“Oh, my God, my God! How late I am! exclaimed the White Rabbit, the character of Alice in Wonderland, tragically. Do you often repeat him, because you also do not have time to do anything? Perhaps it’s time to get acquainted with practical recommendations for those who are tired of losing in unequal battles over time.
“I don’t understand where half a year has gone,” Alla, 32, exclaims in a panic. — In two weeks, my dissertation should be with the reviewer, and I have the first half in a draft, and the second generally consists of scattered notes! I have no idea what I’ll do.» The 45-year-old head of the department, Valery, echoes her: “To launch the project, calculations are needed, and my employee delays them, as a result, the entire department slows down.”
But the difficulties eventually begin at a much earlier age. Sasha, a 5th grade student, also complains about the acute shortage of this valuable resource: “We get so much assignment that I sometimes sit on my homework until eleven. But I want to talk with my friends and play on the computer!”
But there are 24 hours in a day and there will be no more. Not surprisingly, about forty years ago, specialists appeared who thought about how to effectively use the hours and minutes that we have. Since then, the art of time management has been improved and specialized — there are manuals for businessmen, managers and office workers, salesmen and production workers. Anna Vsekhsvyatskaya, an expert in time management and personal effectiveness, specializes in planning «women’s time». So, we refine the details and identify the pitfalls — everything that needs to be considered so that our time management of our lives approaches the ideal.
General Principles
All time management professionals agree that it is helpful to define goals and then present them as concrete and achievable goals. Prioritize tasks, with the most important and urgent first, and the less important in the remaining time. Make sure that leisure and personal life are also included in the list of tasks.
Write down all planned activities in the form of a list and indicate how much time you think it will take to complete them. Then you can compare it with what happened in reality. This will help you calculate the time more accurately next time.
But the period for which we make plans is defined differently by different experts. For a day, for a month? “When I plan time, I prefer to schedule the whole week by day and do it on weekends in half an hour,” the expert admits.
Consider context
Many people look at a huge to-do list in the morning and are themselves afraid of the volume. A single large list is inconvenient, because some of the cases are irrelevant at the moment. Why keep a list of things to do in the evening in front of your eyes all day? The best way is to separate to-do lists by context.
You can focus on the time of the day, and then the to-do list breaks up into “morning”, “afternoon”, “evening”. Or the «child in school» and «after school» lists. The «context» can be a working tool: phone, computer — made all the necessary calls at once, then turned on the computer, found an article, checked mail, etc.
You can link lists to a place — home, work, exit to the city. “At home you see only a list of household chores, on the street — a list of purchases in a store, things in a bank, at work …” — the expert clarifies. Choose any principle convenient for you by which you divide the day into thematic contexts. It is important that in compact lists you are not distracted by anything else and easily navigate through priorities.
In a “large” schedule, it is easier to see how things can be rearranged and moved to minimize force majeure
When scheduling things, be sure to leave yourself a “cushion of spare time”. Experts recommend planning only 70% of both work and personal time, and leave 30% in reserve. Anna Vsekhsvyatskaya also suggests not to grind things close to each other to the nearest minute, but to leave 15-minute gaps between them. Then your partner’s lateness, your own lateness, protracted conversations will not allow the entire daily schedule to collapse.
To make your schedule more balanced, you can plan not only for the day, but also for the week, month and beyond. So we will see how rationally we allocate time between areas of life. If there is a blockage at work and this seems to us the most important, then we draw up the daily schedule with a preponderance of the working area. But then a family celebration, a tour of your favorite band or a parent meeting happens suddenly and unsettles us!
A “big” schedule, for example, for a month, allows you to put other important areas into it in advance: family, entertainment, self-care. In addition, really unpredictable and insurmountable circumstances happen in life, due to which the daily schedule is completely disrupted, and we can panic — we won’t be able to do anything! And in our «big» schedule, it’s easier to see how you can rearrange and move things in order to minimize force majeure.
Consider yourself
There are no individual time management techniques, but there are individual features that you need to measure yourself. And already taking them into account, create your own time management rules and plan things.
The first thing to evaluate is your load, fatigue and ability to recover. A non-working student living with her parents has a lot of energy and time to relax. A married woman with small children and a dog has completely different burdens and opportunities for recovery. Overestimation of forces in planning can lead to breakdowns, despair and illness.
No need to try to embrace the immensity, it is better to set feasible tasks and do only the most important things, albeit little by little, but regularly. The rest to someone to delegate or postpone until better times.
Our internal clocks work differently, some are wrong in estimating the elapsed time several times.
It is very useful to study your biorhythms, ups and downs of activity during the day. A task that at the peak of activity can be done in 15 minutes, at a minimum of activity it will take several times longer. Therefore, during active periods we plan the most complex and creative tasks, and during the decline in activity we do routine necessary things.
Our internal clocks work differently, some are mistaken in estimating the elapsed time several times over. You can test yourself, measure the feeling of time on some small matter, and then compare it with the readings of the clock. If we notice that we are constantly doing all the things a little longer than previously recorded in the schedule, then when drawing up the plan, it is worth making individual adjustments.
Set priorities
“No advanced time management, no planning tools will work if we do not have sufficient motivation,” says the expert. Any business is done quickly and recklessly, if we are driven by the desire to do it and get the result. And when we slow down and get distracted from the task, it means that deep down we don’t want to do it.
We do not want to, but it seems that we should, and why we should is not clear. This internal contradiction takes a lot of energy, breaks all plans. But how do you figure out your own motivation? Do not ask yourself the question “Why do I need this?” every time before washing dishes. The Vsekhsvyatskaya time management training system begins with the “Order in the Head” course.
First we need to decide on personal values and find out what is really important to us. Separate and throw out other people’s values that are imposed by upbringing and public opinion, find meaningless restrictions “no one does this, it’s not supposed to”, stuck fears “I can’t” — and get rid of them.
By your own rules
The habit and skill of listening to intuition will help to identify real dreams, learn to fantasize and turn fantasies into meaningful goals. We learn to protect the values and dreams dear to our soul from the criticism of others, as well as from the “inner critic”. Awareness of our aspirations strengthens the inner core of the personality, and there is a clear understanding of where we want to move and why all this is needed.
On the foundation of awareness, you can build the building of time management — set goals, distribute priorities … And then the choice of work, partner, hobby, places of rest will no longer be random or imposed, but your own and loved.
There is no one “correct” planning technique that is suitable for everyone, because we are very different from each other, live different lives, in different cities and in different climates. But those who have learned to consider their circumstances can try to create their own time management system. His plans for the day, for the month and for any period of time will be harmonious and effective, because they are tailored exactly to him, as if tailored to his measurements.