December 15, 2014 at 11:52Personal Effectiveness System “Important Event of the Day”
Greetings to the community. I would like to talk about the system of personal effectiveness “an important event of the day”.
I learned about this system at one of the business trainings. I don’t know the original technique (could not find), therefore I describe it as I heard and use it myself.
Immediately get to the point.
Every day you need to record the most important event that happened to you during the day. An event can be from any sphere of life. For example: tidied up the room, closed project X, sex, watched a movie, etc.
Further, when the week comes to an end, it is necessary to choose the “most important event of the week” from the days that were during the week. It’s better not to generalize the week, but to choose from the days already recorded.
For a month you need to choose the best of weeks. And so on for the quarter and year.
At first it was not easy to use the technique: I forgot to fix the data, I had to remember events already for the whole week. But over time, the habit came to automatism and became much easier.
One of the weeks was quite routine at work. At the weekend he was engaged in various domestic problems. This week the most “important” event was my “trip to the market”. I was upset when I discovered this. Could I not do at least something really important in a week? It happened that during the month nothing particularly important happened. Awareness of this fact motivates very well.
Sometimes we do not notice what is really important in our life and what is not. One good exercise is choosing an important event. I will give an example that impressed me the most.
In early 2013, I planned a trip to another city for a developer conference. I was already sure in advance that this event would be the most important for the week, month, and possibly for the quarter. But literally 1 day before the trip, I decided to leave graduate school, I will not go deep into the reasons for such a decision, but for me it turned out to be quite bold, not typical for me. And the fact of making such a decision was more important than the whole trip.
"Let go of your past," "you need to live in the present." From time to time I thought, is it worth it to use such a technique? After all, this is really "digging in the past."
But as it turned out, it is interesting and pleasant to look at their events. When 2013 came to an end, I saw what I was doing all year. I have already forgotten many events and I was pleased to recall them. Thus, I began to relate to this technique as a special form of photography, which is sometimes nice to come back to, see and recall.
I do not like paper, so I immediately recorded the information on an electronic device.
The first year I used Evernote. In general, it was convenient. Large, many times nested list. But when the year was drawing to a close, I had to constantly scroll down a note to add information, which often bothered me. Of course, it was possible to keep the list in the reverse order (add the event to the beginning), but I thought about it too late, and I'm not sure that it would be more convenient to maintain a nested list.
The following year I used the mind map application. In the center of the year, quarters depart from it, months from them, etc. This option was already much more beautiful than the previous one and somewhat more convenient. In addition to the technique described above, I started adding colors to events (red - insignificant, yellow - so-so ..., light green - great, dark green - VERY cool). Thus, the map began to look even more pleasant.
In both cases, the technique included a fairly large amount of routine. It was necessary to constantly record dates, monitor the beginning / end of a new period. So I decided to make a small plugin for my mind map application, which would automatically track the “integrity of input” for me, and I would only need to enter events and choose the best. The plugin is still under development. There is a small demo .
Do you use a similar technique? Share your experiences in the comments.
I learned about this system at one of the business trainings. I don’t know the original technique (could not find), therefore I describe it as I heard and use it myself.
Immediately get to the point.
Description
Every day you need to record the most important event that happened to you during the day. An event can be from any sphere of life. For example: tidied up the room, closed project X, sex, watched a movie, etc.
Further, when the week comes to an end, it is necessary to choose the “most important event of the week” from the days that were during the week. It’s better not to generalize the week, but to choose from the days already recorded.
For a month you need to choose the best of weeks. And so on for the quarter and year.
At first it was not easy to use the technique: I forgot to fix the data, I had to remember events already for the whole week. But over time, the habit came to automatism and became much easier.
What for?
Productivity analysis
One of the weeks was quite routine at work. At the weekend he was engaged in various domestic problems. This week the most “important” event was my “trip to the market”. I was upset when I discovered this. Could I not do at least something really important in a week? It happened that during the month nothing particularly important happened. Awareness of this fact motivates very well.
Event Importance Analysis
Sometimes we do not notice what is really important in our life and what is not. One good exercise is choosing an important event. I will give an example that impressed me the most.
In early 2013, I planned a trip to another city for a developer conference. I was already sure in advance that this event would be the most important for the week, month, and possibly for the quarter. But literally 1 day before the trip, I decided to leave graduate school, I will not go deep into the reasons for such a decision, but for me it turned out to be quite bold, not typical for me. And the fact of making such a decision was more important than the whole trip.
Picture of the past
"Let go of your past," "you need to live in the present." From time to time I thought, is it worth it to use such a technique? After all, this is really "digging in the past."
But as it turned out, it is interesting and pleasant to look at their events. When 2013 came to an end, I saw what I was doing all year. I have already forgotten many events and I was pleased to recall them. Thus, I began to relate to this technique as a special form of photography, which is sometimes nice to come back to, see and recall.
Instruments
I do not like paper, so I immediately recorded the information on an electronic device.
The first year I used Evernote. In general, it was convenient. Large, many times nested list. But when the year was drawing to a close, I had to constantly scroll down a note to add information, which often bothered me. Of course, it was possible to keep the list in the reverse order (add the event to the beginning), but I thought about it too late, and I'm not sure that it would be more convenient to maintain a nested list.
The following year I used the mind map application. In the center of the year, quarters depart from it, months from them, etc. This option was already much more beautiful than the previous one and somewhat more convenient. In addition to the technique described above, I started adding colors to events (red - insignificant, yellow - so-so ..., light green - great, dark green - VERY cool). Thus, the map began to look even more pleasant.
In both cases, the technique included a fairly large amount of routine. It was necessary to constantly record dates, monitor the beginning / end of a new period. So I decided to make a small plugin for my mind map application, which would automatically track the “integrity of input” for me, and I would only need to enter events and choose the best. The plugin is still under development. There is a small demo .
Do you use a similar technique? Share your experiences in the comments.