How To Become More Productive

According to my observation, a modern successful person inevitably faces the notion of “time management”. Everyone felt the lack of time, the pressure of deadlines, felt the stress of the forced haste to some extent. After reading the article, you learn the most important thing about time management, get acquainted with the basic concepts of successful time management.

Time management: a necessity or waste of time

People who are able to efficiently manage their own time, live a more fulfilling and fuller life, do their work with minimal time costs. By managing our time, we have more living space: it becomes more realistic to do what we really like.

Considering the rush in which modern man lives, the issue of managing time resources is becoming ever more relevant, even vital. Developed time management skills at times increase personal efficiency. Tested on my own experience. Fortunately, gadgets that allow you to keep track of time come to the rescue, which greatly facilitates our lives. You can read about the best applications here.

Time management allows you to streamline business and personal time during 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 enormous time resources for a rich and fulfilling life. According to professionals, the size of such resources is calculated for years and decades.

How to manage time - 7 main principles of time management

Now let's move on to practice and find out how to manage time correctly, how to start monitoring and planning our actions; what difficulties usually arise along this path and how to overcome them. Below I have described the basic principles and rules.

Principle 1. Plan your actions.

Planning for the next day (or next week) is of practical importance in any work. It doesn't matter if you are sitting in an office, standing by the conveyor, working as a courier during your free time - a clear plan of action will always bring real benefits in the form of increased performance (personal and professional).

Even if your actions are strictly regulated by the job description, you should always have a pre-planned plan. This will help to cope with the work more efficiently and quickly.

Remember that all successful people plan their lives.

Here are a few of the most important axioms of time management:

1. Fix goals in writing. If the paper (or electronic diary) does not indicate your goal, then it does not exist.
2. Plan your day. A pre-compiled list of tasks and actions increases the productivity of any type of activity by 25%.
3. Crush large tasks. Volumetric cases should always be divided into several small subtasks - do not grasp a large-scale project without thinking through the sequence of actions in advance.

It is necessary that planning becomes your second nature: make it a rule to create an action plan for tomorrow before going to bed. In the morning at work, you will already know exactly where to start, what to continue and how to finish.

Remember that those few minutes that you spend on drawing up a plan, will pay off in the future: you will appreciate the results of competent planning in the first week of implementation.

Principle 2. Formulate the desired result in specific goals and objectives.

Strategic and effective planning is impossible without a competent goal setting. In a simpler language, you should be able to clearly articulate the main goal and be able to break it down into more specific and local tasks.

In management theory, this skill is called “goal decomposition”. The main way to translate this concept into practice is the transition from the general to the particular.

Example: You are a marketer in a business firm and your main goal is to increase sales in the current season by 30%. The implementation of this goal can be broken down into several subtasks: increase sales at a specific outlet by conducting promotions, review the pricing issue for certain items, adjust prices, conduct a large-scale advertising campaign on the Internet and in the media.

The main criterion of usefulness and efficiency of a local problem is its specificity. Starting a move towards a large goal with successive tasks, you significantly reduce the time to do work.

Consistency and focus on specific points - the key to future success.

Even the greatest creators did not create their works at once entirely. At first, they made a plan and then carried out it point by point. One of the secrets of successful time management is in the ability to focus on current tasks without losing the general direction.

Principle 3. Fix your action plan.

The need to fix the action plan has already been mentioned above. Here we consider how it is best to do. There are several working and effective tools to make your plans and tasks more visible and specific.

One such method is called the Gantt Chart. Let me explain how it looks in practice.

Example: Let's say your goal is to build a house. To begin with, the task should be broken down into several stages: clearing the site, digging and laying the foundation, carrying out groundworks, finishing the premises, carrying out communications and doing landscaping.

In the Gantt chart, all the tasks of the current large-scale project are indicated, along with the timeframe for their implementation, the duration of time and the order of execution.

The same type of tasks can be grouped into one item, and it is advisable to divide more voluminous matters into several successive tasks.

Visual preparation of the plan saves not only your time but also allows other employees involved in the project to quickly understand the situation and get involved in the work from the desired stage.

Principle 4. Set priorities.

Timely and clearly define the main goal - it is necessary and correct. But the main task is to move towards the achievement of this goal, consistently performing current tasks of varying degrees of difficulty.

For prioritization in daily planning, a simple method called the “ABC Method” is appropriate.

ABC method: "A" is the most important thing of the day, "B" is less important, "C" is a task of average importance, etc.

The first thing on the list should be done first. Usually, this task is the most time consuming and difficult. Sometimes a person experiences fear or is lazy to start the day with the main task, but the secret is that the effectiveness of your current activity depends on its performance.

Practical time management specialist Brian Tracy advises solving this issue strictly and unequivocally. His method is called "eat a frog for breakfast." "Frog" - this is the most difficult and unpleasant affair of the day. You constantly transfer it to the "afternoon", for the evening, and even for tomorrow.

But the bottom line is that thereby creating constant emotional stress that prevents you from doing all the other things productively. Tracy says that the day should start from the most difficult, then all the other things will be done practically by themselves. The logical continuation of the Brian Tracy method here is the law or Pareto principle.

Pareto's Law: 20% of our efforts bring us 80% of the results, and the remaining 80% of our efforts - only 20% of the results.

Thus, our task is to identify this 20% of our most effective actions and concentrate on them.

Principle 5. Focus on the essentials.

I have already said how important it is to achieve your goals; in this section, I will talk about how to do this as effectively as possible.

The ability to focus on the main things, without being distracted by others, is the most important practical skill, having mastered which, you will solve the most priority tasks of productive time management.

Time is not a renewable resource and the most valuable of all. We can spend $100 rubles and earn them again, but we are not able to return the lived second. We are also not able to extend the day to 25 hours, but we can free up our own space for those activities that are really important to us.

So that minor matters do not affect your personal performance, you need to master specific time management techniques.

One of the most effective techniques for freeing time is delegation. More precisely, delegation is a component of classical management. Delegation is a way to delegate part of our business to other people.

The most basic examples are: you can wash your car, not on your own, but give it to a car wash; or else: you can repair the leaking tap in the bathroom yourself or call a professional plumber.

Remember: Any tasks that are more appropriate (in terms of Finance and time) to give to others should be given to others.

The higher the cost of your personal time, the more minor and not too important tasks can be delegated. Less important matters can be done in “non-resource time”. It is about that part of the day when you are no longer at the peak of your mental and physical strength, for example, at the end of the day when there is fatigue.

Also, for example, while in transport or in a queue, you can combine waiting with training — listen to audiobooks on professional skills or the development of one of the skills of personal effectiveness.

Another important skill for real-time savings is the ability to say no.

Do not think that you need to refuse all indiscriminately. The ability to say "no" refers primarily to those people and affairs that deprive you of your energy and time resources without giving anything in return.

Say "no" to a chatty neighbour or employee, reading the tabloid press, surfing the Internet on social networks and entertainment resources, watching TV.

Remember that even a small unplanned break, when someone or something has distracted you from the business, can cause the failure of plans.

Principle 6. Analyze your experience and create your own time management rules.

Periodically, it is worth looking back and making pragmatic conclusions from your time management experience. Study your mistakes and be sure to take steps to correct them.

Be sure to analyze the situations in which you are particularly intensively losing personal resources. You should always remain conscious and look from the outside what exactly happens to your life - in which direction and with what speed it moves.

If you feel that you have lost control and are too deep in the solution of the problem, without thinking about the cost of time - it's time to stop, take a break and try to optimize your own actions. In the end, create your own rules for time management, your chips. Your whole life, your activity is unique.

Principle 7. Plan your vacation.

In pursuit of success and personal performance, never neglect the rest. I will say more than that - plan your vacation, as well as your business objectives! For time management, proper rest is the most important element of success.

Staying at the peak of your psycho-physiological abilities is possible only with the help of regular recuperation.

Do not skimp on sleep, your own output and communication with relatives are also important factors for effective time management, planning, and goal setting.

About the author

Irina is the editor of freeappsforme.com. The majority of articles are devoted to mobile applications and their reviews. Loves everything related to gadgets.

Conclusion

In practice, I was convinced that time planning simplifies life and helps to keep up. I recommend you to follow at least a few simple rules of time management and I'm sure you will feel the changes in a few days. The main thing is to make it a habit. A habit is formed 20-30 days. You will need to hold on quite a bit so that you are used to doing the right things, and then the system of habits and time management will work for you.

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