How Well Do You Manage Your Time?
Priorities, lists, order and the feeling that your day is yours
Time management is usually sold as a set of tricks - lists, apps, colour-coded calendars. When psychologists first measured it properly, they found four different things under the label, and the one that mattered most was not a technique at all. It was whether people felt in control of their time. This test scores all four, so you can see whether you need a better system or simply a different relationship with your day.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Answer about a normal working or studying month, not about the week you finally got organised.
What it measures
The four parts of Macan's Time Management Behavior Scale: setting goals and priorities, the mechanics of planning (lists, schedules), a preference for organisation, and the perceived control of your time. It is not the same as our procrastination test, which looks at delaying things you intended to do; here the question is how you plan and how in charge of your time you feel.
Based on: Time Management Behavior Scale (Macan, Shahani, Dipboye & Phillips, 1990; Macan, 1994)
Possible results
Goals and priorities
Whether you decide what matters most before deciding what to do.
Planning tools
How much you use lists, schedules and broken-down deadlines.
Preference for order
How much you like your space, files and days to be orderly.
Control of your time
How much you feel you, not events, decide how your time is spent.
Common questions
Is good time management just the opposite of procrastination?
No. Procrastination is delaying something you intended to do, often to escape an unpleasant feeling. Time management is how you plan, prioritise and organise your time. Many chronic procrastinators keep beautiful lists, and many people with no system at all never procrastinate. The two are related, which is why we cover procrastination in a separate test.
Does time management actually work?
Moderately, according to the best summary so far. A 2021 meta-analysis of the research found time management moderately related to job performance, academic results and wellbeing, and negatively related to distress. It also found the link with job performance has grown stronger since the early 1990s, perhaps because modern work leaves more of the planning to the individual.
Which time management habit matters most?
In Macan's original study, it was not a technique but the feeling of being in control of your time - it predicted satisfaction and self-rated performance better than list-making or tidiness. So the useful question is which habit gives you that feeling. For some people it is a daily priority, for others a calendar block, for others simply saying no more often.
Sources
- Macan, T. H., Shahani, C., Dipboye, R. L., & Phillips, A. P. (1990). College students' time management: Correlations with academic performance and stress. Journal of Educational Psychology. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.82.4.760
- Macan, T. H. (1994). Time management: Test of a process model. Journal of Applied Psychology. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.79.3.381
- Aeon, B., Faber, A., & Panaccio, A. (2021). Does time management work? A meta-analysis. PLOS ONE. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0245066
An honest note The items are Quinthea's own wording, adapted from Macan's Time Management Behavior Scale, so scores are not comparable to its published norms. The scale was developed with American students and employees, and later studies have not always reproduced its four factors neatly. A 2021 meta-analysis found time management moderately linked to performance and wellbeing, but most of that evidence is correlational: it cannot show that planning causes the benefits.