April 22, 2013 at 10:24Time management by 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. Given that a third of the time a person spends on sleep, and most readers of this article have already spent a third of this resource, there’s not so much precious time left to scatter. Time is money, time is life.
There is no excess and lack of time - it is only necessary to value and be able to use its course, like a stream of rivers - thanks to which a person moves on ships and uses the power of water in mills. This should also be done correctly so as not to row against the current. Even the smallest streams sharpen rocks, and seconds can add up to years of useful work and success.
I myself in the process of thinking and writing this article often complained about the lack of time. More than one month passed from the idea to the execution, and so that this article does not seem to be a rewrite of the next theses from time management, I spent not so few minutes, hours, days and tried different 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 primary sources : S. Kovi, G. Arkhangelsky, D. Allen - from managing yourself, personal space, tricks. These are two. In my article, I’ll talk about my own experience, 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 of the May days my life changed, and instead of the standard schedule from eight to five and following the roadmap, it became necessary for me to distribute, create schedules and monitor their implementation. From a technical point of view, this is not difficult: we select a task, set deadlines, assign a resource. Since we have living resources - people, as well as a changing code, we will introduce risks and expenses for tea drinking, for kissing the nanny’s thigh in the dining room, for the complexity and pickiness of problems and requirements, which is even easier, because It requires evaluating the performance of a particular algorithm, or the application of technology. We take the puzzle in Jira, click and ... From a technical point of view ... But in practice this is not entirely true. Instead of sitting in a chair and moving resources, you have to be involved in the whole process, not just your piece of code, and the entire project, or even several projects that do not completely overlap with each other. Those. to answer questions, make decisions, explain ... and, in fact, in this mouse fuss, my day began to pass in a constant switch from task to task and from person to person ...
I thought about it and decided that something is probably wrong here, because I need my time myself, and not just my subordinates and projects. And if so, then, then, we must learn to manage it.
First, it’s worth understanding what we want.This is a matter of principle. Not only at work, but also in life. Each of us has roles in life. My roles, for example, can be called: worker, friend, teacher, student, son, husband, etc. ... It is worth highlighting the main and fundamental ones for you. They will all differ, of course, but most likely, we all would like to have a good career, be a good friend, and an excellent spouse, and somehow express ourselves in society - our talent or public recognition. And the easier and better it will be to live, the more harmoniously and more evenly (of course, taking into account the internal coefficient of importance) these areas will develop.
Secondly, you need to make a list of all the affairs, projects, desires that are currently available and classify which area they will relate to.It may well be that some of the desires or deeds that we often put aside, which put pressure on us, turn out to be completely irrelevant for our guidelines. Here you should choose the most important and not exchange for trifles. What exactly will affect our key areas of life? When is this important? Will it be important in the future?
For myself, for simplicity, I have identified only four areas:
In practice, each of the categories could also be broken down in my case:
- Career - a list of what is responsible for professional success - steps, actions, accomplishments, acquired skills. Here I included professional (and corporate as well) training (myself as a student), and the role of teacher and mentor - exchange of experience, trainings.
- Self - development - as one of the most unpleasant things for me in life is living in the existing conditions. The craving for development is important for me - knowledge, skills. So, for example, here I included language classes, reading literature (professional and artistic), playing sports, obtaining rights, time management, hobbies.
- Society- both communication with colleagues, friends, and the establishment and maintenance of contacts with people, including some publications.
- Family is also a relationship with relatives and loved ones. Both including routine, deeds, material relationships, and intangible relationships.
As a result, after a thorough analysis / analysis, I left 28 tasks requiring 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 it - and you will like it! In my case, in addition to job duties at work, staying updated on 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 presents compliments your beloved and indulge her from time to time with culinary masterpieces. So, after a few days I got a sense of time. More precisely, a feeling of lack of time. And it became a pity to waste time looking at seals on the Internet. In addition, a problem arose that, despite the fact that an important task was on the list, she persistently did not want to be completed.
The fourth point will be a typical tip from time management:formulate in tasks not goals, but actions. In my case, “keeping fit” transformed into “enrolling in a fitness club”, “going to a fitness club”, “doing exercises”. The goal has become separable and measurable, and therefore - executable. If you follow the terminology of Gleb of Arkhangelsk, then to eat an elephant, you must swallow it on steaks, at least daily (weekly). The result of the processing of my list of steaks and frog cases (small but unpleasant things that are postponed daily for tomorrow) was the reduction of the list of goals to the list of repeated and measured cases - weekly planning.
Of course, I agree, it sounds strange that you should “give a compliment” seven times - and mark “completed” with a tick for the day, but a measurable approach that allows you to assess the quality of a particular chosen sphere of life. I can hardly say that this is less important for me than checking reports from my subordinates.
As a result of these searches and conclusions, I formed the following spreadsheet, in which it should be noted daily progress and track success rates. Contrary to my expectations, in the first two weeks the results against my goals were not just worse, but catastrophically worse. Of course, not every case in the table is 100% complete, but if it turns red instead of green, this is an alarm. So I complicated the excel book a bit by collecting statistics by day of the week, by week, by industry. I determined for myself what a "productive" and "effective" day and week are.
Efficiency \ productivity by days of the week :
Productivity :
Efficiency (planned) :
Efficiency (current):
As a result of the reanalysis, of course, I came to the conclusion that some things can be combined (for example, you can read on the way to work, as well as watch movies), fiction can also be obtained in the form of audio recordings, and therefore listen to how on the road, and in the same fitness club. Instead of viewing news portals, you can configure the desired selection, rss feeds, and / or take a thematic magazine, printouts from the reception and read them during lunch. Things have moved forward, but not too well. I reread Lyubishchev’s instructions and tried to follow them, but, alas, I couldn’t achieve everything. What took my time?
The fifth thesis: know time in person: where and what you spend time on.The easiest way to start is with statistics: how many and which areas it goes to. Most of it will be expected - this is a dream, a road, some kind of routine - fees from work to work, bedtime, everyday life and the like. In my opinion, the most effective method of assessment is to record your employment in a journal. It turned out to be convenient for me to use an A4 notebook, where I entered the time for the start of some action with a regular ballpoint pen. This does not mean that every five minutes you need to write down what you are doing at this time - make notes when your activity changes. In this way, you can keep track of which things are good time and which aren't. The main thing is to write it down as it is: your colleagues are distracted by a question - write it down. Distracted by the Internet - write it down. When you get back to business, make the following note again. As a result, you should get a rather torn schedule, in which every now and then there will be holes from the “garbage time”. How to deal with it is up to you. What useful things do you expect while waiting for transport and how you treat your colleague distracting you. In my case, these two categories accounted for most of the garbage time. With the first one it’s clear - we are listening to an audio book, and with the second one - instead of the tendency to be a universal reference book, I decided that it is better to accumulate and analyze questions during flies in bulk. Usually, up to 99% of the information is in Google or your own brain in a person (you just have to shake it) 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, I will only say that such a “five-minute” assessment of my time greatly increased my efficiency and productivity, and my guys appreciated parasitic urgent matters (phone calls, questions, e-mails, burning reactions to bugs, as well as to a third-party and not very important for the project, decorating and licking the code, sticking the features - the code must pass checks, and a review against standards and specifications). Constant distractions and switching attention away from the state of the stream and simply force even extra minutes, or even tens, to flounder to get back on track. and review against standards and specifications). Constant distractions and switching attention away from the state of the stream and simply force even extra minutes, or even tens, to flounder to get back on track. and review against standards and specifications). Constant distractions and switching attention away from the state of the stream and simply force even extra minutes, or even tens, to flounder to get back on track.
“You can do anything, but not all.” - David Allen
However, there remained a floating, third, category of garbage time - when at the end of the day I wanted to break this self-established regime and surf the Internet instead of something useful. Although this sounds strange, one of the approaches was to force myself, instead of wasting that time, to spend it in a more productive way - to watch movies the same way - but from time to time I could not overcome myself, procrastination prevailed over me, and some days reckless despair rolled over me about how everything was planned, and what frameworks and inconsistencies they have for me. As if such a local “pinarik” was not kicking me, from time to time it demotivated me and demanded that I go out of life for a day or two. Day. Two days. Ineffective and reckless.
“The reason for any failure is rash actions” - Alex Mackenzie.
Then I again began to reason and analyze how it began to turn out like this. Once a month or two, but there were such holes, and they 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 realize that the farther, the worse I can conduct parallel affairs on a daily basis. Roughly speaking, if I had to write a code in a day, prepare a training, study English, visit a swimming pool and read several chapters from professional literature, then 2-3 of them were effective, and the rest turned out to be formally started, somehow hastily done , which influenced the feeling of the result, which, ultimately, was reflected in my subconscious assessment of my actions. Yes, of course, from time to time, as before, I could immediately efficiently execute 5 and 7 or more of such resource-intensive and concentration-demanding projects, but over some short time intervals, after which the breakdown followed. My conclusion was that you should plan not only a weekly list of frogs, but have a plan for the day, in which no more than three key cases will be clearly identified. By the way, this observation also explained to me the performance drawdown on Monday, when tails from the weekend often remained. Indeed, rest is also activity, business, occupation, and not an appendage in the “remaining time”.
Thesis seven: switch completely.Allocate exactly as much time to your affairs and the framework that they deserve. In other words: do not think about work at home, but when you come to work, work. Do not stay out at work, but do not run away from it. Respect your choice at home and at work. Unexpected “extra time”, saved on something, can always be filled with important things. Set the rule: "Your working hours are your time, not the time of your boss and timekeeper." Learn to value it more than others - because only you know its true value, invest in yourself. If you have work 8 hours a day, then devote this time to what is most correlated with your work from the areas related to work. If you spend time with your family, then spend it with your family, and not with a TV or a glass of brandy, and even more so without simultaneously preparing for the upcoming working day. Look for opportunities. Switch. Delineate.
Thesis eight: audit from time to time. Statistics collection and planning is good, but not enough. Because your goals and values may change, sooner or later you will have to make changes to the table, the list of goals and desires. The same goes for the odds. Nevertheless, be honest with yourself, do not fit the numbers to the results.
Thesis nine: keep a to-do list on hand. If you do not have such a list, be sure to get one. I am not talking about a list of regular affairs, not a list of frogs, but about some one-time goals and tasks. They can be either attached to time or not. It can be either attached to a place or not. 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 task lists, and the same Outlook is quite suitable for these purposes, although I prefer the simple, but accessible for any RememberTheMilk platform. Enter the task, if necessary, indicate the time and place, determine the scope, priority. And from time to time you browse. The main thing is to do it regularly: formulate goals and deeds as actions.
To succeed is half the battle; the main thing is to keep him - Orison Scott Marden.
Thesis ten: be in the stream!After the emergence of a sense of time, a sense of its value (especially the value of minutes spent with loved ones and / or loved hobbies), 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 methods, you can learn from mistakes - in any case, you will be more able to manage to do this effectively. This will bring satisfaction and free up time for new things. The more you do, the more you do. So in the end I just wish you good luck and the desire to catch your wave in managing yourself and your time. And, if you still do not remember my first thesis, then remember the eternally relevant Chinese saying:
A thousand li journey begins with one step - Lao Tzu.
There is no excess and lack of time - it is only necessary to value and be able to use its course, like a stream of rivers - thanks to which a person moves on ships and uses the power of water in mills. This should also be done correctly so as not to row against the current. Even the smallest streams sharpen rocks, and seconds can add up to years of useful work and success.
I myself in the process of thinking and writing this article often complained about the lack of time. More than one month passed from the idea to the execution, and so that this article does not seem to be a rewrite of the next theses from time management, I spent not so few minutes, hours, days and tried different 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 primary sources : S. Kovi, G. Arkhangelsky, D. Allen - from managing yourself, personal space, tricks. These are two. In my article, I’ll talk about my own experience, 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 of the May days my life changed, and instead of the standard schedule from eight to five and following the roadmap, it became necessary for me to distribute, create schedules and monitor their implementation. From a technical point of view, this is not difficult: we select a task, set deadlines, assign a resource. Since we have living resources - people, as well as a changing code, we will introduce risks and expenses for tea drinking, for kissing the nanny’s thigh in the dining room, for the complexity and pickiness of problems and requirements, which is even easier, because It requires evaluating the performance of a particular algorithm, or the application of technology. We take the puzzle in Jira, click and ... From a technical point of view ... But in practice this is not entirely true. Instead of sitting in a chair and moving resources, you have to be involved in the whole process, not just your piece of code, and the entire project, or even several projects that do not completely overlap with each other. Those. to answer questions, make decisions, explain ... and, in fact, in this mouse fuss, my day began to pass in a constant switch from task to task and from person to person ...
I thought about it and decided that something is probably wrong here, because I need my time myself, and not just my subordinates and projects. And if so, then, then, we must learn to manage it.
First, it’s worth understanding what we want.This is a matter of principle. Not only at work, but also in life. Each of us has roles in life. My roles, for example, can be called: worker, friend, teacher, student, son, husband, etc. ... It is worth highlighting the main and fundamental ones for you. They will all differ, of course, but most likely, we all would like to have a good career, be a good friend, and an excellent spouse, and somehow express ourselves in society - our talent or public recognition. And the easier and better it will be to live, the more harmoniously and more evenly (of course, taking into account the internal coefficient of importance) these areas will develop.
Secondly, you need to make a list of all the affairs, projects, desires that are currently available and classify which area they will relate to.It may well be that some of the desires or deeds that we often put aside, which put pressure on us, turn out to be completely irrelevant for our guidelines. Here you should choose the most important and not exchange for trifles. What exactly will affect our key areas of life? When is this important? Will it be important in the future?
For myself, for simplicity, I have identified only four areas:
- Career
- Self development
- Society
- A family
In practice, each of the categories could also be broken down in my case:
- Career - a list of what is responsible for professional success - steps, actions, accomplishments, acquired skills. Here I included professional (and corporate as well) training (myself as a student), and the role of teacher and mentor - exchange of experience, trainings.
- Self - development - as one of the most unpleasant things for me in life is living in the existing conditions. The craving for development is important for me - knowledge, skills. So, for example, here I included language classes, reading literature (professional and artistic), playing sports, obtaining rights, time management, hobbies.
- Society- both communication with colleagues, friends, and the establishment and maintenance of contacts with people, including some publications.
- Family is also a relationship with relatives and loved ones. Both including routine, deeds, material relationships, and intangible relationships.
As a result, after a thorough analysis / analysis, I left 28 tasks requiring 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 it - and you will like it! In my case, in addition to job duties at work, staying updated on 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 presents compliments your beloved and indulge her from time to time with culinary masterpieces. So, after a few days I got a sense of time. More precisely, a feeling of lack of time. And it became a pity to waste time looking at seals on the Internet. In addition, a problem arose that, despite the fact that an important task was on the list, she persistently did not want to be completed.
The fourth point will be a typical tip from time management:formulate in tasks not goals, but actions. In my case, “keeping fit” transformed into “enrolling in a fitness club”, “going to a fitness club”, “doing exercises”. The goal has become separable and measurable, and therefore - executable. If you follow the terminology of Gleb of Arkhangelsk, then to eat an elephant, you must swallow it on steaks, at least daily (weekly). The result of the processing of my list of steaks and frog cases (small but unpleasant things that are postponed daily for tomorrow) was the reduction of the list of goals to the list of repeated and measured cases - weekly planning.
Of course, I agree, it sounds strange that you should “give a compliment” seven times - and mark “completed” with a tick for the day, but a measurable approach that allows you to assess the quality of a particular chosen sphere of life. I can hardly say that this is less important for me than checking reports from my subordinates.
As a result of these searches and conclusions, I formed the following spreadsheet, in which it should be noted daily progress and track success rates. Contrary to my expectations, in the first two weeks the results against my goals were not just worse, but catastrophically worse. Of course, not every case in the table is 100% complete, but if it turns red instead of green, this is an alarm. So I complicated the excel book a bit by collecting statistics by day of the week, by week, by industry. I determined for myself what a "productive" and "effective" day and week are.
Efficiency \ productivity by days of the week :
Productivity :
Efficiency (planned) :
Efficiency (current):
As a result of the reanalysis, of course, I came to the conclusion that some things can be combined (for example, you can read on the way to work, as well as watch movies), fiction can also be obtained in the form of audio recordings, and therefore listen to how on the road, and in the same fitness club. Instead of viewing news portals, you can configure the desired selection, rss feeds, and / or take a thematic magazine, printouts from the reception and read them during lunch. Things have moved forward, but not too well. I reread Lyubishchev’s instructions and tried to follow them, but, alas, I couldn’t achieve everything. What took my time?
The fifth thesis: know time in person: where and what you spend time on.The easiest way to start is with statistics: how many and which areas it goes to. Most of it will be expected - this is a dream, a road, some kind of routine - fees from work to work, bedtime, everyday life and the like. In my opinion, the most effective method of assessment is to record your employment in a journal. It turned out to be convenient for me to use an A4 notebook, where I entered the time for the start of some action with a regular ballpoint pen. This does not mean that every five minutes you need to write down what you are doing at this time - make notes when your activity changes. In this way, you can keep track of which things are good time and which aren't. The main thing is to write it down as it is: your colleagues are distracted by a question - write it down. Distracted by the Internet - write it down. When you get back to business, make the following note again. As a result, you should get a rather torn schedule, in which every now and then there will be holes from the “garbage time”. How to deal with it is up to you. What useful things do you expect while waiting for transport and how you treat your colleague distracting you. In my case, these two categories accounted for most of the garbage time. With the first one it’s clear - we are listening to an audio book, and with the second one - instead of the tendency to be a universal reference book, I decided that it is better to accumulate and analyze questions during flies in bulk. Usually, up to 99% of the information is in Google or your own brain in a person (you just have to shake it) 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, I will only say that such a “five-minute” assessment of my time greatly increased my efficiency and productivity, and my guys appreciated parasitic urgent matters (phone calls, questions, e-mails, burning reactions to bugs, as well as to a third-party and not very important for the project, decorating and licking the code, sticking the features - the code must pass checks, and a review against standards and specifications). Constant distractions and switching attention away from the state of the stream and simply force even extra minutes, or even tens, to flounder to get back on track. and review against standards and specifications). Constant distractions and switching attention away from the state of the stream and simply force even extra minutes, or even tens, to flounder to get back on track. and review against standards and specifications). Constant distractions and switching attention away from the state of the stream and simply force even extra minutes, or even tens, to flounder to get back on track.
“You can do anything, but not all.” - David Allen
However, there remained a floating, third, category of garbage time - when at the end of the day I wanted to break this self-established regime and surf the Internet instead of something useful. Although this sounds strange, one of the approaches was to force myself, instead of wasting that time, to spend it in a more productive way - to watch movies the same way - but from time to time I could not overcome myself, procrastination prevailed over me, and some days reckless despair rolled over me about how everything was planned, and what frameworks and inconsistencies they have for me. As if such a local “pinarik” was not kicking me, from time to time it demotivated me and demanded that I go out of life for a day or two. Day. Two days. Ineffective and reckless.
“The reason for any failure is rash actions” - Alex Mackenzie.
Then I again began to reason and analyze how it began to turn out like this. Once a month or two, but there were such holes, and they 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 realize that the farther, the worse I can conduct parallel affairs on a daily basis. Roughly speaking, if I had to write a code in a day, prepare a training, study English, visit a swimming pool and read several chapters from professional literature, then 2-3 of them were effective, and the rest turned out to be formally started, somehow hastily done , which influenced the feeling of the result, which, ultimately, was reflected in my subconscious assessment of my actions. Yes, of course, from time to time, as before, I could immediately efficiently execute 5 and 7 or more of such resource-intensive and concentration-demanding projects, but over some short time intervals, after which the breakdown followed. My conclusion was that you should plan not only a weekly list of frogs, but have a plan for the day, in which no more than three key cases will be clearly identified. By the way, this observation also explained to me the performance drawdown on Monday, when tails from the weekend often remained. Indeed, rest is also activity, business, occupation, and not an appendage in the “remaining time”.
Thesis seven: switch completely.Allocate exactly as much time to your affairs and the framework that they deserve. In other words: do not think about work at home, but when you come to work, work. Do not stay out at work, but do not run away from it. Respect your choice at home and at work. Unexpected “extra time”, saved on something, can always be filled with important things. Set the rule: "Your working hours are your time, not the time of your boss and timekeeper." Learn to value it more than others - because only you know its true value, invest in yourself. If you have work 8 hours a day, then devote this time to what is most correlated with your work from the areas related to work. If you spend time with your family, then spend it with your family, and not with a TV or a glass of brandy, and even more so without simultaneously preparing for the upcoming working day. Look for opportunities. Switch. Delineate.
Thesis eight: audit from time to time. Statistics collection and planning is good, but not enough. Because your goals and values may change, sooner or later you will have to make changes to the table, the list of goals and desires. The same goes for the odds. Nevertheless, be honest with yourself, do not fit the numbers to the results.
Thesis nine: keep a to-do list on hand. If you do not have such a list, be sure to get one. I am not talking about a list of regular affairs, not a list of frogs, but about some one-time goals and tasks. They can be either attached to time or not. It can be either attached to a place or not. 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 task lists, and the same Outlook is quite suitable for these purposes, although I prefer the simple, but accessible for any RememberTheMilk platform. Enter the task, if necessary, indicate the time and place, determine the scope, priority. And from time to time you browse. The main thing is to do it regularly: formulate goals and deeds as actions.
To succeed is half the battle; the main thing is to keep him - Orison Scott Marden.
Thesis ten: be in the stream!After the emergence of a sense of time, a sense of its value (especially the value of minutes spent with loved ones and / or loved hobbies), 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 methods, you can learn from mistakes - in any case, you will be more able to manage to do this effectively. This will bring satisfaction and free up time for new things. The more you do, the more you do. So in the end I just wish you good luck and the desire to catch your wave in managing yourself and your time. And, if you still do not remember my first thesis, then remember the eternally relevant Chinese saying:
A thousand li journey begins with one step - Lao Tzu.