Time management on a personal example: 10 theses
One of the most expensive and irreplaceable resources that we all possess is time. On average, we have 66.29 years, which is equivalent to 24212 days, or 34865280 minutes, or 2091916800 seconds. Considering that a person spends a third of his time on sleeping, and most of the readers of this article have spent a full third of this resource, there is not much time left for them to throw around. Time is money, time is life.
There is no excess and lack of time - it only needs to be appreciated and be able to use its flow, like a stream of rivers - thanks to which a person moves on ships and uses the power of water in the mills. This should also be done correctly, so as not to row against the current. Even the smallest streams sharpen rocks, and seconds can take shape in years of useful work and success.
')
I myself in the process of thinking and writing this article often complained about the lack of time. From idea to execution, it took more than one month, and so that this article did not seem like a rewriting of the next abstracts from time management, I spent not so few minutes, hours, days and tried various ideas that I want to share. So, if you want to do time management, then do it, and do not read about it! This time. If you are interested in practices, methods, techniques - contact the original sources : S. Covey, G. Arkhangelsky, D. Allen - from managing yourself, personal space, tricks. These are two. In my article I will talk about my own experience, about the flow of time and how it is located in it.
“Remember that your own decision to succeed is more important than hundreds of others.” - Abraham Lincoln
So, it all started with the fact that one day in May, my life changed, and instead of the standard schedule from eight to five and following the roadmap, I myself had to distribute, create schedules and monitor their execution. From a technical point of view, this is not difficult: we allocate a task, set deadlines, assign a resource. Since our resources are alive - people, as well as the changing code, for the amendment we’ll add the risks and costs of drinking tea, kicking a thigh in the dining room, on the complexity and intricacy of the problems and requirements - which is even simpler, because requires an assessment of the performance of an algorithm, or the application of technology. Take the puzzle in Jira, click and ... From a technical point of view ... But in practice it is not quite so. Instead of sitting in a chair and moving resources, you have to be involved in the whole process, not only of your own piece of code, but of the whole project, or even several projects that are not completely intersecting with each other. Those. to answer questions, make decisions, explain ... and, actually, in this rat race, in constant switching from task to task and from person to person, my day began to pass ...
I thought about it and decided that there was probably something wrong here, because I need my time for myself, not only for my subordinates and projects. And if so, it means that we must learn to manage it.
For a start it is worth understanding what we ourselves want. This is a matter of principle. Not only in work, but also in life. Each of us has a role in life. My roles, for example, can be called: employee, friend, teacher, student, son, husband, etc ... It is worth highlighting the main and principal ones for you. All of them will be different, of course, but, most likely, we all would like to have a good career, and be a good friend, and an excellent spouse, and somehow show ourselves in society - with your talent or public recognition. And it will be easier and better to live, the more harmonious and more evenly (of course, taking into account the internal coefficient of importance), these areas will develop.
Secondly, it is necessary to make a list of all the cases, projects, desires that are currently available and classify what area they will belong to. It may well be that some desires or actions that we often postpone, which put pressure on us, will turn out to be not at all important for our guidelines. Here it is necessary to choose the most important and not to niggle. What exactly will affect our key areas of life? When is this important? Will this be important in the future?
For myself, for simplicity, I have identified only four areas:
In practice, each of the categories could be divided in my case as well:
- Career - a list of what is responsible for professional success - steps, actions, accomplishments, acquired skills. Here I took both professional (and corporate including) training (myself as a student), and the role of a teacher and mentor - exchange of experience, trainings.
- Self - development - because One of the most unpleasant things for me in life is stagnation in the existing conditions. I am interested in the development of knowledge and skills. So, for example, here I have included language classes, reading literature (professional and artistic), sports, getting rights, time management, and hobby.
- Society - as communication with colleagues, friends, and the establishment and maintenance of relationships with people, including some publications.
- Family - this is a relationship with relatives and loved ones. Both including routine, business, material relationships, and non-material relationships.
In the end, after a thorough analysis / analysis, I left 28 tasks that require my close attention and execution. This is the third thesis: knowing what and when you want - start doing it!
“We are what we do all the time. Perfection is not an action, but a habit. ”- Aristotle
Be sure to try - and you will like it! In my case, in addition to job responsibilities at work, finding out about new trends and technologies, improving skills, I had to go to a driving school, study English, keep fit, read books, magazines, watch movies, meet friends, parents, give compliments of the beloved and pamper her from time to time with culinary masterpieces. So, after a few days, I had a sense of time. More precisely, the feeling of lack of time. And time was a pity to lose on the examination of the seals on the Internet. In addition, there was a problem that, despite the fact that an important task was on the list, she stubbornly refused to be fulfilled.
The fourth thesis will be typical advice from time management: formulate goals, not goals, but actions. In my case, “keep fit” was transformed into “sign up for a fitness club,” “go to a fitness club,” “do exercises”. The goal became separable and measurable, which means executable. If you follow the terminology of Gleb Arkhangelsky, in order to eat an elephant, you have to swallow it with steaks, at least daily (weekly). The processing of my list of steaks and frog affairs (small but unpleasant things that are postponed daily for tomorrow) was to bring the list of goals to a list of repeated and measurable cases - weekly planning.
Of course, I agree, it sounds strange that you should “make a compliment” seven times - and tick off the “done” one day, but a completely measurable approach to assess the quality of one or another chosen sphere of life. I can hardly say that it is less important for me than to check reports from my subordinates.
As a result of these searches and conclusions, I had the following spreadsheet, in which I had to note progress daily and track success rates. Contrary to my expectations, for the first two weeks, the results against the goals set for me were not only worse, but catastrophically worse. Of course, not every business in the table is necessarily 100% performance, but if it turns red instead of green, this is an alarm signal. Therefore, I have a little complicated the excel-book, collecting statistics on days of the week, on weeks, on spheres. I determined for myself what a “productive” and “effective” day and week are.
Efficiency / productivity on days of the week :
Productivity :
Efficiency (planned) :
Efficiency (current) :
As a result of the re-analysis, I, of course, concluded that some cases can be combined (for example, you can read on the way to work, as, incidentally, watch movies), fiction can be obtained in the form of audio recordings, and therefore you can listen to road, and in the same fitness club. Instead of viewing news portals, you can set up the necessary selection, rss-feeds, and / or take the thematic magazine from the reception, printouts and read them during lunch. The case has shifted from a dead end, but not too well. I reread the instructions of Lyubishchev and tried to follow them, but, alas, I could not achieve everything. What was taking my time?
Fifth thesis: know the time in person: where and what you spend time on. The easiest way to start is with statistics: how much and on what areas it goes. The most part will be expected - this is a dream, a road, some kind of routine - fees from work and for work, preparations for bedtime, life and the like. In my opinion, the most effective method of assessment is to record your employment in a journal. I found it convenient to use an A4 notebook, where I contributed the start time of some action with an ordinary ballpoint pen. This does not mean that every five minutes you need to write down what you are doing at this time - make entries when your activity changes. Thus, it is possible to track which cases make up useful time and which do not. The main thing is to write as is: distracted by a question from a colleague - write it down. Distracted by the Internet - write. As you return to business, re-add the following mark. The result should be quite a ragged schedule, in which every now and then there will be holes from the “junk time”. How to deal with it is solely your business. What is useful you will do while waiting for the transport and how you will treat your colleague distracting you. In my case, most of the garbage time was made up of these two categories. With the first one it’s understandable - we are listening to an audiobook, and with the second one - instead of the tendency to be a universal reference book, I decided that it is better to accumulate questions and disassemble them in a crowd. Usually, up to 99% of the information is in Google or in a person’s own brain (one has only to agitate) in a short time. In addition, in terms of discipline and responsibility, this approach is also preferable. I will not dwell on this in detail, let me just say that such a “five-minute” assessment of my time greatly increased my efficiency and productivity, and my guys appreciated parasitic urgent business (phone calls, questions, e-mails, burning reactions to bugs , as well as a third-party embellishment and licensing of the code that is not very important for the project, the sticking of features (the code should be checked and reviewed against standards and specifications). Constant distractions and switching of attention are taken out of the state of the flow and simply force even extra minutes, or even dozens of, to flounder in order to get back on track.
“You can do anything, but not everything” - David Allen.
However, the third category of garbage time remained floating - when at the end of the day this self-imposed mode wanted to break and sit on the Internet instead of something useful. Although it sounds strange, one of the approaches was to force myself, instead of wasting this time on idleness, to spend it in a more productive manner - on the same films watching - but from time to time I couldn’t overcome myself, procrastination took over me, and some days, reckless despair rolled over me from how everything was planned out, and what frameworks and inconsistencies they had with me. As if such a local “pinarik” did not kick me, from time to time he demotivated me and demanded to turn off from life for a day or two. Day. Two days. Ineffective and reckless.
“The reason for any failure is rash actions” - Alex McKenzie.
Then I again began to argue and analyze how it came to be so. Even once a month or two, but such holes were, and were a stable trend. They did not suit me. Hence the sixth thesis: the effectiveness of time management is not in the number of supported cases, but in their quality. I began to understand that the further, the worse I can manage parallel affairs a day. Roughly speaking, if I had to write code for the day, prepare training, study English, visit the pool and read several chapters from professional literature, then 2-3 of them were effective, 2 were productive, and the rest were formally started, somehow hastily done. that influenced the sensation of the result, which, ultimately, was reflected in my subconscious evaluation of my actions. Yes, of course, I could from time to time, as before, immediately implement effectively 5 and 7 or more of such resource-intensive and concentration-intensive projects, but for some short time intervals, after which the disruption followed. My conclusion was such that it is necessary to plan not only the weekly list of frogs, but to have a plan for the day, in which no more than three key cases will be clearly indicated. By the way, this observation explained to me a performance slump on Monday, when often there were tails from the weekend. After all, rest is also an activity, a matter, an occupation, and not an appendage in the “remaining time”.
Thesis of the seventh: switch completely. Give your business exactly the time and the framework they deserve. In other words: do not think about working at home, but when you come to work - work. Do not sit out at work, but do not run away from it. Respect your choice at home and at work. Unexpected “extra time”, on something saved, can always be filled with important things. Set the rule: “Your working hours are your time, not your boss and timekeeper’s.” Learn to appreciate it more than others - because only you know its true value, invest in yourself. If you work 8 hours a day, then devote this time to what is most correlated with your business from the areas related to work. If you spend time with your family, then spend it with your family, and not with communication with the TV or a glass of brandy, and even more so without being engaged in parallel preparation for the upcoming working day. Look for opportunities. Switch over. Delimit.
Thesis of the eighth: conduct revisions from time to time. Collecting statistics and planning is good, but not enough. Since your goals and values ​​may change, sooner or later you will have to make changes to the table, list of goals and desires. The same about coefficients. Nevertheless, still be honest with yourself, do not adjust the numbers for the results.
The thesis of the ninth: have always on hand list of affairs . If you do not have such a list, be sure to start. I'm not talking about the list of regular cases, not about the list of frogs, but about some one-time goals and objectives. They may or may not be time bound. He may or may not be tied to a place. In any case, always keep it in front of your eyes and / or at hand. Now there are not so few tools that allow you to manage such lists of tasks, and the same Outlook will fit perfectly for these purposes, although I prefer the simple but accessible for any platform RememberTheMilk. Enter the task, if necessary, specify the time and place, determine the scope, priority. And from time to time you look. The main thing is to do it regularly: formulate goals and deeds as actions.
Success is half the battle; the main thing is to keep him - Orison Scott Marden.
Tenth thesis: be in the flow! After the appearance of the feeling of time, the feeling of its value (especially the value of the minutes spent with your loved ones and / or your favorite hobby), you will certainly want to follow your goals, values, plans and at the same time be more flexible. Again, by analogy with water - the stream has tremendous power, driving force and direction, while it does not break, but goes around obstacles and rocks. To achieve this, you can try different techniques, you can learn from mistakes - in any case, you will have more time to do it effectively. This will bring satisfaction and free up time for new things. The more you do, the more you have time. So in the end I just wish good luck and desire to catch my own wave in managing myself and my time. And, if you still do not remember my first thesis, then remember the ever-current Chinese saying:
A journey of a thousand li begins with one step - Lao Tzu.
There is no excess and lack of time - it only needs to be appreciated and be able to use its flow, like a stream of rivers - thanks to which a person moves on ships and uses the power of water in the mills. This should also be done correctly, so as not to row against the current. Even the smallest streams sharpen rocks, and seconds can take shape in years of useful work and success.
')
I myself in the process of thinking and writing this article often complained about the lack of time. From idea to execution, it took more than one month, and so that this article did not seem like a rewriting of the next abstracts from time management, I spent not so few minutes, hours, days and tried various ideas that I want to share. So, if you want to do time management, then do it, and do not read about it! This time. If you are interested in practices, methods, techniques - contact the original sources : S. Covey, G. Arkhangelsky, D. Allen - from managing yourself, personal space, tricks. These are two. In my article I will talk about my own experience, about the flow of time and how it is located in it.
“Remember that your own decision to succeed is more important than hundreds of others.” - Abraham Lincoln
So, it all started with the fact that one day in May, my life changed, and instead of the standard schedule from eight to five and following the roadmap, I myself had to distribute, create schedules and monitor their execution. From a technical point of view, this is not difficult: we allocate a task, set deadlines, assign a resource. Since our resources are alive - people, as well as the changing code, for the amendment we’ll add the risks and costs of drinking tea, kicking a thigh in the dining room, on the complexity and intricacy of the problems and requirements - which is even simpler, because requires an assessment of the performance of an algorithm, or the application of technology. Take the puzzle in Jira, click and ... From a technical point of view ... But in practice it is not quite so. Instead of sitting in a chair and moving resources, you have to be involved in the whole process, not only of your own piece of code, but of the whole project, or even several projects that are not completely intersecting with each other. Those. to answer questions, make decisions, explain ... and, actually, in this rat race, in constant switching from task to task and from person to person, my day began to pass ...
I thought about it and decided that there was probably something wrong here, because I need my time for myself, not only for my subordinates and projects. And if so, it means that we must learn to manage it.
For a start it is worth understanding what we ourselves want. This is a matter of principle. Not only in work, but also in life. Each of us has a role in life. My roles, for example, can be called: employee, friend, teacher, student, son, husband, etc ... It is worth highlighting the main and principal ones for you. All of them will be different, of course, but, most likely, we all would like to have a good career, and be a good friend, and an excellent spouse, and somehow show ourselves in society - with your talent or public recognition. And it will be easier and better to live, the more harmonious and more evenly (of course, taking into account the internal coefficient of importance), these areas will develop.
Secondly, it is necessary to make a list of all the cases, projects, desires that are currently available and classify what area they will belong to. It may well be that some desires or actions that we often postpone, which put pressure on us, will turn out to be not at all important for our guidelines. Here it is necessary to choose the most important and not to niggle. What exactly will affect our key areas of life? When is this important? Will this be important in the future?
For myself, for simplicity, I have identified only four areas:
- Career
- Self development
- Society
- Family
In practice, each of the categories could be divided in my case as well:
- Career - a list of what is responsible for professional success - steps, actions, accomplishments, acquired skills. Here I took both professional (and corporate including) training (myself as a student), and the role of a teacher and mentor - exchange of experience, trainings.
- Self - development - because One of the most unpleasant things for me in life is stagnation in the existing conditions. I am interested in the development of knowledge and skills. So, for example, here I have included language classes, reading literature (professional and artistic), sports, getting rights, time management, and hobby.
- Society - as communication with colleagues, friends, and the establishment and maintenance of relationships with people, including some publications.
- Family - this is a relationship with relatives and loved ones. Both including routine, business, material relationships, and non-material relationships.
In the end, after a thorough analysis / analysis, I left 28 tasks that require my close attention and execution. This is the third thesis: knowing what and when you want - start doing it!
“We are what we do all the time. Perfection is not an action, but a habit. ”- Aristotle
Be sure to try - and you will like it! In my case, in addition to job responsibilities at work, finding out about new trends and technologies, improving skills, I had to go to a driving school, study English, keep fit, read books, magazines, watch movies, meet friends, parents, give compliments of the beloved and pamper her from time to time with culinary masterpieces. So, after a few days, I had a sense of time. More precisely, the feeling of lack of time. And time was a pity to lose on the examination of the seals on the Internet. In addition, there was a problem that, despite the fact that an important task was on the list, she stubbornly refused to be fulfilled.
The fourth thesis will be typical advice from time management: formulate goals, not goals, but actions. In my case, “keep fit” was transformed into “sign up for a fitness club,” “go to a fitness club,” “do exercises”. The goal became separable and measurable, which means executable. If you follow the terminology of Gleb Arkhangelsky, in order to eat an elephant, you have to swallow it with steaks, at least daily (weekly). The processing of my list of steaks and frog affairs (small but unpleasant things that are postponed daily for tomorrow) was to bring the list of goals to a list of repeated and measurable cases - weekly planning.
Of course, I agree, it sounds strange that you should “make a compliment” seven times - and tick off the “done” one day, but a completely measurable approach to assess the quality of one or another chosen sphere of life. I can hardly say that it is less important for me than to check reports from my subordinates.
As a result of these searches and conclusions, I had the following spreadsheet, in which I had to note progress daily and track success rates. Contrary to my expectations, for the first two weeks, the results against the goals set for me were not only worse, but catastrophically worse. Of course, not every business in the table is necessarily 100% performance, but if it turns red instead of green, this is an alarm signal. Therefore, I have a little complicated the excel-book, collecting statistics on days of the week, on weeks, on spheres. I determined for myself what a “productive” and “effective” day and week are.
Efficiency / productivity on days of the week :
Productivity :
Efficiency (planned) :
Efficiency (current) :
As a result of the re-analysis, I, of course, concluded that some cases can be combined (for example, you can read on the way to work, as, incidentally, watch movies), fiction can be obtained in the form of audio recordings, and therefore you can listen to road, and in the same fitness club. Instead of viewing news portals, you can set up the necessary selection, rss-feeds, and / or take the thematic magazine from the reception, printouts and read them during lunch. The case has shifted from a dead end, but not too well. I reread the instructions of Lyubishchev and tried to follow them, but, alas, I could not achieve everything. What was taking my time?
Fifth thesis: know the time in person: where and what you spend time on. The easiest way to start is with statistics: how much and on what areas it goes. The most part will be expected - this is a dream, a road, some kind of routine - fees from work and for work, preparations for bedtime, life and the like. In my opinion, the most effective method of assessment is to record your employment in a journal. I found it convenient to use an A4 notebook, where I contributed the start time of some action with an ordinary ballpoint pen. This does not mean that every five minutes you need to write down what you are doing at this time - make entries when your activity changes. Thus, it is possible to track which cases make up useful time and which do not. The main thing is to write as is: distracted by a question from a colleague - write it down. Distracted by the Internet - write. As you return to business, re-add the following mark. The result should be quite a ragged schedule, in which every now and then there will be holes from the “junk time”. How to deal with it is solely your business. What is useful you will do while waiting for the transport and how you will treat your colleague distracting you. In my case, most of the garbage time was made up of these two categories. With the first one it’s understandable - we are listening to an audiobook, and with the second one - instead of the tendency to be a universal reference book, I decided that it is better to accumulate questions and disassemble them in a crowd. Usually, up to 99% of the information is in Google or in a person’s own brain (one has only to agitate) in a short time. In addition, in terms of discipline and responsibility, this approach is also preferable. I will not dwell on this in detail, let me just say that such a “five-minute” assessment of my time greatly increased my efficiency and productivity, and my guys appreciated parasitic urgent business (phone calls, questions, e-mails, burning reactions to bugs , as well as a third-party embellishment and licensing of the code that is not very important for the project, the sticking of features (the code should be checked and reviewed against standards and specifications). Constant distractions and switching of attention are taken out of the state of the flow and simply force even extra minutes, or even dozens of, to flounder in order to get back on track.
“You can do anything, but not everything” - David Allen.
However, the third category of garbage time remained floating - when at the end of the day this self-imposed mode wanted to break and sit on the Internet instead of something useful. Although it sounds strange, one of the approaches was to force myself, instead of wasting this time on idleness, to spend it in a more productive manner - on the same films watching - but from time to time I couldn’t overcome myself, procrastination took over me, and some days, reckless despair rolled over me from how everything was planned out, and what frameworks and inconsistencies they had with me. As if such a local “pinarik” did not kick me, from time to time he demotivated me and demanded to turn off from life for a day or two. Day. Two days. Ineffective and reckless.
“The reason for any failure is rash actions” - Alex McKenzie.
Then I again began to argue and analyze how it came to be so. Even once a month or two, but such holes were, and were a stable trend. They did not suit me. Hence the sixth thesis: the effectiveness of time management is not in the number of supported cases, but in their quality. I began to understand that the further, the worse I can manage parallel affairs a day. Roughly speaking, if I had to write code for the day, prepare training, study English, visit the pool and read several chapters from professional literature, then 2-3 of them were effective, 2 were productive, and the rest were formally started, somehow hastily done. that influenced the sensation of the result, which, ultimately, was reflected in my subconscious evaluation of my actions. Yes, of course, I could from time to time, as before, immediately implement effectively 5 and 7 or more of such resource-intensive and concentration-intensive projects, but for some short time intervals, after which the disruption followed. My conclusion was such that it is necessary to plan not only the weekly list of frogs, but to have a plan for the day, in which no more than three key cases will be clearly indicated. By the way, this observation explained to me a performance slump on Monday, when often there were tails from the weekend. After all, rest is also an activity, a matter, an occupation, and not an appendage in the “remaining time”.
Thesis of the seventh: switch completely. Give your business exactly the time and the framework they deserve. In other words: do not think about working at home, but when you come to work - work. Do not sit out at work, but do not run away from it. Respect your choice at home and at work. Unexpected “extra time”, on something saved, can always be filled with important things. Set the rule: “Your working hours are your time, not your boss and timekeeper’s.” Learn to appreciate it more than others - because only you know its true value, invest in yourself. If you work 8 hours a day, then devote this time to what is most correlated with your business from the areas related to work. If you spend time with your family, then spend it with your family, and not with communication with the TV or a glass of brandy, and even more so without being engaged in parallel preparation for the upcoming working day. Look for opportunities. Switch over. Delimit.
Thesis of the eighth: conduct revisions from time to time. Collecting statistics and planning is good, but not enough. Since your goals and values ​​may change, sooner or later you will have to make changes to the table, list of goals and desires. The same about coefficients. Nevertheless, still be honest with yourself, do not adjust the numbers for the results.
The thesis of the ninth: have always on hand list of affairs . If you do not have such a list, be sure to start. I'm not talking about the list of regular cases, not about the list of frogs, but about some one-time goals and objectives. They may or may not be time bound. He may or may not be tied to a place. In any case, always keep it in front of your eyes and / or at hand. Now there are not so few tools that allow you to manage such lists of tasks, and the same Outlook will fit perfectly for these purposes, although I prefer the simple but accessible for any platform RememberTheMilk. Enter the task, if necessary, specify the time and place, determine the scope, priority. And from time to time you look. The main thing is to do it regularly: formulate goals and deeds as actions.
Success is half the battle; the main thing is to keep him - Orison Scott Marden.
Tenth thesis: be in the flow! After the appearance of the feeling of time, the feeling of its value (especially the value of the minutes spent with your loved ones and / or your favorite hobby), you will certainly want to follow your goals, values, plans and at the same time be more flexible. Again, by analogy with water - the stream has tremendous power, driving force and direction, while it does not break, but goes around obstacles and rocks. To achieve this, you can try different techniques, you can learn from mistakes - in any case, you will have more time to do it effectively. This will bring satisfaction and free up time for new things. The more you do, the more you have time. So in the end I just wish good luck and desire to catch my own wave in managing myself and my time. And, if you still do not remember my first thesis, then remember the ever-current Chinese saying:
A journey of a thousand li begins with one step - Lao Tzu.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/177225/
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