Dr Amantha Imber is obsessed with time management, productivity and how we get the most out of the hours we have available each day.
And she’s going against the trend of what we’ve come to expect from those writing, speaking and working in the space of time management and productivity. Imber is publishing books and getting heard in a field heavily dominated by men.
Dr Imber is an organisational psychologist, founder of behavioural science consultancy, Inventium, and host of the number one ranking business podcast, How I Work, where she interviews some of the world’s most successful innovators.
She’s consolidated her knowledge on productivity and time management into her new book, Time Wise, which details how to use the habits of highly effective people to level up your life.
On the latest Women’s Agenda podcast episode, Dr Imber joined us as a special guest host where she shared more information about her latest book and gave insight into how to make the most of your time.
“When I wrote Time Wise, I didn’t want to create just another productivity book that makes everyone feel completely ineffective in how they currently do their day,” she said. “For me, it’s about being really deliberate with how you use your time as opposed to lots of ways to just get things done quicker and faster and mobile and never switch off.”
Dr Imber founded her company, Inventium, about 15 years ago, and in that time, has used her knowledge as an organisational psychologist to experiment with different ways to bring better balance to each of her team members’ unique lives.
The realities of productivity in day-to-day life
For many people, life can sometimes get in the way of the perfect, productive routine. As a woman in business and a single parent, Dr Imber understands the unique challenges that come with juggling unpaid, caring responsibilities on top of paid work.
“If you look at most productivity gurus, in inverted commas, that are out there in that particular category, they’re mostly men– a lot of them are younger men that don’t have kids,” she says.
Many of the books and podcasts in today’s market, geared towards increasing productivity, fail to mention the disruptions that come with caring responsibilities. Dr Imber’s book offers a unique perspective on time management for the many women in business taking on the brunt of unpaid work.
Being more productive by working less days
One of these ways was to experiment with a four-day work week.
In the back half of 2020, Inventium undertook a six-month trial where the team worked four days instead of the usual five. They tracked the data and found that productivity increased 26 per cent, people’s stress was reduced and their intentions to stay with the company grew stronger. For the already high-performing team whose job it is to teach other people to be more productive, the trial was a huge success.
“Aside from the fact that we’ve really doubled down on a lot of the productivity strategies that we teach to our clients and certainly strategies that are in my new book, Time Wise, […] I don’t think that people think all that deliberately about how they use their working hours,” she says.
“When you’re suddenly given this massive constraint – you’ve just cut 20 per cent of the working week and 20% of the available hours to get your job done– you start to think really consciously and deliberately about how you use every hour in the day.”
Working to your chronotype
As a business leader, Dr Imber works with her team members’ individual chronotypes to inspire time management and ideas.
“It’s part of our DNA, we have been working in certain ways for years and it’s just become habitual,” she says.
“We all work to our Chrono type. And so chronotype is basically a fancy name for the peaks and troughs in our energy levels over a 24 hour period. So broadly speaking, there are larks who are morning people, owls who do their best work at night, then there’s middle birds who are like larks, but they get up an hour or two later and still do their best work in the morning.”
The Inventium team frequently does things asynchronously via email or Google Docs to accommodate each individual’s different preference in working hours. This reduces the need for too many meetings, which Dr Imber says is one of the biggest barriers to productivity.
Balancing passion and rest
While Dr Imber is always on the hunt for ways to increase productivity. She also knows the importance of switching off and allowing for rest. It can be tricky to take breaks when your work is also your passion, but she says it doesn’t always have to be one or the other.
“I think I’m actually very good at switching off but I caveat that with the fact that I love my work. So, when I’m talking about things to do with work, or when I’m reading the book of someone I’m gonna be interviewing on How I Work, it feels like fun,” she says. “If I’m reading Cal Newport’s latest book on the weekend, am I working or am I just enjoying myself? And I think the answer is both.”
“Yes, I absolutely switch off and I try not to do what would be considered as work on weekends- and obviously not on Fridays. But there are things that I love doing and they happen to be stuff that I do for work.”
You can hear more from Dr Amantha Imber on The Women’s Agenda Podcast, where we examine some of the best stories covered on Women’s Agenda. Subscribe on Spotify or iTunes or listen below.
The audio and written versions of Time Wise will be available on July 5.