Time management: secrets of time management. Time management: time management Time management as an effective path to success
Personal efficiency is the main secret of success in all matters, and it depends, among other things, on the ability to correctly distribute time resources. Time management can be scientifically studied and planned. There are special techniques that will allow you to correctly allocate time so that there is enough for everything.
Time management concept
At birth, a person receives a unique, irreplaceable resource - time. A person’s success in business and his effectiveness often depend on how he manages it. Time management, or time management, is a multi-step process that includes planning, analysis and process organizing skills.
The idea of time management is not at all new; back in the first years of our era, the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote that time requires a special attitude, and formulated the first rules of time management: you need to keep a time diary, you need to evaluate how useful the time was spent and how The time period was full of events. Later, philosophers more than once thought about how to hold on to the flowing time, put forward theories and invented methods for saving it and rationally spending it.
But a scientific approach to managing this resource appeared only at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Frederick Taylor, an American engineer, proposed the concept of employee time management and linked this process with motivation and goal setting. Russian scientists at the beginning of the 20th century created a whole direction called the “scientific organization of labor” and laid a serious foundation for the modern theory of time management. The term “time management” appears only in the 70s of the 20th century, and by the beginning of the 21st century this industry has become one of the most important and well-developed parts of management.
Types of time
In order to manage something, you need to understand the essence of the object. Time is a specific object of management; in order to spend it wisely, it is worth dividing it into types. The first classification is based on the concepts of work and rest, in this case time is divided into working and leisure, or free time. Managing the seasons allows you to distinguish such types as seasonal time: high and low seasons of time consumption.
You can also classify a time resource depending on the activity to which it is dedicated, then working, personal and social time are allocated. Work time is spent on performing official duties, planning, personal time includes rest, education, entertainment, and social time is spent on family, friends, and establishing various communications. When it comes to planning, working time is usually taken into account, although, of course, it is necessary to apply the acquired skills of economical use of time to all types of time.
Time management functions
Any management performs the main function - the rational use of resources. The functions of time management are to plan, distribute and spend this non-renewable resource. Time management is necessary in order to make the most efficient use of the available time, which directly affects the productivity of a person or employee. The main functions of time management are planning the use of time, organizing processes for using time, monitoring compliance with principles and recording time expenditure.
Benefits of using time management
Time management has a number of positive benefits. To achieve success in any activity, you need to learn how to spend your time correctly. A person who has mastered time management technologies receives the following benefits:
- achieves goals faster and more often;
- he creates the circumstances of his life and can control them;
- able to achieve any goal and success in any activity;
- experiences less nervous feelings, since there is no place for fuss and haste in his life;
- has enough time for self-education and spiritual development;
- has an action plan for every day, becomes more disciplined and collected;
- rests more and therefore feels cheerful and healthy, has more opportunities to communicate with friends and family, and engage in hobbies;
- more effective at work;
- ultimately the person is more confident and happy.
Time management process structure
A time management system includes several basic processes:
- analysis - in order to move somewhere, you need to know what you want and what resources you have;
- strategic planning;
- formulation of goals;
- tactical and operational planning;
- goal achievement;
- control of resource expenditure and goal achievement.
There are other approaches to determining the structure of time management; it identifies 4 areas of developing knowledge, skills and habits, these include:
- goal setting, mastering the technique of setting goals;
- ability to prioritize;
- ability to use planning tools and their competent application;
- development, consolidation and application of time management skills.
Types of time management
Like any management, basic time management can be divided into strategic and operational planning. Management of this resource can also be divided into types according to timing: long-term and short-term, which, in fact, duplicates the first classification.
Strategic planning is associated with achieving long-term, global goals, while time is distributed over a year or more. It is associated with forecasting and is based on a deep analysis of the situation.
Current time management is associated with achieving goals in a short period of time: from a month to six months. It is built into the strategic plan, but covers only the immediate part of it.
Operational time distribution is associated with drawing up weekly and daily plans. The tactical distribution of resources is related to the real, current situation, to which circumstances can make adjustments.
General principles of time management
Time management processes are based on the main principles, these include:
- Correct goal setting. Its achievability and motivation to achieve it depend on this. There are various goal setting techniques, the most famous and effective is the SMART model.
- Motivation. Saving time must be conscious and related to the satisfaction of some important needs, otherwise success cannot be expected from time management.
- Saving. Time management is necessary in order to remove or reduce time pressure and increase productivity in the same periods of time.
Time management methods
Today, various strategies and techniques for distributing and using time are known. The most famous time management methods are as follows:
Eisenhower Matrix. This method consists of filling out a matrix according to 4 characteristics: important-not important, urgent-not urgent. All tasks for the planned period are assessed on this scale and ranked for implementation. Urgent and important tasks are completed first, less urgent and important tasks are put off to second priority, the main thing is not to delay their implementation so that they do not move into the first category. If possible, urgent and less important tasks should be delegated to subordinates; non-urgent and unimportant tasks should not accumulate, so they should be delegated or not performed at all and excluded from plans.
Pyramid of B. Franklin. This thorough model requires a lot of preparation the first time, and then it is easy to use. The base of the pyramid is the global goals and life values of a person. The second level is long-term goals for 10-20 years. The third is the strategic plan, decisions on ways to achieve global goals. Next is the plan for the coming year, then the short-term plan. Above is the plan for the day. Such a pyramid must be periodically revised and updated.
There are other time management techniques, but they are all based on the ability to separate the important from the unimportant, the skills of setting correct and achievable goals, and the motivation to save time.
Working time management: basic techniques and rules
Rational distribution of working time is the most important task for people seeking to increase their efficiency. Time management methods and management are aimed at eliminating the shortage of working time. Therefore, it is extremely important to plan your working day based on the following principles:
- it is necessary to ensure the ability to record the time spent on various operations;
- when drawing up a plan, you need to devote 60% of the time to planned work, 20% to unforeseen matters, 20% to spontaneous tasks;
- it is necessary to identify “time sinks” and eliminate them as much as possible;
- you need to rank work tasks by urgency and importance;
- Time planning must be systematic, consistent, and reasonable.
To manage time in an organization, the ABC method is often used; it allows you to classify company resources by degree of importance. It is built on three principles:
- the most important tasks are carried out by the manager, he spends 15% of his time on them;
- tasks of medium importance are delegated to managers, they are allocated 20% of working time;
- less important tasks are delegated to performers, who spend 65% of their time.
Time management in the organization
Time management in a company is a way to save up to 30% of a specialist’s working time. Therefore, it is necessary to pay due attention to this. Time management in an organization falls on the shoulders of managers who draw up operational and medium-term work plans for performers. Today there are many computer programs that allow you to plan the working hours of employees, as well as monitor the completion of tasks and the time spent. For example, Toggl, Bitrix “Team” and “Project”. There are three main strategies for organizing time management:
- Acceleration. It is necessary to minimize the time spent on typical, especially repetitive operations.
- Accumulation. It is necessary to identify reserves and priorities at each production stage, and create a time reserve to complete unforeseen tasks.
- Ordering. It is necessary to implement effective systems for planning and monitoring time use.
Free time management
Any person always feels a lack of free time, and it needs to be planned just as carefully as work time. To do this, you need to learn to strictly separate work from rest so that you have time to restore your performance. During vacation, you need to limit yourself from calls and messages about work in order to fully relax. You need to learn how to organize household work with maximum time savings. You need to develop the skill of identifying the most important tasks so that you have enough time not only for relaxation, but also for self-development. You should also learn to give up small routine tasks that no one needs, leaving maximum time to achieve priority goals.
Greetings to all guests and regular readers. In this article I will share with you the secrets of how to manage to do everything and what home time management is in general. After all, many of you are probably already tired of the constant rush of work that never ends.
At the same time, general fatigue accumulates, which over time threatens to develop into serious depression. Let's talk today about how to do everything without feeling like a “hunted horse.”
Why do you need home planning?
Of course, everyone's goals are different. Someone wants to unload their schedule so that they have time to communicate with loved ones, relax and pursue hobbies. Someone is constantly busy cleaning, cooking and washing and is late for work because of this. Some people get tired of the constant “Groundhog Day”.
This is a state when every day resembles the previous one, but at the same time you do not receive any return and do not achieve your goal. A home management system will help you organize your time correctly and effectively to get everything done!
Another very important and effective time management technique is not only to strictly follow the plan, but also to analyze what you have done. This is very important for strengthening your own motivation and understanding that you are on the right path.
It’s not enough to simply cross off all your household chores at the end of the week. Analyze the list, mentally dividing it into 3 groups:
- What can I praise myself for?
- What did I fail to do and why?
- What should I focus on next week?
There are a large number of types of time management, but they all pursue one goal: “Achieve more and get tired less!”
Golden Rules for Home Planning
- You don’t need to just write a huge to-do list that you will never be able to complete in 1 day. This is ineffective time management and will lead to loss of motivation. You are more likely to abandon the entire time control system, having lost faith in it. That is, the task of effective time management lies precisely in the rational distribution of time, which means that when setting a task, you need to clearly understand how much time it will take to complete it. Don’t deceive yourself and don’t “throw on” too much, then you will definitely not have time for anything.
- Clearly rank household chores according to their importance.
- Break up a big task that has been lying unfulfilled for months, or even years, into small parts and pieces. This could be moving, renovation, general cleaning, etc.
- Combine several things at once. (Useful + super useful, pleasant + useful, pleasant + pleasant). For example, a woman is torn between a lot of ironing, cleaning, the need to get herself in order before an event and the desire to relax while watching her favorite TV series. Why not organize your day in such a way that from 12-13 you iron, while you can turn on your favorite TV series or show, and then apply a mask to your face and at the same time do a little cleaning.
- Identify your time wasters. What distracts you more from completing work tasks (TV, social networks, telephone conversations)? There is no need to exclude them from your life forever. If all these little things bring you pleasure, then just set aside a clear period of time for them. Perhaps this rule would be perfectly suited to the saying: “If you’ve done the job, go for a walk!”
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- Set aside a little time for household chores. This rule applies to very busy people who spend 10-12 hours at work. In this case, no matter how you plan the day, there are not 3-4 hours for cleaning, cooking, washing and ironing. So don't torture yourself and set aside only 30 minutes. Designate that on Monday you spend 30 minutes in the bathroom, on Tuesday you iron for exactly 30 minutes? This time is not enough - transfer another 30 minutes of ironing to another day of the week, etc. This is much better than on a single day off, with your tongue on your shoulder, doing a global cleaning of the house, at the same time washing, ironing and cooking for the whole week. What will you get at the end of such a day off? Depression and terrible fatigue!
Many women complain that cooking takes them a huge amount of time, but at the same time they have a daily panic at work that the family will have nothing to eat in the evening! This suggests that you are ineffective in managing time and have not organized your time correctly.
There is even such a type of time management as organizing home meals. In short, you should always create a menu for the week. Based on this, buy groceries + think through as much as possible on the weekend what you can prepare from this menu. And in order not to feel like a “victim of home life”, you can combine Sunday cooking for the week
I manage to do everything!
Many who first encounter the newfangled and overseas concept of “time management” automatically reject such a time management system. Like, why do I need all these systems, I already have time for everything!
Perhaps, but think about how much more efficiently you could use your resources. You could learn a new business, learn a foreign language, master some specialty or read more interesting books, attend cultural events.
Yes, you may actually be able to do everything, but at what cost? Are you tired and come home with just the thought of going to bed? You are satisfied with yourself, you did everything this way, but at the same time there were no interesting and bright moments in your day.
Don't limit your life to just household chores. An effective time management system will help make life brighter and save you from general fatigue!
Be sure to rest!
This is a very important rule that many people either forget or don’t pay attention to. I don’t mean now the dream when you, tired and automatically, carried your body to the bed and set the alarm clock with the last of your strength.
I’m talking now about proper rest; one of the types of effective time management at home will help you allocate time for it.
- When making a plan for each day, be sure to imagine the time resources that will be spent on completing the task.
- Clearly define “working” time and rest time.
- Write down the types of holidays that are ideal for you. This could be going to the cinema, the theater, an exhibition, reading a book (which you’ve been wanting to read for a year), watching TV with your loved one, dinner in a cafe, a walk in the park, a visit from guests. Why is it so important to write this out? In order to avoid that same feeling of the notorious “Groundhog Day” and so that you can clearly see how much more diverse, brighter and richer your life can be.
- Now that you have written down how you want to relax, make a short-term plan. Leave time in your schedule every day to do what you love. For the weekend, include those that require more time (theater, cinema, walk, picnic). And every evening, set aside 1-2 hours for relaxation (movie, book, tea with loved ones, etc.)
Successful business consultants who teach the basics of effective time management claim that there is no worse enemy for yourself than chronic fatigue! Nothing demotivates us, reduces our performance and prevents us from achieving our goals like chronic fatigue. So the time management system is precisely aimed at ridding you of this feeling.
In general, we can talk about effective time management for a very long time, but it’s better to visit time management training , and you will see how much better your life can be.
Share in the comments how you plan your household chores, and does a similar system help you in your life? Subscribe if you haven't done so yet and see you next time!
Hello, friends! Dmitry Shaposhnikov is in touch.
In my observation, a modern successful person inevitably encounters the concept of “time management.” Everyone, to one degree or another, has felt a lack of time, pressure of deadlines, and experienced stress from forced haste.
After reading the article, you will learn the most important things about time management and become familiar with the basic concepts of successful time management. All this is accompanied by my examples and comments. I hope you find this topic useful, interesting, and fun!
Let's start, friends!
1. What is time management - definition and history
Direct translation of this term " Time Management"from English - " time management" It is clear that it is impossible to manage time in the literal sense: the real function of time management is to use the time of your life with maximum efficiency.
The most accurate definition of time management is:
Time management- this is the accounting, distribution and operational planning of your own time resources.
Another definition.
Time management is a scientific approach to organizing time and increasing the effect of its use.
The motto of a professional time manager:
Work less, have time more!
People who know how to manage their own time productively live richer and fuller lives and do their work with minimal time expenditure.
By managing our time, we have more living space: the opportunity to do what we really like becomes more real.
Considering the pressure in which modern people live, the issue of managing time resources is becoming increasingly relevant, if not vitally important. Developed time management skills significantly increase personal effectiveness. I realized this 12 years ago.
Time management allows you to organize your work and personal time throughout the day (week, month) in order to have time to do all the important and necessary things without being distracted by secondary or extraneous issues and problems.
Effective planning allows you to free up colossal time resources for a rich and fulfilling life. According to professionals, the size of such resources is calculated in years and decades.
History of time management
The scientific approach to organizing time is not a new problem. The history of time management goes back a long way.
Even 2000 years ago in Ancient Rome, the famous thinker Seneca proposed dividing all time into usefully spent, that is, good, into bad and useless.
Seneca also began to keep constant records of time in writing. The thinker said that when living a certain period of time, it is necessary to evaluate it from the point of view of its fullness.
In the subsequent history of time management, these ideas formed the basis of the concept of “personal effectiveness.”
Alberti, a writer and Italian scientist who lived in the 15th century, said that those who know how to manage time effectively will always be successful.
To do this, he proposed using two rules:
- Make a to-do list every morning.
- Arrange things in order of decreasing importance.
For many centuries, all these principles existed only in theoretical form, and only since the 80s of the last century this topic began to move from theory to practice.
Time management is necessary not only for executives and business owners: each of us must be able to manage our own assets in order to enjoy the process of life to the fullest.
Of course, not everyone needs time management. If a person has nothing to do in his life, and his main task is to “kill time,” then time management for such a person is an irrelevant and unnecessary discipline.
In other words, you first need to decide whether you really don’t have enough time and where you would like to spend your free minutes, hours and days when they appear.
Time management consists of several components:
- strict time tracking;
- optimization of time resources;
- planning the day (week, month or other period of time);
- organization of motivation.
Time management is important not only for work: people who master the art of time management are more cheerful, healthy and successful in their professional and personal lives.
Effective time management allows you to comprehend all your actions and decisions from the point of view of their appropriateness for your own development and improvement.
2. Myths about time management – 3 main misconceptions
There are a number of social stereotypes and misconceptions about time management.
Some believe that time management is needed solely for work, that in Russia this discipline is ineffective due to the peculiarities of the national mentality, that life strictly according to plan turns a person into a robot and deprives him of free will.
All these myths are unfounded: below I will try to completely debunk them.
Myth 1. No one can manage time.
The statement is correct in form, but erroneous in content. Managing time is truly impossible. (unless, of course, you are the inventor of a time machine). No one is able to slow down its objective progress, speed it up or stop it even for a moment.
But a person can do the following : manage yourself, your decisions and actions over time, and also engage in setting priorities. This is exactly what time management practitioners talk about – about managing your own life.
Taking a smart and pragmatic approach to your actions is time management: you'll be surprised how many minutes and hours free up once you start to act more deliberately and consciously.
Remember that all successful people, regardless of their type of activity, plan their affairs and act with maximum productivity. At the same time, they work about the same amount of time as ordinary people, but they always manage to do more.
Their secret is that they manage to do more things per unit of time, which ultimately affects their life results.
Myth 2: Time management will make me work harder and harder.
Working hard and getting tired, neglecting rest is a direct path to overwork and depression. It is necessary to constantly strive to reduce the amount of work while increasing productivity. How to do it? In short, act strictly according to plan and be able to separate the secondary from the main.
Using time management techniques effectively does not mean doing more or increasing productivity by getting things done faster.
We are talking about increasing personal productivity by eliminating unnecessary tasks and eliminating the so-called “time wasters” or “chronophages”.
The category of chronophages includes hundreds of meaningless and small things that we do during the day, without even thinking about their expediency: frequently checking email, communicating and viewing news on social networks, meaningless conversations with colleagues.
A person’s commitment to matters distracted from the main task is partly explained by procrastination - the desire to postpone important and necessary events “until better times.”
However, if you discard reflection and recognize for yourself the importance and significance of your current tasks, you will have neither the strength nor the desire to be distracted by extraneous matters.
Myth 3. Using time management will turn me into a robot who will do everything according to a schedule, depriving me of freedom and choice.
People are afraid of turning into robots, but in fact they are already them, and also slaves of their own psycho-emotional habits and behavior patterns.
Time management does not limit our freedom, but, on the contrary, creates it.
Time management is necessary not only for office workers, executives and managers: managing the main resource of life - one’s own time - is necessary for everyone who takes themselves responsibly and seriously.
A practical criterion for the need to implement time management principles in life is the presence 4 or more cases in the plan for the current day (not only professional, but also personal matters are taken into account). Businessmen, freelance artists, and housewives need this.
You've probably noticed that most of us are so overloaded with work and personal worries that we don't even have an idea how to get out of such a situation and how to manage everything?!
We experience some kind of emotional stress, panic, discomfort, which leads to lethargy and a depressed mood, when everything falls out of hand and we don’t want to do anything!
If you do not want to become a victim of depression, you need to learn how to properly plan your time, that is, do Time management!
Psychologists believe that there IS a way out of the situation of “catastrophic lack of time,” the main thing is that you have the desire to change yourself a little, and also change your attitude towards personal time.
What is the purpose of time management?
Time management is the ability to effectively manage and control your personal time!
This is the ability to sort out what is the main thing for you at the moment and what is secondary, what is the very first thing you should do, and what can be moved a few hours ahead.
As soon as a person begins to realize all this, all the fuss with a lack of time immediately disappears.
You may think that managing your time is quite difficult - not at all!
The main thing is that you make specific decisions for yourself about what needs to be done and when!
The best time management tip is to ignore idiots...
- Great quote. Who is author?
- To imagine that they don’t exist...
- Well, who is the author?
- And continue to do your thing...
Many are sure that those people who actively use time management manage to do much more and faster! This is a wrong opinion...
Time management helps us increase our productivity significantly, and also teaches us to throw all unnecessary things into the trash. Additional time appears - and it’s up to you where you spend it!
Those people who have learned to manage their time effectively - they manage to save a third of their lives! Amazing, isn't it?
Basic rules of time management!
Time management: Imagine that today is your last day.
This rule may seem ridiculous to you, but still...
From this question I wake up vigorously every morning and start wisely.
And here is my question: “If I knew that today was the last day of my life, what would I do and how would I behave on this day?” My advice to you, right now, take a piece of paper and frankly answer the question for yourself .
I think you will find this interesting!
Time management: Do planning.
Those people who were able to achieve recognition and success in life constantly plan.
Daily planning is ESSENTIAL to increase your efficiency throughout the day.
Always plan specific tasks in your notebook!
Remember, if your goal is not on paper, then it simply does not exist!
When you work with a compiled list of planned tasks, you immediately increase the productivity and productivity of your time by 25%.
Make it a habit in the evening (before you go to bed) to write down your task plan for tomorrow!
As soon as you come to work, you will already clearly know where to start.
Work with this list throughout the day: as soon as some new task appears, include it in the same list, taking into account its priority compared to previously recorded tasks.
As soon as you successfully complete a specific task, be sure to cross it off the list!
This way you will be satisfied with the work done, and you will also be proud of yourself for not wasting your time!
A complex task needs to be divided into several subtasks - do not take on it entirely (only unreasonable people do this, in other words, losers).
Time management: Filter information.
In order not to oversaturate your brain with a huge amount of unnecessary information, and also not to waste your precious time on it, learn to choose the most necessary, useful and weed out the unnecessary!
Learn to quickly study and skim the pages of the World Wide Web without reading everything from beginning to end.
Stop and remember only the important things.
Time management: Eliminate “time wasters” from your life!
This is probably the very first problem that prevents us all from effectively and efficiently managing our time!
By checking email, communicating on ICQ and on social networks (VKontakte, Facebook) - we STEAL and KILL our time, we waste it!
I think everyone has heard who Evgeny Popov is and what path he has taken: from an ordinary cleaner to a successful Internet businessman.
Evgeniy created an effective Time Management Script, which allows you to shape your day in a convenient form. It can be installed both on your phone and on your computer to plan your day productively!
With the help of the “Master of Time” course from Evgeny Popov, many radically change their lives and daily use a special script (installed on their phone or computer) to plan their day!
Manage to do in a day what you have accumulated in a week and you will see how dramatically your life will change!
Stop being a vegetable! Be active! Live a colorful life!
P.S. I personally bought the “Master of Time” course from E. Popov immediately on the 5th day after its release! Therefore, I advise everyone without a doubt: buy and learn to manage your time productively!
Time management teaches us all to effectively manage our lives, enjoy every moment of time in which we are now, find time for our family and friends, make time for self-development - life will begin to acquire bright colors and become much more interesting!
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Often, people who pay increased attention to developing their careers are faced with a serious problem: there are not even 24 hours in a day for all their job responsibilities.
Modern technologies can help cope with this time management technologies, which allow you to properly organize your working time and thereby increase professional efficiency.
Time management - the science of time
Time management(in translation from English - “time management”) - the science of methods for determining what is important to a person and what time should be spent on first. Its origin dates back to the 60s of the 20th century.
Then, in Western countries, thanks to the development of business, the pace of life rapidly accelerated. The workload of people involved in management has increased sharply. They began to experience a chronic lack of both working and free time. Gradually the process spread to other categories of employees.
Excessive busyness, loss of productivity and increased stress among many people have led to the emergence of a new science - time management, which was based not on the desire to do everything at once, but on the principle of achieving maximum results in minimum time. The main tool for this was planning.
Effective plan - setting goals
To compose effective plan, we need a goal. Find out what you want to achieve, and then set a clear time frame: exactly when you plan to achieve what you want. Time management distinguishes between short-term and long-term goals. They are determined depending on the implementation period. If the former can exist on paper in the form of a current task for the day, for example, to call ten clients, then the latter can exist a year or more in advance, for example, to move up the career ladder.
According to Brian Tracy, business consultant and best-selling author of books on improving personal productivity, if solving a problem takes too long to deal with it at once, it is worth breaking it down into several stages, and those, in turn, into sub-stages. Each of them needs time. Then a plan is drawn up, and following it you will move from one task to another. And what you do brings you step by step closer to your cherished goal.
Having defined your long-term goal, all its stages and sub-stages, begin to record plans for each day. To ensure that the written sheet is not just a useless list of to-dos, it is worth focusing it on the result. For example, write in the list not “compile a report”, but “the report has been completed”, so that at the end of the process you can put a bold tick next to the entry. This is a strong motivator. Clearly formulate the outcome you want to achieve when solving the problem.
Pareto principle – 20 versus 80
Sometimes the list of work tasks is so extensive that you risk not meeting the standard 8 hours. Therefore, it is better to arrange things in order of urgency and importance. If there are urgent matters, postpone routine work. Classics of time management believe that most people do not reach career heights not because of lesser abilities, but because they do not know how to highlight the main thing.
This idea is clearly demonstrated by the rule derived by the Italian economist and sociologist Vilfredo Pareto: “20% of effort gives 80% of the result, and the remaining 80% of effort gives only 20% of the result.” So it is recommended to highlight those 20% of things that provide maximum effect and start your day with them.
Don't forget to show management your plan. Even if your manager is not as keen on time management as you are, he will be aware of which of the most pressing job responsibilities you perform first and which ones you put off. It can also influence the plan and help you decide on your priorities. Thanks to this, there will be no inconsistency in work.
Eisenhower Planning Matrix
To create an effective plan for your goals and objectives, use the planning matrix of Dwight Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States. He held this post from 1953 to 1961. It provides four options for combinations according to parameters: urgent, not urgent, important, not important.
Make a list of these symbols next to each case. And estimate the time required to complete them. Sort things by importance and keep the table in front of your eyes to focus on the main thing.
Leave “spare” time
According to Gleb Arkhangelsky, a classic of Russian time management, when planning a day, you need to calculate no more than 60% of the time, and 40% - the so-called buffer zones - should be left in case urgent and unforeseen tasks arise. There is always force majeure, this also needs to be taken into account. And you shouldn’t plan your day minute by minute, such a plan won’t work anyway.
If no unexpected tasks arise, get busy doing important, but not urgent, things. For example, sort out the papers in your desk - if you don’t need contracts with clients today, this doesn’t mean they won’t be useful soon. This way you will solve the problem before it becomes a burning issue and requires your time at the most inopportune moment.
Well, if this approach does not allow you to avoid force majeure (for example, you need to go to an urgent meeting that will take half a working day), then you should:
- Entrust some of the planned tasks to another employee if you have assistants.
- Move things to a later date (in whole or in part).
- Reject tasks.
When creating a plan, prioritize the “hard” tasks that must be completed at a specific time, such as meetings.
Make sure that they are not scheduled strictly one after another, without a time interval. Your partner or client may be late, the meeting may drag on, and this will lead to a shift in all other tasks.
Organization of the manager's time
Organization of the working day for a manager has its own characteristics: communication with subordinates, setting tasks, control and resolution of conflicts between employees.
In the midst of all this chaos, you need to focus on the problems and solve them effectively. Time management classics give four pieces of advice on this matter:
- Don't schedule more than four meetings a day, otherwise you'll be less likely to be effective.
- Delegate: If you're doing work that someone in your department could do, and their time costs less per hour than yours, you're wasting the company's money.
- Set weekly reception hours for subordinates - an open-door policy discourages employees from being independent and leads to an unreasonable waste of time.
- When planning your working day, create conditions in order to focus on the problem at hand for at least two to three hours.
Bounded Chaos Method
When implementing a plan with short-term goals, as a rule, no problems arise. But with long-term ones, difficulties may arise, especially if there are several such projects. It's hard to keep a lot of details in your head. At the same time, regularly working on little things takes up time and prevents you from concentrating on the main thing. The way out is the “method of limited chaos”, described in the book of the same name by Gleb Arkhangelsky.
For each project, create a separate folder and place all relevant materials there. Remind yourself and review them periodically. Carry a small notepad with you to write down your thoughts. And then organize your entries into folders. When it comes time to process the materials, you will already have some good ideas or solutions.
For very complex and lengthy projects, when the work ahead psychologically overwhelms you with its scale, the “Swiss cheese” method is effective.
It is based on the fact that you need to start the task gradually, making “holes” in the problem like those visible in the cut of Swiss cheese. This way, you will begin to feel movement forward, and you will be motivated to continue solving the problem until you get the desired result.
Time management control
All of the above time management functions will not be as effective if not controlled.
It covers three tasks:
- Understanding your physical and emotional state.
- Comparing what was planned with the result.
- If necessary, adjust the plan.
- This simple procedure will help you better understand what you have achieved and what steps you should take to better organize your working time.