Time Management Glossary from A to Z — Time Management

Time Management Glossary — 138 definitions

All the terms defined in the guide's 28 sections, in alphabetical order.
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Concrete action: Task stated as a precise action starting with a verb ("Call X", not "X file").
Lasting adoption: Quality of a system actually kept over time: the only criterion that really counts.
Calendar: Tool for scheduling slots and appointments; a true time dashboard if it includes work.
Calendar as steering tool: Using the calendar not only for meetings, but to steer all your work time.
Alignment: Consistency between time use and goals: the key to meaningful time management.
Assertiveness: Asserting yourself respectfully: stating limits clearly, neither submitting nor aggressing.
Attention: Limited mental resource, today the rarest: protecting it is often worth more than gaining minutes.
Self-diagnosis (time tracking): Recording real time use over a few days to objectify where it really goes.
Automation: Having a repetitive task done by a tool/rule, once configured, rather than manually each time.
Batching: Grouping same-nature tasks to process them in a row, limiting context switches.
Estimation bias: Gap between time you think you spend on an activity and real time: often large.
Review: Look at the past week: what moved forward, what blocked, what you learn from it.
Time block: Reserved, protected slot to accomplish an important task, with no planned interruption.
Bullet Journal (BuJo): Notebook organization system: calendar, tasks, notes combined, with quick symbols (bullets).
Burn-out: Professional exhaustion from chronic stress and prolonged overload. Prevent via balance and rest.
Multiple calendars: Separating/overlaying several calendars (work, personal, projects) for a clear overview.
Course / vision: The overall direction giving meaning to goals and arbitrating between tasks.
Focus capacity: Ability to sustain deep attention; it is cultivated and trained like a muscle.
Capture: Noting EVERYTHING requiring attention (tasks, ideas) in "inboxes", to keep nothing in mind.
Context switch: Mental effort to move from one task to another. Cumulated, it wastes huge time and energy.
Mental load: Weight of untreated things kept in mind. GTD reduces it by externalizing everything into a system.
Chronotype / energy peak: Time of day when most focused and performing (often morning, varies by person).
Clarify: Processing each captured item: is it actionable? What is the next action? (2-min rule included).
Consistency: One single, articulated system, where each tool has a clear role, rather than overlapping tools.
Column / card: Column = progress state; card = a task moving left to right.
Action minutes: Summary centered on decisions and actions (who/what/when), rather than detailed narrative.
Focusing efforts: Focusing energy on the vital rather than scattering it on the accessory.
Clear instructions: Objective, expected outcome, constraints and deadline made explicit, so the person succeeds.
Chosen consultation: Deciding yourself when to check messages/apps, rather than being interrupted at their initiative.
Time constraint: Deliberately tight limit creating productive tension and fighting procrastination.
Short / long term: Articulating immediate and background objectives, so as not to sacrifice important to urgent.
Opportunity cost: What you give up saying yes to something else: every yes has a hidden price.
Context-switch cost: Time and energy lost at each switch from one task type to another.
Disconnection: Virtue of paper: organizing without screen or notifications, limiting distractions.
Breakdown: Splitting a big task into doable sub-actions, to make it approachable and avoid procrastination.
Deep Work: Intense, distraction-free focus on a demanding task, producing the highest-value work (Cal Newport).
Delegation: Entrusting a task or responsibility to someone else, with needed instructions and autonomy.
Start small: Lowering the entry barrier by committing to only a tiny piece of a dreaded task.
Politely defer: Pushing back a non-urgent request ("I'll get back to you in an hour") without breaking focus.
Scattering: Spreading over too many tasks at once, which the WIP limit directly fights.
Availability: Free/busy slots visible to others; eases appointment-making without back-and-forth.
Right to disconnect: Right not to be reachable outside work: essential to recovery and balance.
Deadline: Date/time limit set for a task. A short deadline focuses effort; its absence favors spreading.
Attention savings: Focus gained by avoiding back-and-forth between different tasks.
Attention economy: Model where apps seek to capture your attention: protecting it is a deliberate act.
Priming effect: Once a task is started, you tend to continue it: action drives action.
Effectiveness vs efficiency: Effectiveness: doing what counts. Efficiency: doing it well. Effectiveness comes first.
Attention endurance: Ability to stay focused over time, maintained by work/pause alternation.
Do / Schedule / Delegate / Eliminate: The 4 actions by quadrant: urgent+important (do), important (schedule), urgent (delegate), neither (eliminate).
System reliability: Quality of an up-to-date organization system, thus trustworthy. Review ensures it.
Energy management: Aligning tasks with rhythms (energy peaks/lows) and respecting needs for lasting productivity.
Time management: Art of devoting time and attention to what really counts, rather than "always doing more".
Task manager: App centralizing tasks with reminders, deadlines, priorities, projects and sync.
GTD (Getting Things Done): David Allen's method to empty your head into a reliable system, in 5 steps.
Hybrid (paper + digital): Combining both strengths: paper for reflection/daily, digital for reminders and sharing.
Important: What counts for goals and values, even with no immediate deadline.
Inbox zero: Approach to process and empty your inbox regularly, so it never piles up.
Interruption: Request cutting an ongoing task (message, colleague, notification). Its true cost is refocus time.
External / internal interruption: External: from others (colleague, request). Internal: self-generated (urge to check, distraction).
Personal Kanban: Visual board (To do / Doing / Done columns) to steer your own tasks.
WIP limit: Maximum number of tasks allowed "in progress" simultaneously. Forces finishing before starting.
Catch-all list: Endless, unprioritized list mixing everything: demotivating and ineffective.
Pareto law (80/20): Principle that ~20% of causes produce ~80% of effects: few tasks make most results.
Parkinson's law: "Work expands to fill the time allotted." The more time, the more a task takes.
Margin / buffer: Unplanned time deliberately left to absorb contingencies, overruns and interruptions.
Progress margin: Time recoverable by cutting time thieves, revealed by diagnosis.
Eisenhower matrix: Grid crossing urgency and importance in 4 quadrants, to decide what to do with each task.
MoSCoW method: Prioritization in 4 categories: Must (essential), Should (important), Could (desirable), Won't (not now).
Paper method: Organizing time by hand (notebook, paper planner) rather than with digital tools.
Micro-management: Excessive control of every detail: counterproductive, it cancels delegation's benefit.
Micro-task: Very short task which, cumulated, clutters the mind; the 2-minute rule eliminates it at the source.
Microsoft To Do: Simple, free manager, integrated in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Ideal for lean use.
Migration: BuJo ritual of recopying undone tasks, forcing pertinence re-evaluation.
Timer: The central tool: it materializes time, creates commitment and shields sessions from distractions.
Focus / Do-not-disturb mode: Setting suspending notifications for a period, to work uninterrupted.
Template: Prepared, reusable content (type email, document) to never start from zero.
Multitasking: Doing several things at once. Actually the brain keeps switching: less effective and more tiring.
Must / Won't: Must: without which the goal fails. Won't: what you explicitly give up doing (for now).
Notification: Alert (sound, vibration, banner) triggered by an app. Main modern interruption source.
Selective notifications: Keeping only truly essential alerts active, disabling the rest per app.
Notion: All-in-one workspace (notes, databases, tasks), very flexible but to configure.
SMART goal: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound goal. Makes intention concrete and steerable.
Goal vs task: The goal is the targeted outcome; the task is an action to reach it. Prioritize tasks by goals.
Objectivation: Replacing impressions with measured facts, basis of any improvement.
Agenda: List of topics to address, circulated in advance; frames meetings and avoids digressions.
Organize / Review: Putting each thing in the right place (lists, projects, calendar); reviewing regularly to keep the system reliable.
Break: Regular cut (5 min, then longer every 4 sessions) to recover and last over time.
Dedicated slot: Slot devoted to one task type (e.g. "processing emails 11:00–11:30").
Protected slot: Slot dedicated and defended against any interruption, reserved for deep work.
Meeting-free slot: Slot protected from any meeting, devoted to focused background work.
Planning: Deciding in advance when to perform tasks, coherently with priorities.
Planning the evening before: Preparing your day the evening before: you start with direction, mind clear.
Pomodoro: A focused work session (classic 25 min) devoted to one task, uninterrupted.
Power Automate / Zapier: Tools linking apps to automate chains ("when X, then Y"), without coding.
List prioritization: Marking the day's 2–3 priority tasks to address first.
Priority: What deserves doing first, given goals and value — not apparent urgency.
Day's priorities: The 2–3 key tasks to absolutely accomplish in the day: the heart of daily planning.
Procrastination: Tendency to postpone, often difficult or unattractive tasks. An internal time thief.
Productivity: Doing the RIGHT things (effectiveness) and well (efficiency) — not simply doing a lot.
Time protection: Actively defending slots and priorities against non-essential requests.
"Important non-urgent" quadrant: The key quadrant (schedule): anticipation, training, reflection. Neglected, it generates tomorrow's urgencies.
Rapid logging: Quick symbol notation (task, event, note) at Bullet Journal's heart.
Reminder: Alert scheduled before an event, to forget nothing and anticipate transitions.
Realignment: Checking tasks and priorities truly serve goals, and correcting if needed.
Redundancy: Multiplying systems doing the same thing (several lists, calendars): confusion and load source.
Email rule: Email automation: sorting, filing, forwarding automatically by criteria.
2-minute rule: If a task takes under 2 minutes, do it immediately rather than postponing it.
Time log: Journal of activities and durations, kept through the day or at regular slices.
Appointment with yourself: Slot blocked for your own work, treated as seriously as an external appointment.
Renegotiation: Not refusing outright, but adjusting (deadline, scope, priority): "yes, but…".
Effective meeting: Necessary, framed meeting (goal, agenda, timing) leading to clear actions.
Useless meeting: Meeting with no clear goal, no decision, or replaceable by email: a collective time thief.
Week review: Weekly point to set the week's big priorities (see also 3-5).
Weekly review: Regular ritual (30–60 min) of review, list updates and next-week preparation.
Saying no: Refusing or renegotiating with tact requests not serving priorities, without aggression or guilt.
Availability signal: Showing you're focused (busy status, headset, closed door) to cut external interruptions.
Light tracking: Accompaniment without micro-management: measured checkpoints, granted trust.
Over-perfection: Tendency to polish beyond need; a deadline helps stop at "good enough".
Personal system: The coherent set of tools and methods adopted to manage time and tasks.
Single system: Principle: centralizing in ONE tool rather than scattering tasks across redundant systems.
High-impact task: Task among the 20% generating most value: to address first.
Repetitive task: Predictable action regularly redone: best automation or simplification candidate.
Pomodoro technique: Working in timed sessions (often 25 min) separated by short breaks, for focus and endurance.
Collective time: Sum of all participants' time: a 1h meeting at 8 = 8h consumed. Respect it.
Time-blocking: Reserving calendar slots devoted to precise tasks, like scheduling a meeting.
Time-blocking in calendar: Reserving calendar slots for important tasks, not only meetings.
Time-boxing: Allocating a fixed duration to a task and sticking to it, rather than doing it "until finished".
To-do list: List of tasks to accomplish. Effective if realistic, limited, prioritized and made of concrete actions.
Todoist: Powerful manager: priorities, projects, labels, natural language for deadlines. Multiplatform.
Continuous processing (avoid): Checking/processing continuously (emails, messages): fragments attention and multiplies transitions.
Email batching: Checking and processing email at defined times, rather than continuously all day.
Shallow work: Undemanding tasks, often logistical (emails, meetings), easy to do but low-value.
Urgent: Requiring immediate action (deadline, request). Urgency doesn't imply importance.
Produced value: High-impact outcome from deep work, as opposed to shallow-work agitation.
Emptying lists: Processing, updating and cleaning lists and inboxes to restart on a clean basis.
Flow visualization: Seeing all your work and progress at a glance, rather than a linear list.
Time thief: Activity consuming time without serving priorities (interruptions, notifications, useless meetings…).
Unique value zone: What only you can/should do: what delegating the rest preserves.