How to organize your life so that you can do everything. Learn to plan your household chores

As often happens, when you hear an alarm clock, you are not in a hurry to get up, but you think to lie still for at least 5 or 10 minutes. As a result, you are going in a hurry, because you are already late, you don’t have time to have breakfast, sometimes you can even forget something important at home. The extra few minutes spent in bed will not allow you to sleep, but will only disrupt your morning routine, and the day will not go the way you planned in the morning. It is better to get up as soon as you wake up, while in the evening prepare a suit and shoes and put everything you need in your bag.

To get things done faster, organize your workspace in the most optimal way. Starting at your desk, where all items should be arranged in order of need. For example, sort papers that can be shuffled into drawers so that you don’t have to look for them and waste precious time on this. Stationery, disks and flash drives - all this should be in its place. The same applies to the desktop on the computer. Organize files and shortcuts in a way that makes it easy for you to work with them. Set up your work environment so that it doesn't distract you in the future.

Have you noticed how often housework is delayed? You planned to finish cleaning in 30 minutes, but spent more than an hour on it. Add drive. Boring household chores need to be done quickly and energetically, otherwise they can take up most of your free time. Turn on your favorite music, open the window or window and quickly do everything you have planned. And, if possible, don't get distracted.

Divide responsibilities between family members, entrust some work to children. You will save time, and it will be useful for them, as they will not only learn how to do household chores, but also get used to responsibility. If you are doing something together, you can talk to the child at this time, find out how he is doing, what he is thinking about.

A lot of time is wasted on things like TV and the Internet. Every evening you spend a couple of hours watching talk shows or the news, and then move to the computer, where you can hang out late in chat rooms or social networks. Try to do this as little as possible. Without wasting mental strength on empathizing with non-existent heroes of the TV screen, you can pay more attention to your loved ones, and they will also respond to you with care. The amount of free time that has appeared can also pleasantly surprise you.

It is very important to allow yourself enough rest. Often, the time allotted for sleep is considered in some way a reserve that can be spent on other tasks. It is better not to do this, because your body needs a good rest. Don't forget to also relax, meet friends, do your favorite things.

Time is one of the most valuable irreplaceable resources of our life. And along with this, the art of taming time is the most difficult. But having learned to manage it, and first of all - to correctly distribute it, you will be able to manage several times more.

Visualize and prioritize

One of the fundamental foundations of time planning is its visualization. No matter how phenomenal memory you have, it is impossible to remember everything. Therefore, choose for yourself the most optimal way to record upcoming events: diary, notepad, separate landscape, electronic planners.

Write things down in order of priority. Try to complete the most urgent, difficult, unpleasant tasks at the beginning of the day. At this time, the level of concentration, composure and efficiency is the highest. You will spend less time on labor-intensive tasks and realize with relief that the hardest part is already behind you, besides, you will happily continue your working day, performing easier tasks.

Be realistic about your strengths

In addition to describing the task, include a realistic amount of time needed to complete the task. By driving yourself into an unrealistic framework, you will not only not have time to complete the intended task, but also shift the completion of everyone else. It is better to take time with a margin, but be on time just in time, than to live in emergency mode.

One of the features of life is that it always happens not the way we imagine. Therefore, it is worth planning only 60% of the available time, and leave the remaining 40% in reserve, so to speak, for “unforeseen expenses”.

Do not forget that you are not a robot, and you definitely need rest. And it also needs to be included in your daily routine. After every hour and a half of hard work, take five minutes to collect your thoughts, get distracted, stretch, etc. Give yourself a full lunch break. At this time, it is better to change the situation - go outside, move away from, lie down and let yourself relax. By observing and resting, you will be able to work productively throughout the day.

Separate difficult tasks and get rid of unnecessary things

Divide your time planning into long-term and current. In the long term, describe your plans for the next week, month, year. Based on global tasks, plan your day. Large tasks should be divided into smaller subtasks. So you will know exactly how you will achieve a particular goal, what you need to do for this, and when you will do it.

The hardest part of planning is getting rid of time wasters. Gather all your will in and say a resounding “no” during working hours to social media communication, looking at photos, talking on, etc. All this after work.

Determine the most important task (MOT)

“Many people like to start the day with the easiest and fastest tasks,” Cruz writes. “Sorting through overnight mail, answering emails, signing purchase orders – cracking those things like nuts makes you feel so productive.” And here the main trap lies in wait for us: the desire to appear effective, but not to be.

Our resources - time, attention, productive state - are finite. If we shoot sparrows with a cannon, we will not achieve anything. Instead, Cruz suggests that you use your willpower to focus on what matters most—what fits in with your big plans, what will move you forward.

The goal should be specific, measurable and tangible. If you can’t narrow it down within one day, define an “area of focus”. For example, if you need to prepare a webinar, the focus area will be collecting material, analyzing case studies, and creating a presentation. If you are a startup, your area is creating an investor-attractive product presentation.

Having decided on the main task, start the day right there. Psychologist Dan Ariely says our most productive hours are in the morning. Creative work is best done at the peak of cognitive abilities (and it comes about half an hour after waking up). Leave the "reactive" work for later.

Schedule tasks in blocks

Immersive work requires a different mode of activity than one-minute debriefing. Remember this. Constantly switching between different types of tasks during the day is like trying to sleep fitfully: you will earn a headache and do not have time to do anything.

To-do lists that aren't backed by a measurable resource (particularly time) will never work.

"In all the interviews and surveys I've done for this book, one of the main messages I've gotten is that if you want something done, you need to schedule a specific time for it."

Think of planning your day like building a building that people can live comfortably in. You also need to be comfortable in your schedule - otherwise it simply will not work. Plan even for things that are not considered to be business - for example, time to "breathe". The head of LinkedIn, Jeff Weiner, does just that: he includes blocks of “air” in his daily schedule just to keep from going crazy.

Create an "auto-responder" in case of unforeseen cases

The ability to postpone problem solving to free time so as not to disrupt your plans is a very useful habit that will significantly increase your productivity. Remember: you can always return to a non-urgent task, and interrupted work will completely knock down your rhythm of the day.

Train yourself to automatically respond to unexpected requests that conflict with your schedule. Something like this: “Unfortunately, from 16:00 to 17:00 I have an important business scheduled. Can we talk after 5:00 pm or will it wait until tomorrow?”

Set a limit

“Like any housewife, a manager's job is never done. There are always tasks that still need to be done. And there are always more than we can handle,” writes Andrew Grove in High Performance Management. Many of our attempts to do everything are connected with the fear of not being perfect, not performing enough, and ultimately being vulnerable. In fact, this only leads to the fact that we choose momentary calm, but sacrifice our long-term goals.

Ultimately, the price of such a choice is your full life, where there is a place for joy and relaxation.

Don't be a slave to your to-do list, says Kevin Cruz. Take it for granted: the flow of incoming tasks is endless, you can always find something else to do. Instead, analyze how you spend your time throughout the day. Find what is truly important to you, and invest in doing it well, with full dedication.

Apply the SODA Rule

SODA stands for "make, postpone, delegate, archive (delete)". Any information that comes to you must be processed quickly. If the reaction takes less than a minute - do it. If the matter is not urgent, postpone it (be sure to make a note for yourself what to do with it later). If the task is simple and someone can do it for you, delegate. If it does not fit into any of the previous categories, feel free to delete it.

To work with mail, apply the 3-25-0 principle: you can look into the mailbox only three times a day, you can spend no more than 25 minutes on letters and communication in messengers, and so that not a single task is left without a specific solution. Otherwise, our thoughts will constantly return to what is "hanging" - this feature of unfinished business was explained by the Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik.

Use the "Pareto Principle"

It is also called the 80/20 principle. In the most common interpretation in relation to productivity, it sounds like this: 80% of efforts give 20% of the result, and vice versa. This ratio magically turns out to be true for almost any field. For example, for sales (80% of revenue comes from 20% of loyal customers) or for education (20% of the material contains 80% of all significant information).

How to apply the Pareto principle? It is necessary to clearly define the tasks and activities that will bring the maximum return.

Try to determine what exactly in each case will fall into the top 20 (and require the most effort), and what will remain a routine. If you are a leader, focus on developing a small number of priority areas; if you are an entrepreneur, think about the needs of your most important customers.

Delegate everything

In 2013, professors Julian Birkinshaw and Jordan Cohen published the findings from their productivity experiment. It turned out that highly skilled workers spend 41% of their time on things that are not related to their immediate tasks and can be done by others. According to the researchers, it's about the satisfaction that small "victories" bring.

But if we invest that time into learning new things, finding better ways to do our thing, it will pay off in the long run. Kevin Cruz suggests evaluating each task in terms of what can be done with it - delegated, forgotten, or done more efficiently. The same “80/20 principle” works here: find a goal that is worth your effort and achieve it. For the rest, try to think as little as possible.

It is not necessary to have a personal secretary. There are many services on the service market that allow you to delegate cleaning, cooking, garbage disposal, walking the dog. There is a service of personal assistants Fins, with which you can deal with small assignments. Evaluate the gain in time and think about where it could be invested.

And finally - a quote from Danny Iny, founder of Firepole Marketing: “How to increase your efficiency? Very simple: plan for yourself what you need to accomplish, and not let others decide it for you. Most people do just the latter, practicing the seemingly innocent but completely counter-productive habit of starting the day by checking email... As a result, their attention and energy is directed to where other people want, and not where they would produce more Effect".

This question was asked to me under the post where I talked about the weekly menu. How to succeed, I don't know. And no one will give you the answer to this question. This is first. Secondly, what does everything mean?

It is not possible to do everything in one day. By "everything" I mean all areas of life. I will continue to speak exclusively about myself. And work, and household chores, and a farm, and a family, and a bird with a garden, and friends, and parents.

Under the expression "do everything" I see only competent and clear planning. And I perfectly understand that when they tell me that they do not have time, it means that self-organization simply suffers.

Now let's go in order. It will be a little boring, but I want to go into great detail. At first, everything seems hard and incomprehensible, then like clockwork.

Before I run somewhere, I always designate the final goal. You need to know whether you came running or are still kicking your legs.

Absolutely any goal can be achieved in a short period of time. Another question is that for each individual goal and short intervals are considered different. It all depends on where this goal is in life priorities.

Now let's start from the beginning and in order. Since the question "How to keep up with everything?" was intended specifically for me, then I will only talk about myself, and not abstractly.

To begin with, I had to cut down on what takes a lot of time. At first, I reduced the Internet in my life, especially social networks. Firstly, by my age, it’s somehow strange for me to run around with the phone all day and be afraid to miss someone’s photo. Or who liked something there, for example.

What happens if I don't reply to a comment right away, but in the evening? Never mind. The older I get, the clearer it is that an adequate, adult, successful person cannot sit in social networks for days. Well, life on the Internet should not be more important than family.

At my age, virtual life is in last place now. And at the son, for example, on the first. I am 41, my son is 16. He endlessly updates the pages of his girlfriends, and me? And I endlessly leaf through instagram, so what?

When it dawned on me that the virtual life was taking away the real one from me, it became scary. When a phone left in the car causes panic, this is really scary. Instead of spending this time with my family, with my children, with my parents, I was constantly on the phone.

Don't eat it, it hasn't been photographed yet or posted on a social network. Tell me is it okay? And when you go to bed in the evening and realize that December 18, 2017, will never happen again. At all. What do I remember about this day? I kissed my husband? No! Did I hug my parents? No! Fooled around with a child? And when to me. I am busy. I do not have time for anything.

Come on! But to go on Facebook for a minute in the morning and wake up only at lunchtime - it was. I always had time for this. Or write a post about the fact that I don’t have time for anything, then I always had time for this.

In the house srach, there is nothing, only sausages and cheeses with yogurts in the refrigerator. I'm talking about myself, if that. Yourself in the past.

The first such anxiety from the fact that life flies by, and I spend all day on the Internet, I felt when my relatives died one after another. About two years after their death, I was cleaning my closet and found my diaries with plans.

On paper, the question of how to keep up with everything did not even stand. Plans I wrote regularly.

Yes, in my plans I wrote to myself to go to one grandmother, go to another grandmother. Did you go? No, the Internet was more important to me then. So important that over the years I have more photos of food than with relatives of the elderly.

The second significant event, after which social networks completely went to the very last plan, was the daughter's wedding. It suddenly dawned on me that my daughter is already a real adult. And most of her life, especially as a teenager, I spent on the Internet. And by this time, the son had entered the age when his parents are not particularly important to him now. In the sense that if we go on vacation for a long time, then he will only be delighted, and will not be very bored, as, for example, at 10-12 years old. The seventeenth year went to the guy, however.

I'm trying to explain that when Odnoklassniki is the main daily leisure of a woman, and God forbid a man, it means only one thing. Life is a utopia.

Well, the third point, we installed the camera in the house, just in the room where the computer is located. And then squandered on fast forward. I felt ashamed, I am constantly near the computer. If I hadn't seen it from the outside, I wouldn't have believed it. My husband asked, remember, are you more interested there? Everything, as grandmothers whispered.

How to succeed? Back to the main idea of this post. I removed social media from my life. I consider this to be almost my main achievement in recent years.

At first, she completely retired from Odnoklassniki, then changed her password on Instagram and left. The last time there was a very long time ago. I don't remember exactly, of course. Maybe summer, maybe early fall.

Vera, a girl, wrote me a comment here yesterday so that I can check the direct on Instagram. It's not tricky, the main thing is to find the password.

What happened during this time? It turns out that in the day before a fig of time. He likes, cook borscht, develop a farm, he likes to travel. But I will return to the priority in planning.

I think that you will ask a question about the fact that social networks are important in business. Agree. But only if you really do this business.

Any business can be brought to such a state in 10 years that you don’t have to sit on your own and write posts. And to be able to hire a person who will represent your business for you in all social networks. And if, for example, for 5 years you are still sitting at the same level, then this is not a business. No development. It's living life on the internet.

You just need to admit to yourself that you simply do not have time to do anything for this business, since something else comes first.

If the Internet is the only source of income, then, naturally, time planning will come from these priorities. But here, you see, sitting on the phone for days is not a well-built business.

That's it, the first step was the most difficult in answering the question "How to do everything." The most difficult and the most important for me.

But in parallel with the Internet, a lot of time was wasted on other things. Let's talk about this separately, it turned out to be a very long post.

Are you surprised that some people get everything done on time, while others rush from task to task without even knowing where to start? Obviously, the former have learned to manage their time competently, which is one of the most important skills in adulthood.

How to get it all done...

In concept, time management (time management) is not too complicated, but in practice it requires some effort, especially the initial investment of time that is required to organize and set the right priorities. Allocating a few minutes daily for organizational moments, in a month you will certainly notice that you have begun to complete all the planned tasks.

1. Set goals

So you can see where you should go at the moment. These are not necessarily super-important life goals like “I want to become president”, the banal “I want to finish work by the weekend and get out to the country” is also a kind of goal, and quite real.

2. Prioritize

In order not to miss something important, you must first highlight it among other things. The whole working day can be divided into necessary, important and necessary. Things must be done in the same order. You can draw a line between them by asking yourself the following questions:

Why am I doing this?
How can I use this to achieve my goal?
What happens if I don't?

3. Keep a to-do list

How to do everything in a day? Make a to-do list! It will remind you every minute of what you have to do at the moment and will not let you relax. The tasks in the list should be divided into small components so as not to waste time thinking in the process. No need to try to remember everything - it is better to entrust modern technology. A banal electronic calendar will become an indispensable thing on the way to the effective use of time. Do not forget to highlight the most important tasks in it.

4. Focus on just one task

In an effort to do everything at once, you expose yourself to the danger of complete failure. Doing several things at the same time is very dangerous, because the brain cannot think about many things at the same time. It's better to do less than to do a lot. It has been proven that multitasking takes 20-40% more time.

5. Remember the deadline

Setting a time limit for each task is very important - it will not allow you to postpone things until tomorrow. In conditions of limited time, the brain works much more efficiently, realizing that it is now or never.

6. Do the hard things first

Admit it, it is much more pleasant to work when you know that in the future the tasks will not be so difficult and it will be easier to cope with them if you have already gone through all the circles of hell. But to work, realizing that there is an ocean of unfulfilled hard work ahead, is psychologically difficult. First the whip, then the stick.

7. Wake up early

How to manage to do all the things scheduled for today? Try to get up early. Scientists have proven that the morning hours for work are the most effective. Sunrise is the perfect time to start your day. It's great if the rays of the sun fall directly into your window, so they will be a natural signal to rise. Perhaps it sounds strange, but after a few days of adaptation, you will easily wake up on your own without the need for an alarm clock. And try to go to bed no later than 23:00 - at this time the body recovers much more efficiently and quickly.

8. Get rid of negative energy

It is difficult to work when something annoys you, so always get rid of negative energy before starting work - this will save time wasted on whining and dissatisfaction. There are enough ways to throw negativity out of your body: screaming, hitting a pillow, breaking dishes, etc.

9. Set aside time to rest

If you do not rest, the body will not actively work - it needs time to recover. Fatigue interferes with the normal functioning of not only the body, but also the brain. No need to neglect a lunch break or other opportunity to escape from exhausting work, but it is worth keeping everything under control, avoid deviations from the plan.

10. Follow the daily routine

Going to sleep and waking up at the same time is very important, even if you have the weekend and so want to stay in bed for another hour. By doing this, you will knock down your biological clock and you will have to adapt again. This is one of the reasons why Mondays are so hard for us. Instead of sleep, it is better to spend time walking or exercising.

Everyone can learn how to properly manage their time. Every person has 24 hours a day, no more, no less. Surely you have dreams, plans, goals and desires that you constantly put off until tomorrow, but it never comes, does it? How to learn to distribute your time so that you have time to do a lot?

How to stop wasting your life

1. Write on a piece of paper how much time per day you spend on social networks, TV, computer games, talking on the phone, etc. You may be surprised, because most of us do not even notice how much time they waste every day .

2. Schedule your classes for the coming week. A large number of businessmen keep a diary, making notes about upcoming business in it. This is a very useful thing, because thanks to a clear plan of action, you become a more disciplined person.

3. Eat food separately from other things. Usually, watching TV at breakfast, lunch, or dinner only prolongs your meal by at least 15 minutes, which you could spend on more important things.

4. Stop being lazy. Grow, learn languages, draw, sign up for a gym or whatever you like. You still have time to watch TV or surf the Internet.

5. Legal holiday. Give yourself a day off once a week, which you can spend on whatever you want. It can be a walk with friends, watching your favorite series, a break from the work routine.

6. "Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today." Oh, how true this popular saying is. No matter how hard it is, do what you need today, despite laziness, lack of desire and mood. Tomorrow you will thank yourself for this.

7. Read several books on time management. Having experienced everything, the authors of such books reveal secrets that can increase your productivity and save time.

8. We eradicate the habit of taking on several things at the same time. Such a habit will not lead to anything good. It will be difficult for you to do several things at once, while maintaining the required quality of work.

9. "Eat a frog for breakfast." What does it mean? You need to do the most difficult and unpleasant thing in the morning so that you can spend the rest of the day on what will be easier, so you will not constantly torment yourself with thoughts about the approach of a difficult task and stop delaying the work process.

10. Learn to say "No". No matter how polite you are, don't take on other people's problems. You already have a shortage of time, why further reduce the productivity of your own work? Helping a friend is a good thing, but not at the expense of your time.

11. Get training in time management. Professionals will help you allocate time by setting the right priorities, as well as weeding out unnecessary things that consume your time. You will be taught how to manage your time and increase your productivity at no extra cost.

12. You can buy a Swiss watch on the site invicta.com.ua, which will not only help you keep track of time, but will also become your pride.

If you follow the above rules, you will have more free time, work will become better and more productive, therefore, life will become a little better!