Personal time management
After reading a recent topic about frogs, I realized that the Habrasoobschestvo is not very well versed in matters of time management and many have never been engaged in building their own time system.
Therefore, I will try to correct this shortcoming.
Under the cut you will not find any innovative models of time management. It will be a foundation, a foundation, without which people who care about their future, their well-being and personal development cannot be dispensed with.
')
Welcome!
Planning
This is the most basic point in time management. In order to have time for everything, to do much more than we did before, it is necessary to plan your day. It would seem to be commonplace, but at the same time many people neglect this business, which takes only 5-10 minutes of your time per day. Plan things to do and need to do it every day. Only in this way will the picture with all your projects and undertakings become clear, only in this way you will understand where you are going, what you are striving for, how close you have come to your Goal and how much is still left to be done. Only in this way you can not dig into the routine of everyday affairs and always see the most important thing for which you live and work.
Tools
To build your time system, the choice of tools is absolutely not important and lies solely in the plane of your habits and usability. It can be a paper diary, it can be Google Calendar, Outlook, post-it pages, a communicator or any other way of storing and recording information that you think will be convenient for you.
If you have a lot of meetings, then the best options would be a paper diary or communicator, if you are at your computer almost all the time, this could be a Google Calendar or other software. It is better that there is a possibility of synchronization between the worker and the home computer, which would always keep a finger on the pulse and be able at any time to get access to your records. If you are working on a laptop, but there is not always the Internet - a good planning tool is Outlook. Convenient interface, great features and good flexibility.
In general, choose a tool based on lifestyle and personal preferences.
Methods
Everything is very simple. In the evening of the outgoing day or in the morning, you need to figure out all the urgent matters and the matters that you would like to do today and write them in your diary.
Cases can be divided into 3 types:
- Rigid (rigidly tied to time. For example, a meeting with a customer or a scheduled meeting scheduled for a specific time)
- Soft (depending on the grid of hard cases, but not dependent on a specific time. For example, writing a commercial offer, developing a module. They are stretched in time and not tied to specific watches, but at the same time, they depend on hard cases, how do you have to interrupt and go to the customer or go to a meeting)
- Tapes (cases that can be performed at any time. For example, call a friend, remind a colleague of your request, check the progress of the module programming work. In general, distribute planned butting to your subordinates and colleagues to be aware of the progress of the work / project).
- Super-urgent (cases that appear suddenly and require immediate execution. For example, urgently raise a fallen server)
As can be seen from our plan, we have two “hard” cases around which we must build all our “soft” affairs. For example, we can only start “working on the system” at 5:00 pm, since in the morning and in the interval between “hard” cases, we will not physically have time to complete this work.
Below our time schedule, we wrote out three “pokes” that can be performed at any time. It is better if it is during a trip to the customer, since all three “pokes” are, in fact, a phone call.
With more global planning, business needs to be divided into two types:
- Short-term business that needs to be done in the near future)
- Long-term (cases that need to be performed, but the deadline has not yet come up, or simply does not have one)
I will tell about this by my example.
I use Google Calendar, because all the time I am at the computer and practically don’t go to meetings. Its functionality is quite enough to satisfy my daily planning needs.
How the work is built:
I have a method of displaying the time grid in the form of a week, lined on a clock scale.
Every evening in the left column, I write out all the things that need to be done tomorrow. I know my strength, so I always write out a little more than, according to calculations, can keep within a working day. If I do almost everything - well. If I do absolutely everything, it's wonderful. It’s just that maybe some of the cases will go faster than planned, so I always know what to do with the time left.
In the right-hand columns, I write out all my affairs - both short-term and long-term. And every evening I simply drag the blocks with affairs from the right columns to the left, thus shaping my future day, while mentally setting priorities - it’s time to start and what else to endure. Usually, short-term affairs all fit in one working day and there is always room for long-term ones, so I don’t do a hard division of one from another.
I do not bind to a specific time, because the specifics of the work does not require it. There are almost no super-urgent cases, and if they do, they appear spontaneously. That's why they are super urgent. If I know in a few days about the upcoming business - then it can hardly be called super-urgent.
Thus, making a plan every evening, I am always aware of my upcoming affairs.
And now about how I form the order of affairs.
Priorities
This is also one of the key points when building your time system. You need to be able to prioritize your business and follow a predetermined schedule. If you put off complex and important matters for the end, you can simply fail to complete the task and, as a result,get kicked out of the bosses from feeling uncomfortable because of the deadline.
Therefore, planning your business - always prioritize. First, there must be priority cases that can not be delayed. Because if you miss the deadlines, we will always have a reserve of time that we can pick up from less urgent matters.
The easiest way and one of the most effective is to write out a to-do list in descending order of urgency.
It is in this way that I build my day - in the morning I begin to solve the most urgent issues, and in the evening there are things that can be postponed until the next, more relaxed, day.
Very important is the issue of constantly evolving permanent urgent tasks.
For example, you have planned the elaboration of the system architecture, which requires you to focus as much as possible and attention. And in the midst of work, you are given the task of resolving the issue with the customer (fix the bug on the site). It's okay that you interrupt the elaboration of architecture. Bring to a logical point and take up a super-urgent task. You will not lose much time, and you will increase the loyalty of your bosses and client.
Do not be afraid to change your daily plan. Do not be afraid to enter there things that yesterday evening or morning didn’t even suspect. Change the plan is not only possible but necessary. Otherwise, you will lose flexibility and mobility. But, if super-urgent matters do not appear, try to follow the set schedule.
Frogs
I am 100% sure that every person has such things that they don’t want to perform, which cause unpleasant sensations, take up a lot of energy, are not interesting in themselves, and the implementation of which is postponed constantly from day to day. Such cases are called in the time management language "frogs".
This may be a trip to the savings bank, where it will be necessary to defend in a very large queue. This may be a call to the customer, who needs to be informed that the project is being delayed. This may be writing an annual report. In general, any activity that you don’t want to do at all, but sooner or later you need to do it.
What to do with frogs:
Everything is very easy - you just need to “eat” one by one every day. Write out the whole list of frogs on a separate sheet / separate tab / separate file and eat one every morning. You will be surprised, but in a couple of weeks you will not have a single frog and cats that constantly scratch their hearts because of this will disappear without a trace. Breathing will be easier. Yes, and every evening, returning home, you will be satisfied with what you have done an important thing that has been hanging in your brain for so long and did not allow you to calmly speculate about life and your affairs.
Plus - this is a good motivator for productive work. You dealt with the "frog" and now any business for you is nonsense.
Eat "frogs" and the mood will be noticeably higher.
Elephants
“Elephants” in the time management language are those things that you do not know how to approach and where to start. "Elephants" can be called a complex volume project, writing a diploma and much more. The fact that at first glance it seems very difficult and very time consuming.
How to deal with "elephants":
You understand that it’s almost impossible to swallow a whole “elephant” at a time. But it is possible to chop it into “steaks” and eat them one by one. Catch a thought?
If we are in charge of a project, the first thing to do is to break it down into small parts (“steaks”). For example:
- Writing TK
- Team selection
- Drawing up a time plan
- Design development
- Revision of CMS modules for tasks
- Testing
- Etc.
You see - as one big incomprehensible task turned into a set of simple actions right away. An example, of course, is primitive, but it makes good sense, therefore, do not judge too hard :)
Therefore, before embarking on a large complex task, break it into many small components and get to work. You yourself will not notice how everything goes easily and only the trunk and ears will remain from the “elephant”.
Relaxation
Oddly enough, but it is necessary to rest. If there is no rest, there will be no fruitful work.
There are two main points that should not be neglected:
- sleep 8 hours
- disconnection from work issues
sleep 8 hours
Eight-hour sleep may seem like a waste of time, but it is necessary. Eight hours - this is the time during which our body has time to relax at 100%. For some, this figure is not very good. For me, for example, it is better to sleep or seven or nine hours, but not eight. I do not know - on what it depends, but, watching myself, I came to the conclusion that I work much more productively after seven or nine hours of sleep.
Watch yourself and you will understand - which is more convenient for you. But do not fall below seven in any case, otherwise you will simply be useless during the day. Saved hour at night will result in a complete failure for you during the working day.
Naturally, I do not take into account such moments of life when there are facile delivery of projects, for example. Here, if at least a little sleep - and then joy. But on ordinary days, do not turn your schedule into a daily fix. Life is more expensive than work. Let it even brings great pleasure.
Disconnect from work issues
Do not take work at home. Houses need to rest. Chat with family, girlfriend, friends, watch TV, drink beer, go for a walk, go to a restaurant / cafe for dinner, play a toy, watch another episode of Dr. House. But not
work. Disconnect from work. Only in this way can you fully recuperate for the next day.
While at work, disconnect for a while. Go for a smoke or just walk. Have some tea. Open Habr. Disconnect from work. Think about life, call a friend, chat on abstract topics with colleagues.
The main thing is that it does not take 90% of the time. :) Although, with the onset of the crisis, there are almost no such people left in the companies.
It is a very good practice to spend 30% of the time on such affairs or your projects, and to work hard the rest of the time. If you set such a limit, then you will be able to rest or go about your projects with much greater pleasure and a clear conscience. Work 100% impossible. It will not bring any pleasure, and there is no pleasure - there is no point in working.
Motivation
Well, the last point on which I want to focus attention is motivation.
There are times when you don't want to do absolutely nothing. I want to open Habr, for example, and hang out here for the whole day, occasionally going up to the cooler to pour another cup of tea.
For these moments, I have one interesting technique, peeped in the book “Time Drive” by Gleb Arkhangelsky.
It is called the “pinarik calendar”.
It looks something like this:
This is a lined sheet, glued to a notebook, which I always carry with me. Each cell means one day of my life. I lined a piece of paper up to my thirty years, that is, by the time I painted all the cells, I should be thirty years old.
Every evening I open a piece of paper to cross out or fill in the box that symbolizes the next day. If, in my opinion (yes, I am absolutely honest with myself), the day turned out to be productive, I paint over it completely, if the day was sluggish and I didn’t do what I had planned, then put a cross. Thus, I solve two questions of motivation at once:
- the total number of labeled cells shows - how quickly time flies and how little is left until my thirtieth birthday. I was able to understand the temporality of time only when I got myself a “pinnic”.
- The number of productive days in the general rhythm of my life. When I began to celebrate the days, I realized how many days I wasted. I had one solid crosses. Literally just a couple of solid cells. I began to strive to do more, so that in the evening, with a clear conscience, paint over the cell, as if telling myself that today was a productive day and I did a good job. Thus, I now have, on average, once a week, a cross, and on the remaining days a solid shade. It used to be the opposite. And only thanks to “pinarika” I was able to motivate myself to a more productive pastime.
Try it and you. 30 seconds of time every day is not enough. But only this way you will understand how quickly time flies and how irreplaceable it is.
Conclusion:
Plan your life. Because if there is no plan, then there is no clear path to its goal. And there is no way - the goal is unattainable. And she will forever remain a dream.
And living without a goal is boring.
Good luck in your work and personal affairs. Make plans, be honest with yourself.
And take care of time. This is a valuable resource that cannot be bought.
All the best.
Therefore, I will try to correct this shortcoming.
Under the cut you will not find any innovative models of time management. It will be a foundation, a foundation, without which people who care about their future, their well-being and personal development cannot be dispensed with.
')
Welcome!
Planning
This is the most basic point in time management. In order to have time for everything, to do much more than we did before, it is necessary to plan your day. It would seem to be commonplace, but at the same time many people neglect this business, which takes only 5-10 minutes of your time per day. Plan things to do and need to do it every day. Only in this way will the picture with all your projects and undertakings become clear, only in this way you will understand where you are going, what you are striving for, how close you have come to your Goal and how much is still left to be done. Only in this way you can not dig into the routine of everyday affairs and always see the most important thing for which you live and work.
Tools
To build your time system, the choice of tools is absolutely not important and lies solely in the plane of your habits and usability. It can be a paper diary, it can be Google Calendar, Outlook, post-it pages, a communicator or any other way of storing and recording information that you think will be convenient for you.
If you have a lot of meetings, then the best options would be a paper diary or communicator, if you are at your computer almost all the time, this could be a Google Calendar or other software. It is better that there is a possibility of synchronization between the worker and the home computer, which would always keep a finger on the pulse and be able at any time to get access to your records. If you are working on a laptop, but there is not always the Internet - a good planning tool is Outlook. Convenient interface, great features and good flexibility.
In general, choose a tool based on lifestyle and personal preferences.
Methods
Everything is very simple. In the evening of the outgoing day or in the morning, you need to figure out all the urgent matters and the matters that you would like to do today and write them in your diary.
Cases can be divided into 3 types:
- Rigid (rigidly tied to time. For example, a meeting with a customer or a scheduled meeting scheduled for a specific time)
- Soft (depending on the grid of hard cases, but not dependent on a specific time. For example, writing a commercial offer, developing a module. They are stretched in time and not tied to specific watches, but at the same time, they depend on hard cases, how do you have to interrupt and go to the customer or go to a meeting)
- Tapes (cases that can be performed at any time. For example, call a friend, remind a colleague of your request, check the progress of the module programming work. In general, distribute planned butting to your subordinates and colleagues to be aware of the progress of the work / project).
- Super-urgent (cases that appear suddenly and require immediate execution. For example, urgently raise a fallen server)
As can be seen from our plan, we have two “hard” cases around which we must build all our “soft” affairs. For example, we can only start “working on the system” at 5:00 pm, since in the morning and in the interval between “hard” cases, we will not physically have time to complete this work.
Below our time schedule, we wrote out three “pokes” that can be performed at any time. It is better if it is during a trip to the customer, since all three “pokes” are, in fact, a phone call.
With more global planning, business needs to be divided into two types:
- Short-term business that needs to be done in the near future)
- Long-term (cases that need to be performed, but the deadline has not yet come up, or simply does not have one)
I will tell about this by my example.
I use Google Calendar, because all the time I am at the computer and practically don’t go to meetings. Its functionality is quite enough to satisfy my daily planning needs.
How the work is built:
I have a method of displaying the time grid in the form of a week, lined on a clock scale.
Every evening in the left column, I write out all the things that need to be done tomorrow. I know my strength, so I always write out a little more than, according to calculations, can keep within a working day. If I do almost everything - well. If I do absolutely everything, it's wonderful. It’s just that maybe some of the cases will go faster than planned, so I always know what to do with the time left.
In the right-hand columns, I write out all my affairs - both short-term and long-term. And every evening I simply drag the blocks with affairs from the right columns to the left, thus shaping my future day, while mentally setting priorities - it’s time to start and what else to endure. Usually, short-term affairs all fit in one working day and there is always room for long-term ones, so I don’t do a hard division of one from another.
I do not bind to a specific time, because the specifics of the work does not require it. There are almost no super-urgent cases, and if they do, they appear spontaneously. That's why they are super urgent. If I know in a few days about the upcoming business - then it can hardly be called super-urgent.
Thus, making a plan every evening, I am always aware of my upcoming affairs.
And now about how I form the order of affairs.
Priorities
This is also one of the key points when building your time system. You need to be able to prioritize your business and follow a predetermined schedule. If you put off complex and important matters for the end, you can simply fail to complete the task and, as a result,
Therefore, planning your business - always prioritize. First, there must be priority cases that can not be delayed. Because if you miss the deadlines, we will always have a reserve of time that we can pick up from less urgent matters.
The easiest way and one of the most effective is to write out a to-do list in descending order of urgency.
It is in this way that I build my day - in the morning I begin to solve the most urgent issues, and in the evening there are things that can be postponed until the next, more relaxed, day.
Very important is the issue of constantly evolving permanent urgent tasks.
For example, you have planned the elaboration of the system architecture, which requires you to focus as much as possible and attention. And in the midst of work, you are given the task of resolving the issue with the customer (fix the bug on the site). It's okay that you interrupt the elaboration of architecture. Bring to a logical point and take up a super-urgent task. You will not lose much time, and you will increase the loyalty of your bosses and client.
Do not be afraid to change your daily plan. Do not be afraid to enter there things that yesterday evening or morning didn’t even suspect. Change the plan is not only possible but necessary. Otherwise, you will lose flexibility and mobility. But, if super-urgent matters do not appear, try to follow the set schedule.
Frogs
I am 100% sure that every person has such things that they don’t want to perform, which cause unpleasant sensations, take up a lot of energy, are not interesting in themselves, and the implementation of which is postponed constantly from day to day. Such cases are called in the time management language "frogs".
This may be a trip to the savings bank, where it will be necessary to defend in a very large queue. This may be a call to the customer, who needs to be informed that the project is being delayed. This may be writing an annual report. In general, any activity that you don’t want to do at all, but sooner or later you need to do it.
What to do with frogs:
Everything is very easy - you just need to “eat” one by one every day. Write out the whole list of frogs on a separate sheet / separate tab / separate file and eat one every morning. You will be surprised, but in a couple of weeks you will not have a single frog and cats that constantly scratch their hearts because of this will disappear without a trace. Breathing will be easier. Yes, and every evening, returning home, you will be satisfied with what you have done an important thing that has been hanging in your brain for so long and did not allow you to calmly speculate about life and your affairs.
Plus - this is a good motivator for productive work. You dealt with the "frog" and now any business for you is nonsense.
Eat "frogs" and the mood will be noticeably higher.
Elephants
“Elephants” in the time management language are those things that you do not know how to approach and where to start. "Elephants" can be called a complex volume project, writing a diploma and much more. The fact that at first glance it seems very difficult and very time consuming.
How to deal with "elephants":
You understand that it’s almost impossible to swallow a whole “elephant” at a time. But it is possible to chop it into “steaks” and eat them one by one. Catch a thought?
If we are in charge of a project, the first thing to do is to break it down into small parts (“steaks”). For example:
- Writing TK
- Team selection
- Drawing up a time plan
- Design development
- Revision of CMS modules for tasks
- Testing
- Etc.
You see - as one big incomprehensible task turned into a set of simple actions right away. An example, of course, is primitive, but it makes good sense, therefore, do not judge too hard :)
Therefore, before embarking on a large complex task, break it into many small components and get to work. You yourself will not notice how everything goes easily and only the trunk and ears will remain from the “elephant”.
Relaxation
Oddly enough, but it is necessary to rest. If there is no rest, there will be no fruitful work.
There are two main points that should not be neglected:
- sleep 8 hours
- disconnection from work issues
sleep 8 hours
Eight-hour sleep may seem like a waste of time, but it is necessary. Eight hours - this is the time during which our body has time to relax at 100%. For some, this figure is not very good. For me, for example, it is better to sleep or seven or nine hours, but not eight. I do not know - on what it depends, but, watching myself, I came to the conclusion that I work much more productively after seven or nine hours of sleep.
Watch yourself and you will understand - which is more convenient for you. But do not fall below seven in any case, otherwise you will simply be useless during the day. Saved hour at night will result in a complete failure for you during the working day.
Naturally, I do not take into account such moments of life when there are facile delivery of projects, for example. Here, if at least a little sleep - and then joy. But on ordinary days, do not turn your schedule into a daily fix. Life is more expensive than work. Let it even brings great pleasure.
Disconnect from work issues
Do not take work at home. Houses need to rest. Chat with family, girlfriend, friends, watch TV, drink beer, go for a walk, go to a restaurant / cafe for dinner, play a toy, watch another episode of Dr. House. But not
work. Disconnect from work. Only in this way can you fully recuperate for the next day.
While at work, disconnect for a while. Go for a smoke or just walk. Have some tea. Open Habr. Disconnect from work. Think about life, call a friend, chat on abstract topics with colleagues.
The main thing is that it does not take 90% of the time. :) Although, with the onset of the crisis, there are almost no such people left in the companies.
It is a very good practice to spend 30% of the time on such affairs or your projects, and to work hard the rest of the time. If you set such a limit, then you will be able to rest or go about your projects with much greater pleasure and a clear conscience. Work 100% impossible. It will not bring any pleasure, and there is no pleasure - there is no point in working.
Motivation
Well, the last point on which I want to focus attention is motivation.
There are times when you don't want to do absolutely nothing. I want to open Habr, for example, and hang out here for the whole day, occasionally going up to the cooler to pour another cup of tea.
For these moments, I have one interesting technique, peeped in the book “Time Drive” by Gleb Arkhangelsky.
It is called the “pinarik calendar”.
It looks something like this:
This is a lined sheet, glued to a notebook, which I always carry with me. Each cell means one day of my life. I lined a piece of paper up to my thirty years, that is, by the time I painted all the cells, I should be thirty years old.
Every evening I open a piece of paper to cross out or fill in the box that symbolizes the next day. If, in my opinion (yes, I am absolutely honest with myself), the day turned out to be productive, I paint over it completely, if the day was sluggish and I didn’t do what I had planned, then put a cross. Thus, I solve two questions of motivation at once:
- the total number of labeled cells shows - how quickly time flies and how little is left until my thirtieth birthday. I was able to understand the temporality of time only when I got myself a “pinnic”.
- The number of productive days in the general rhythm of my life. When I began to celebrate the days, I realized how many days I wasted. I had one solid crosses. Literally just a couple of solid cells. I began to strive to do more, so that in the evening, with a clear conscience, paint over the cell, as if telling myself that today was a productive day and I did a good job. Thus, I now have, on average, once a week, a cross, and on the remaining days a solid shade. It used to be the opposite. And only thanks to “pinarika” I was able to motivate myself to a more productive pastime.
Try it and you. 30 seconds of time every day is not enough. But only this way you will understand how quickly time flies and how irreplaceable it is.
Conclusion:
Plan your life. Because if there is no plan, then there is no clear path to its goal. And there is no way - the goal is unattainable. And she will forever remain a dream.
And living without a goal is boring.
Good luck in your work and personal affairs. Make plans, be honest with yourself.
And take care of time. This is a valuable resource that cannot be bought.
All the best.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/58575/
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