we'll get, we'll get more into some of these in a bit, but travel and transportation to and from the activity, the time spent on the activity outside of the actual meeting hours, time spent communicating and coordinating with members.
Of the group, or maybe like the leader of the group, whatever it is, time spent thinking about and preparing for the activity. Spine. Spine, hopefully we all have spines time spent on administration tasks that [00:05:30] are related to the commitment. Every item that I just listed consumes hours that, at first glance may seem invisible, but when we say yes to the activity itself, we're actually saying yes to all of the above invisible time commitments.
Having a fully developed time management habit, which I talk a lot about here, must include recognizing the true overhead cost of what it is that we're saying yes to. Now let me give you a [00:06:00] giant red flag, um, that this might be a blind spot, maybe in your own time management habits.
Let's say that you have listened to episodes five and 25, and you have your time management system locked and loaded and squeaky clean. You are a master of making time visible, which is the foundation of time management Now, just to review this important point, time management is a very real mathematical equation that can be made visible [00:06:30] on paper and in calendars, okay?
At its absolute most cellular basic level, managing time involves putting tasks and obligations and all of the things on a calendar and seeing if they will fit. If they do not fit, despite your best Tetris efforts, you have to remove something from your calendar because we are not yet in the business of inventing time.
Right? So step one is that we've gotta be using some kind of calendar to make sure [00:07:00] that we're not overcommitting on an obvious level to begin with. Okay? But here's where the red flag comes in. If you are feeling pulled in a thousand directions and you are overwhelmed, even though your commitments, literally fit neatly into the calendar that you made visible. Then you have like a real calendar, not like a mental thing that you made in your real calendar, then you're probably not considering the true overhead cost of what it is that you're really saying yes to. So that's the [00:07:30] red flag. If you technically, and you know I'm using air quotes here if you're not watching this on YouTube, but if you're technically you can fit your obligations onto a calendar without overlap, but you're still feeling like there is just not enough time in the day, then it is probably the invisible time commitments associated with those obligations that are truly weighing you down.
Now, let me give you an example of a time that I misjudged the overhead cost of something that I said yes to. This is funny [00:08:00] because I was thinking I was gonna use this example today, and then it was, it became kind of an irrelevant example because I sort of solved it just this morning.
I got an email from somebody related to this example, and I'll add that in. But, um, a few years ago, okay. My daughter wanted to join scouts. Not Girl Scouts, but scouts. It's not called Boy Scouts anymore, in case you didn't know. It's just called Scouts. Okay? But my town did not have a Girl Scout [00:08:30] troop. They had like a Girl Scout troupe, but not a girl's Scout troop.
So we needed to start one. Okay. So another woman in my town who was absolutely incredible got the entire thing going, and this involved forming a committee. I was asked to join the committee, which only met for about 90 minutes to two hours once a month on Mondays. It seemed like an obvious yes for me to join this committee.
It. Especially because it was for the benefit of [00:09:00] my own kid. All right, so what am I gonna say? Like, no, when people are doing this favor for my own kid, she was like the only person in the troop at the time. So of course I joined the committee, but I did calculate the math and I said, okay, I can do this once a month commitment.
But here's the reality. Each committee meeting would end with things that needed to be done between then and the next committee meeting. We needed to increase in, uh, recruitment and I was the one with some marketing and graphic design experience. So, you know, I volunteered to do the flyers and the things [00:09:30] like that.
And then because I was on the committee, I was asked to go to this event and this event, and before I knew it, this 90 minute commitment, just once a month turned into so much more than I could handle for that season of my life.
I had to say no. I felt guilty and like I was letting people down, but I could not attend all of those additional events that we're typically like in the evening, seven 30 at night, or maybe on the weekend, but especially in the evening.
That's when I'm with clients. [00:10:00] And this is an example coming from someone who knows all about time management and calculating the true cost of things. And even I neglected to consider the administration and communication work and all of the other things that went along with saying yes to this committee that extended far beyond the once a month meeting.
Now, the thing I wanted to add is just this morning I got an ex, um, an email from, so at this point. A little complicated, but the boys and [00:10:30] girls troops in my town have somewhat combined, so they're to combine resources or share resources. They're gonna camp out separately and all that. But I was asked just this morning if I wanted to join the joint committee.
Like literally, I haven't attended a committee meeting in months because I, I did have to back out and now that they've joined, I was asked, someone said, Hey, I recognize that your name is on the original committee. Um, we would love to have you join our committee. And it meets on Tuesdays [00:11:00] at, I don't know, it was like maybe eight o'clock or something.
I am with clients, so I literally had to say no, but I just thought it was funny that I'm like, oh gosh, this is coming like around again. Like my no, my no is a boomerang and I had to like, I dunno if that visual makes sense, but whatever I said, no. Um, and that's a whole other podcast episode that I've got up my sleeve about different ways to say no.
But let me give you, an example for a student. Okay. Let's say that a high school student signs up for a [00:11:30] weekly club at school that meets for one hour on Wednesdays. One hour a week. It does not feel like a big deal. But what's the real time commitment? What is the true overhead? That student also has to get to and from the meeting, remember where and when it is, reply to group chats or emails.
Maybe bring something to the next meeting. Remember to bring something to the next meeting and possibly work on some kind of project or initiative in between the meetings, [00:12:00] right? So that one hour a week is really more like three. Once you account for everything that comes along with it. Now let me give you an a professional example.
Let's say that you agree to be on a task force that meets once a month for two hours. Okay, that seems manageable. It's just two hours once a month. But again, overhead. There is prep work before the meeting. There's follow ups afterwards. Time spent emailing the other members, mentally reviewing talking [00:12:30] points in the shower or on your walk, and potentially having sidebar conversations with colleagues about the task force's work.
Alright, so that two hour meeting might actually cost you six hours a month when all is said and done. These are the invisible time costs, the hidden time commitments that we don't calculate upfront. And they're what make us feel like we're doing everything right on paper or on our calendars, but still falling behind.
So let's talk about why [00:13:00] it is that we say yes in the first place. Why do we keep doing this? Why do we say yes to things when we're already maxed out? Right? What led me to say yes to this committee when I was skilled at it even thinking about and calculating invisible time costs. Okay. There's a few reasons.
Most of them are psychological. first of all, many of us just want to be helpful. We like to say yes because you know, we're team players or we're good students and we're supportive coworkers, and we want to do [00:13:30] good. Also, we don't wanna miss out. That club or job or committee might lead to something else, a future opportunity.
And that fear of missing out gets us. This is FOMO at its finest.
Now another reason is all of us, me too, underestimate how long things will take. This is actually a very real cognitive bias that affects all of us, and it's called the planning fallacy. Like clinically, our brains [00:14:00] are overly optimistic when it comes to estimating time and resources required to complete things, especially if we have not completed that thing before and we don't have any.
Evidence to make a more accurate time estimation based on, alright.
Now another reason is that sometimes we only see the reward, a resume bump, a letter of recommendation, a networking opportunity. These are visible and obvious benefits to saying yes to something and that [00:14:30] envisioned reward often drowns out the voice of reason that says, yeah, but we don't have the time.
a note here too is that people with executive function challenges, especially A DHD. So you, if you have ADHD, you're going to struggle with executive functioning. But people with executive functioning don't always have ADHD, okay?
It's kinda like a Venn diagram, but people with ADHD and or executive dysfunction often have an even harder time visualizing [00:15:00] future time. Okay. And managing transitions accurately, or estimating task duration. And this is why I'm always saying like time is math. Do the math, because the math is more reliable than our hope based predictions of how long something might take.
So what do we do? You know about this trap and you're thinking, okay, like that makes sense, but how do I really know what the invisible time costs are if I can't see them? Good question. [00:15:30] Let's talk about that. The visible time element you have down at this point. Okay? I'm gonna give you credit for that.
That's the hour that you spend in a meeting, the two hour event that you signed up to help with the weekly shift you picked up at work, the weekly club you signed up for, right? These are the obvious, visible time costs of whatever it is that you said yes to.
Like the time you block out on your calendar. But it's the invisible time, the invisible overhead that gets us. I think I've made that point clear by now. So let's go over some of these [00:16:00] invisible time costs so that you get used to thinking about them this way. Now, I, I did allude to these a little bit earlier in the episode and I said I'd come back to them.
So this is where we're gonna dig in a little bit more. The commute to and from somewhere. Okay. But not what you imagine that commute to, uh, commute to be. Or you have to think about traffic patterns at certain times of day. Do a Google Maps, I almost said a map quest. Do you guys even know what a map quest is?
Do do a Google map search or a Waze search to figure out the actual amount of [00:16:30] time it's gonna take you to and from to get somewhere. To get to and from. I'm not even gonna edit that out. Whatever. And then when you're blocking out the time on your calendar for this one hour event, make sure that you're adding the 20 minutes it takes to get there.
And the 20 minute takes 20 minutes it takes to get home. Now what if it takes you 20 minutes to get there and typically 10 minutes to find parking? Okay, so that's 30 minutes to get there. 20 minutes to get home. That's an extra 50 minutes, five zero on top of the one hour that you were gonna block on [00:17:00] your calendar.
So now we're talking about an almost two hour event. Okay. Another invisible time cost is the mental energy you put into solving issues related to the thing that you said yes to. So for example, if you are on a monthly committee, but in between your monthly meetings you're asked to brainstorm some solutions to, I don't know, some problem your committee is dealing with.
Right? Okay. Well, don't forget that thinking takes time. When are you going to do that? When are you going to think? That [00:17:30] takes time. Then there's sending and replying to messages. This could be email, phone call, text.
Side story: I am a quick writer and a quick communicator, and for fun the other day. This is what I do for fun guys.
I timed myself writing one email, like a basic email that I typically get and have to reply to, and it took close to eight minutes. And this was during an admin block that I had on a Friday. I had planned for it intentionally and I knew I had about 10 emails to get to, [00:18:00] and if each of them is taking eight minutes.
Okay. I gave myself about 60 minutes for this admin block. I had a ton to do, and I'm like, okay, I can get these 10 emails and then I'll do like all these other things or whatever. And one email took eight minutes and that was like a basic email. So if all 10 of my emails were gonna take eight minutes, that's 80 minutes without me even like taking a sip of water and pausing.
That's already beyond my admin block. Okay? That is a significant amount of time, and if I weren't [00:18:30] aware of that overhead. Okay. That could, and, and I mean I was aware of it and I still sort of like misjudged, but if I had no idea that overhead were even a thing that could absolutely knock me off my game and take me by surprise.
And that's what happens a lot. Alright. With working professionals and even students who are like, I have no time. I don't know where the time went. Well, it, it. Probably went to this, the overhead, right? For the things that you're saying yes to, then there is taking an organizing post-meeting notes. Okay.
Let's say the thing that you're saying yes to is [00:19:00] some kind of meeting committee, task force club or whatever, taking your notes and organizing them afterwards, and maybe even sending the minute notes, um, the minutes out to everyone else who is at the meeting. And there's context switching and recovery time.
Even just thinking about the task outside of the task itself. This all consumes very real minutes in our days. There's absolutely way more things that I could list out, um, that I would consider invisible tasks, but it really does depend on what your visible [00:19:30] task is, right? So they'll, those are things that you're gonna have to think about for yourself.
But you know, for example, um, if you volunteer to make a reservation for a night out with your friends, I've been in this situation, right? That's not just the five minutes it takes to, you know, make a phone call to the restaurant. It's the research of all the places. It's checking with your friends about allergies and checking to see if the restaurants are allergy friendly, right?
Seeing what people like and finding a, a place that's convenient for, you know, where based on where [00:20:00] everybody lives, it might be calling one restaurant and making a reservation, but then thinking of another restaurant and then in the meantime, and then you have to call the first one back and cancel the res.
You get the idea. Five minute phone call. No way. So I'm just giving you this list of, you know, common overhead tasks and these examples so that you can start to see your yeses for what they really are.
Okay, now I wanna move on to some strategies for what to do when we have committed to something and now we've realized that it [00:20:30] is far more expensive, so to speak, than we thought. Time-wise. We're at the point where we say, shoot. The overhead cost of this thing is, is too much, but I can't back out. I am already in it.
And what do I do to manage it? You know, because that's a choice too. You could always do as I did, and say, yo, my bad, like I am no longer able to participate in this thing. Right? Don't come up with some reason. You don't even need to give a reason. I am no longer able to to participate in this. [00:21:00] I'm sorry.
Right. But I do understand that, that that's not always feasible. And so there is another option. If you've listened to any other episodes of the show, you have heard me talk about this on multiple occasions, and that is an admin block. In fact, if you caught it, I did mention this just like a few minutes ago, and yes, I am going to suggest yet again that an admin block is a great solution to these situations.
Hear me out. So in many cases, the overhead cost or the invisible [00:21:30] tasks weighing us down are administrative in nature. Okay. Emailing about the thing, communicating about the thing, writing something down, about the thing, drafting some kind of, I don't know, memo or notes about the thing. Some planning, some details about the thing, right?
Most of these things are what I would consider administration tasks. These can be managed reasonably well by scheduling an admin block at some point in your week, if you're absolutely new to the show, welcome [00:22:00] and I love that you're here, but then you might be confused over this concept of an admin block.
So I wanna direct you to episode three, titled what's an admin block and why you need one? Okay. But for everyone listening who has heard it before but maybe needs a little reminder, an admin block is an intentional block of time that you put in your calendar. Like it's a meeting, like it has a start and an end period.
Okay. Where you know you'll be working just on administration tasks. This is for students and [00:22:30] professionals. Okay. And, and what you're doing during this time will depend on, you know, what your role is. Are you a professional? Cool. What's your industry? What are your administration tasks? If you're a student?
Okay, well, high school, college, graduate, it's all different. But this can be for maybe one hour, once a week on Fridays. It could be 2 45 minute sessions throughout a week. Something like Tuesdays and Thursdays. Whatever the details, you kind of just have to figure out for yourself and what makes sense for, you know, your job or the things that are on your plate.[00:23:00]
But I strongly make the case that every student and professional should be making some intentional time in their week to handle these often overlooked tasks that unfortunately still consume very real minutes in our day, those invisible tasks as we've been talking about. So let me go back to my example of when I said yes to be on the committee for my daughter's Scout program.
My mistake was thinking that it was only once a month. Alright, contained to the [00:23:30] two hours where we met in a municipal building downtown. But as I said, it was all the additional work required in between those meetings and the email back and forth, and going to the bank to open the accounts for the new troop and all of the stuff.
That's what became too much. So the strategy, which I actually did try, was to start putting some of those invisible tasks into an admin block in my week. Like to my credit, I did do that, but my problem was that my admin blocks were already [00:24:00] full of all of my other administration tasks from being a mom and running a household and running an in-person business and running an online business, those are like separate animals, right?
And my admin box was literally already bursting at the seams.
And that's what gave me the evidence I needed to say, like, whoops, this math isn't mathing, and I need to subtract something from the equation to balance it out.
Now I do wanna give you another practical [00:24:30] strategy to help manage overhead when backing out isn't possible. Um, and that's to schedule a buffer block in your calendar. This is different from an admin block. A buffer block is. A floating period of unassigned time. Maybe it's 30 minutes at the end of the day, or maybe it's an hour once a week, that's designed to absorb the unexpected.
If your calendar is booked back to back, even a small invisible task, like a quick form you forgot [00:25:00] to fill out, or maybe somebody asking you for edits on something can completely derail you. When you intentionally create space for overflow, we leave room for the invisible work to land somewhere instead of it stacking up and stealing time from something else.
Now, the point of a buffer block is not to plan what will go there, okay? It's to protect yourself from the mental whiplash that works, mental whiplash of having to constantly [00:25:30] squeeze things in. So while the admin block is for known and intentional tasks like email calls and prep and things like that, the buffer block is for surprise tasks.
Okay, which overhead is full of. It's for the tasks that you didn't anticipate, maybe because just, you know, life happens that way, or maybe because you were still developing the skill of thinking about invisible overhead. I highly recommend starting with just one 30 [00:26:00] minute buffer, block per week and adjusting from there.
I mean, you do you, but if you're like, gimme a place to start 30 minutes once a week, perhaps at the end of your busiest day. All right. Now, something that's also important to note here, and it might be validating for someone to hear this, is that these invisible tasks still count as real work. Even if they don't show up on your to-do list, even if they're not graded or billed or [00:26:30] acknowledged, they're still using up your energy.
Your time and when we don't recognize that we tend to be harder on ourselves than we need to be. We say things like, why am I so tired? Like, I didn't even do that much today. Or like, I felt like I got nothing done. Or like, I shouldn't be this overwhelmed. I only had two meetings. But when you stop to think about it, you realize those two meetings had hours of prep, six emails each, some mental stress the night before and, and then follow up tasks [00:27:00] afterward.
Even though the visible part of your day looked chill, the invisible part drained your tank. All right, so a gentle reminder here that invisible tasks are still real. They're valid, they're work, and they deserve space on your calendar and respect in your energy budget. Okay, friends, I've been trying to get better about adding a quick little recap at the end of each episode.
So here goes today. We talked about one of the sneakiest time management traps [00:27:30] out there. The invisible overhead that comes with saying yes to things.
We covered what overhead is and why it's so hard to spot.
We covered real life examples of how small commitments can balloon into something way bigger.
And then the reasons that we tend to say yes in the first place, like fomo, optimism, um, trying to be helpful or just a natural human tendency, something called the planning fallacy, to misjudge how long tasks [00:28:00] take. Um, and two practical strategies we covered to manage the overhead when we just can't say no or we're already in it.
Number one, use a weekly admin block to handle known invisible tasks. And number two, schedule a buffer block for overflow and surprises. Most importantly, we've reframed time management as not just managing your hours, but managing your choices and knowing the true time costs of those choices before we [00:28:30] commit.
If this episode gave you a new way to think about time, I would love for you to follow the show so you don't miss what's coming. If you are on YouTube, make sure you hit subscribe. Uh, feel free to leave me a comment too. I love comments and I don't get that many on this channel, so I would love that. If you're listening to this on a podcast app, make sure you follow and subscribe there as well.
If you know someone who's constantly over committed or stretched too thin, send this their way. It might be just the thing they need to hear. Thank you for being with me here [00:29:00] today. I appreciate you so much and never stop learning.
