One priority - all goals answer

Beginners to work with time management often face the following problem.

A person answers questions, where he would like to go, what to achieve, and so on. The result is a long list of goals.

Or, a to-do list for the day is formed, and it turns out to be very long, since each case is urgent and important.
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It is also possible, in the development of the project, you get from the customer a long list of improvements that are needed yesterday.

The general pattern is simple - there are a lot of elements at the entrance, everything is important, but it is impossible to do everything. The solution is as follows.


The point is that we fall into the so-called “focus effect” trap (see list of cognitive distortions ). For example, focusing on who is to blame for a possible nuclear war, distracts attention from the fact that everyone will suffer in it.

So here - you need to step back from the very process of forming the list, and ask yourself - what is the most important thing at the moment? The answer to this question should be short and succinct, tezisnym. It must contain the purpose of the satisfaction of any need. For example, when a person writes a list of work cases, the answer might be: “finish the project and feel out of alarm”. If a person forms goals for the year, among which there are many purchases, vacations, various entertainments, the answer will be: “to rest and return the vigorous and energetic state of the body”.

Thus, it is necessary to rethink the root causes of the list. If there are several of them, choose at random a random one and listen to yourself - you chose the one. Here the intuition (subconscious) will tell, since it is not subject to distortions of the thinking process, which are natural to the consciousness.

So, choose one thesis. And then we go through the list and perform a logical operation & with each element. :) And if the output is false, we throw it out of the list. For example, if the thesis is to relax and recover, and there are 10 purchases and vacations in the list, then, of course, you need to choose a vacation and throw away the purchases.

The same technique was described in the excellent book Rework. There, the guys wrote that if a business has clear goals and visions for the future, it is always clear which tasks need to be solved in the present, and which will be superfluous (they do not coincide with the global vector).

This method is simple at first glance, but not so easy to implement. The thing is that we often cannot disconnect from the inertia of thinking and see a forest behind the trees.