Contents
In fact, the only thing we can count on in dealing with time is to learn to manage not it, but ourselves. We at Psychologies have tested this first hand.
I do not have time for anything. Nothing. These completely useless words I utter in the morning, running out of the house; in the afternoon, remembering last week’s postponed visit to the tax office; in the evening, nervously turning off the computer halfway to the planned amount of work … In general, nothing original, if not for the dossier that our editors are working on now – to live in our time, consciously live every day allotted to us, enjoy work and recreation. And it’s okay for me – for so many years I managed to get used to myself, but after all, others say that they don’t have enough time for anything! Where to look for salvation? Go to time management training… But where else can you find time for this? On the other hand, what prevents me from learning the basics of time management without leaving my workplace? I choose a few books and immerse myself in reading, although I hardly believe that this will help – after all, creative people are always surrounded by some kind of chaos … Will I be able to structure it? And here is the answer: “Those who can calculate how many minutes it takes to read a page of text, this book will be useful”*. I can – 50 seconds. So, I’m moving on.
Get involved in the process
“We will start our conversation about time management in an unusual way – with the organization of rest” **, – after reading the first phrase of the book, I understand that not everything is so bad: I will build relationships with time not only to cope with work matters and take more and more new tasks. “It is important to find a balance between life and work,” business coach Mark Kukushkin supports me in a telephone interview. Learn to distribute your affairs in such a way as to notice the passage of time in your life, to coincide with it, not to lag behind, but not to run ahead. Feel harmony with what is happening around and inside me. And yet – where to find time for time management? “Finding fifteen minutes a day is a very real task,” says time management expert Gleb Arkhangelsky. Especially when you consider how much time we lose if we use it inefficiently. By the way, what does “effectively” mean? “With full dedication, feeling your maximum involvement and interest,” explains Mark Kukushkin. Regardless of what we do, we need to immerse ourselves in the process completely, devoting ourselves either only to work, or only to rest. So, I draw the first conclusion: down with lunch in front of the computer. Second, I turn off email reminders for endless corporate spam – just check your email a couple of times a day. Better save this time for a big and beautiful break with coffee, ice cream and a walk … And of course, social networks. Facebook, “come on, bye!”
Pass the tests
- How do you manage your time?
- Why don’t you have enough time?
Find your rhythm
I have a list of tasks that I have to complete. It’s boring, of course, to get a grasp of these dry, business headlines, but it’s quite possible to start a diary (I have one, by the way) or determine how much time I spend on each business, and do real planning – it’s quite possible. True, I am very worried about the thought – will I be able to live by controlling time when the experiment is over? “Reasonable doubt,” says Mark Kukushkin. – You can learn a lot of useful tools, but never resort to their help. Will is needed here no less than reason. It is also important to master the techniques of time management, to make them your own – after all, what suits one person does not suit another at all. “Find your own rhythm, learn to alternate the time of maximum efficiency with pauses – slowing down and relaxing, and in this way distribute your own strength so as not to get tired and do everything without suffocating or running out of breath,” the business coach sums up.
Lists don’t work!
“Stop making to-do lists,” says Daniel Markovitz, president of consulting firm TimeBack Management. “This is a direct path to failure and disappointment.”* Why? The need to choose from more than seven items is overwhelming for the brain and causes negative emotions; we’d rather do something quick to cross the item off the list, and the difficult case will go on the back burner; the list does not provide important information (time to complete the task, the time we have); we tend to choose from the list of pleasant rather than important things. Instead of to-do lists, Daniel Markowitz suggests using a calendar, making sure to leave an hour or two for emergencies that are urgent. It is important to evaluate the task and deliberately bring it in on the day when we can do it. “I used to make lists too, but now I plan things on my calendar around existing appointments, based on the success or failure of the previous day,” emphasizes Daniel Markowitz. “As a result, I have time for myself, which is much more fun than just crossing off an item.”
Svetlana Soustina
* “To-Do Lists Don’t Work”. Harvard Business Review, January 24, 2012.
Learn the theory of small things
Having plunged into the abyss of time management, I understand that some things seem familiar and familiar to me, some seem impossible and unthinkable, and something interesting and attractive. For example, I never set myself mega tasks, but prefer to cut big and frightening things into pieces and even pieces. Mark Kukushkin supports me in this, and also suggests that every day I do a small unpleasant thing that I never get my hands on and which, as a result, begins to seriously spoil my life. It’s interesting, you can try. And here is the thing that is completely unthinkable for me – long-term planning and looking at myself as a corporation with accounting, human resources and marketing ***. No, please.
Prioritize
“It’s impossible to do everything,” I read on. – Spend your time on the essentials. Clear your life of imposed affairs, learn to say “no”, delegate responsibility.” I have already heard these words from the existential psychotherapist Svetlana Krivtsova. And here’s something else interesting. “Any urgent matters can wait while you are fully immersed in your work,” writes Yana Frank. – The one who did not get through, will call back; no one expects you to answer a letter in a minute; and half of the panic messages that everything is gone, broken and does not work lose their relevance in half an hour.” But it really is! You will have to turn off not only email notifications, but also your phone. And then immerse myself in the development of criteria (own, personal) that will help me prioritize tasks and their place on the urgent to-do list. Oh those lists!
I think I’ve written enough of them already to feel the change. But time is in no hurry to give in to control. “And this is normal,” Mark Kukushkin reassures me. – Training will not solve all your problems, at least it will not happen quickly and by itself. Well, if at first you manage to feel the irrationality of using the time of your life, learn some tools and techniques. Although, of course, I’m exaggerating. The first encouraging results became noticeable immediately – after all, I wrote this note and even handed it in on time! And I finally got to the tax office and brought to an end the case of a car sold five years ago, taxes on which came to me all these years … But the most pleasant thing is that communication with the state did not come at the expense of work and personal life. In part, the war with the “eaters” of time helped me in this. I must say, and then I took up the matter with a smirk. But still, I took an inventory of my day and even took into account all the microscopic spontaneous breaks. “Just put a tick in your notebook, and then, at the end of the day, count their number and multiply by two or three minutes,” writes Gleb Arkhangelsky. Not only did these manipulations reveal free minutes and even hours, I had to be much more sober about the idea that I was working like a driven horse … The only thing I could not do was pull myself out of the information flow and stop being in keep abreast of the latest events that suddenly turned out to be full of our today’s life.
* Commentary by Artemy Lebedev in the preface to Yana Frank’s The Muse and the Beast (Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, 2011).
** G. Arkhangelsky “Time Drive” (Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, 2012).
*** G. Arkhangelsky “Formula of time” (Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, 2006).
Alena Popova, 29, public figure, founder of the Open Projects Foundation
“I like to live in times of change”
“I am delighted with what is happening around. I always wanted to live in times of change, and I suffered from the fact that my active development took place in those years when everything in our country was too clear, boring and stable. When the protest movement was born, volunteer organizations began to appear, I realized that I was absolutely right when I refused to leave the country. My generation is often called the lost one because we were born when the only goal was to survive. And now we realized that you can change the life around you and change yourself! Our time is the time of involvement, when people enter different communities and become active participants in them. They cease to be a gray mass, they become different. And there are a lot of such “others”. I love that we can work together even if many of us have different points of view. My life was divided into two parts: before and after Krymsk. Now it even seems to me that I am growing. In fact, I just change a lot. When an emergency arises, it’s like I have a second wind, and I am ready to work around the clock just to do what is important. My attitude towards time has also completely changed. When you realize that yesterday people had one life, and today they have a completely different one, every second becomes important. Nothing can be postponed until the day after tomorrow, as I did before. This also applies to communication with loved ones – it is very important to live in the present and see the goal in front of you.
Recorded by Julia Varshavskaya