Ecology of life. All inhabitants of the planet are equal in one thing. Regardless of financial situation, status and other characteristics, everyone has the same amount of time

All inhabitants of the planet are equal in one thing. Regardless of financial situation, status and other characteristics, everyone has the same amount of time available every day. However, not everyone is able to manage their 24 hours correctly.

Entire volumes are devoted to time management; its basic principles are taught by many truly successful people, who have repeatedly been convinced of their effectiveness through personal experience.

However, there are many who do not even suspect the existence of such a subject as the theory of time management. At the same time, learning how to use it in your own life will not hurt anyone.

How to manage time

Various time management theorists, as a rule, agree on several basic principles, without which it is impossible to learn how to use time effectively. One of the main rules is planning your affairs. Many modern people, who are in a state of permanent time pressure, simply have to visually imagine what exactly they have to do on each specific day.

To do this, you should create task lists. They can turn out to be quite extensive, and there will not be enough time to implement them. The principles of the so-called Eisenhower matrix will certainly come in handy here. According to it, all cases are systematized according to their importance and urgency and distributed into four categories.

Systematization of priorities simple. The first group includes important and urgent matters, the second – important, not urgent, the third – unimportant, urgent, and the fourth (also called the “trash can”) – unimportant and not urgent. The priority, oddly enough, will be the tasks of the second of the above categories. If a person concentrates specifically on them, then extremely rarely - and even then mainly not due to his own lack of organization - he will encounter tasks that require speedy completion.

In practice, important non-urgent tasks can be coursework or a diploma, which the student must submit at the end of the semester. Or a task assigned to an employee by his superiors with a deadline in a month. If you immediately take on them and slowly complete them, while simultaneously dealing with other, more urgent matters, then they will be completed long ago by the appointed time. Setting deadlines– another important principle.

Another well-known principle of time management is combining various tasks. Unfortunately, many people underestimate him. For example, an effective housewife can load laundry into the washing machine, dirty plates and cutlery into the dishwasher, and at the same time deal with lunch/dinner.

Also, while the dish is being prepared (if you don’t need to monitor it at the moment), you can do the cleaning. While waiting for an important fax, it will not be difficult for an office worker, for example, to draw up a contract or draw up documents for the shipment of goods. Already in connection with a completely different task from my must-do list.

What are the mistakes of those who do not have time?

At the same time, You shouldn't be a notorious perfectionist. Of course, any task should be done well. However, this does not mean that they need to be literally “licked.” There is a huge gap between doing a job well and finishing it carelessly, and it is not so easy to cross.

Anyone who wants to learn how to use their time effectively Shouldn't be a workaholic either. Undoubtedly, there will be situations in which you will have to stay late at work, but for a person who actively applies the rules of time management, this happens extremely rarely. In addition, he will remember that at the end of the working day it is important to rest both mentally and physically.

The evening should be spent with family members, friends, with your favorite hobby - in a word, with those and those things that bring mental satisfaction and are not related to your main job. And you should definitely highlight enough time to sleep.

No less important is proper organization of the workplace. All documents and other items should be arranged there in an orderly manner so that you can easily find what you need. In addition, disorder in the surrounding space contributes to a significant decrease in enthusiasm and productivity.

If a person has other employees subordinate to him, then he it's worth learning to delegate him some of the tasks assigned to him and periodically monitor their implementation. Then the work will be completed in a timely manner, and you won’t have to stress too much about it. published

A person who has never thought about how effectively he uses his time eventually faces a situation where an endless string of tasks, each of which is important in its own way, is no longer possible to squeeze not only into working hours, but also into those 24 hours. hours by which the day is calculated. But the next day is fraught with new matters, just as urgent, and the person begins to understand that his situation is hopeless.

A lot of time is often spent doing work that is generally useless.

Probably everyone has encountered a similar situation at least once in their life. On the verge of time pressure, realizing that we do not have time to do anything, and as a result losing the ability to think sensibly, we are ready to grab everything at once, although our intuition tells us that this will not help anyway. The best thing to do in such a situation is to calm down and just sit for 15-20 minutes, doing nothing. And after that, come to terms with the fact that you still won’t have time to do something today, and highlight for yourself those things that can still be done in the remaining time.

Case groups

The list of things that need to be done in a day includes not only business meetings, work with documentation, and other things related to the professional duties of a manager. Even if you are a desperate workaholic and endlessly devoted to your company, you, just like any other person, must eat, sleep and rest at certain times. These are habitual, repetitive activities that cannot be avoided and which, of course, take time.

Apart from the daily activities that are life-supporting and by definition predictable, almost no day goes by without something unexpected and very often urgent occurring.

Another group of activities that can be distinguished when structuring your day is planned activities. This block includes a significant part of what needs to be done at work, as well as some household little things, which are also very useful to distribute in advance by time and degree of importance.

In order to correctly distribute all the mentioned types of activities throughout your day, you must first decide for yourself which of them have the greatest and which have the least importance, i.e. you need to set priorities.

The likelihood of urgent matters also needs to be taken into account by those who want to use their time rationally.

It should be noted that in organizations where sufficient attention is paid to motivation and professional growth depends on the employee’s real contribution to the overall success of the company, personal and corporate goals are usually interrelated and some are achieved at the expense of others.

SETTING PRIORITIES

The priority of a particular phenomenon for each individual person depends primarily on what life goals this person sets for himself. But if he holds a leadership position in any organization, then he must correlate his personal goals with corporate goals and, based on this, create a list of priorities that need to be focused on first.

If your personal goals include financial well-being and career advancement, then the surest way to achieve this is to make every effort to effectively achieve the goals of the organization for which you work. And to do this, you need to learn to determine what you need to spend time on first.

The list of areas in which a manager can set priorities is quite broad. But since the main areas of a manager’s work are working with people and working with information, they are the ones you need to pay attention to first.

Personal contacts

When setting priorities in the area of ​​personal contacts with people, a manager must first make a list of those with whom he communicates most often. By recording who contacted him and for what reason (say, within a week), the manager will clearly understand that many contacts were of no use. But he wasted his time on this!

"Time Thieves"

The most unproductive contacts are with people who are not only unable to offer anything positive, but also strive to shift their responsibilities onto the shoulders of the leader. Moreover, they motivate this precisely by the desire to increase efficiency. “Ivan Ivanovich, could you call company N, they will resolve this issue much faster with you than with me, an ordinary employee.” And now Ivan Ivanovich, in addition to his direct responsibilities as a leader, also has an assignment from his subordinate, to whom he now seems to owe something.

When working with employees, the manager must clearly and unambiguously make it clear that even if he agrees to help, this problem will not become his problem for a minute.

Another group of interlocutors with whom it is best to exclude contacts are people from the past.

It is necessary to remind the subordinate that, while working in the organization, he receives a salary precisely for solving such problems, and no one other than him should be responsible for their successful resolution.

"Shadows from the Past"

Classmates from the school where you once studied, classmates from the institute you graduated from long ago, colleagues from your former job - all these are people with whom you no longer have common interests and it is difficult to expect that they will appear in the future. Therefore, no matter how harsh such a recommendation may seem, contacts with such people must be interrupted as quickly as possible. They will pull you into the past, and you should think about the future.

By analyzing the list of his contacts, the manager will not only be able to obtain information about those with whom he should not communicate, but also to more clearly identify for himself those people whose communication with whom brings undoubted benefits. This may include more experienced managers who can always give a hint or teach something. It may also be useful to talk to some subordinates if they are creative in their work and are ready to offer new ideas. Time for such contacts should always be built into an effective manager's schedule.

Information flows

When setting priorities in the field of information exchanges, the manager must first of all distribute all information flows that enter the organization into three main groups.

First group: information coming directly to the manager

This could be documents for signature, information from regular large clients of the company, reports from heads of functional departments about internal problems and achievements, messages about emergency situations that pose a threat to the existence of the organization.

Second group: information received by the manager after preliminary processing

It is not at all necessary for the manager to study some information messages in full. For example, when choosing a supplier of certain raw materials, a preliminary study of available proposals is carried out by supply service specialists. They select the most acceptable options based on the price-quality ratio, and only after that they present the manager with a small list of options from which he can choose the final one without spending too much time on it.

Third group: information that should not go to the manager

This is current information that production department employees need to carry out their daily professional duties. For example, to ensure the quality of manufactured products, it is necessary to carry out control at each stage of the production process, but information about the results of such control becomes the property of the manager only if significant deviations from the norm occur. If the process proceeds normally, there is no need to specifically inform the manager about this, and the situation is considered satisfactory by default.

Having distributed the information flows and highlighted the information with which he will work himself, the manager must perform a kind of sorting here too.

Very often, the relative importance of information is assessed intuitively by the manager. Unconsciously, he implies that, having worked enough time in this organization, he is able to understand its needs and is quite capable of determining what is important for it and what is secondary.

But priorities will be set much more accurately if the leader uses the organization's goals as a guide when assessing the importance of messages. In this case, the significance of information is assessed based on the scale of its possible impact on achieving goals, regardless of someone's subjective ideas. It is this criterion that allows messages to be clearly distributed in order of importance and guarantees that the manager’s time will not be wasted.

USE OF SCHEDULES AND PLANS

The more detailed a manager’s time is structured, the more efficiently it is spent. That is why it is recommended to draw up a workday schedule in which each task is allocated a very specific limited period of time. But such a schedule is not the only tool with which a manager can more clearly regulate his time expenditure.

In order for the time allotted for processing information to be used as efficiently as possible, it is necessary to classify all available messages according to the degree of importance.

Even if a manager seems to have a fairly clear idea of ​​what issues need to be discussed, he may find that when he tries to put them on paper, he ends up with an incoherent jumble of words.

It is no secret that a very large share of a manager’s working time is spent on holding all kinds of meetings and conferences. And here there is a very large resource for saving time.

Planning a meeting

If the manager spends some time on preliminary preparation before holding a meeting, he will be able to see how pre-planned events differ from spontaneous ones. Therefore, before holding a meeting, it is useful to pay attention to some points.

Agenda

Even a short morning planning meeting will be much more effective if the manager has a list of issues that are relevant at the moment, which need to be addressed when discussing tasks for the current working day. It is even more important to have a plan when holding longer meetings regarding the strategic aspects of the organization.

Time spent

Often, when holding meetings where discussions and discussions of different opinions are expected, it is impossible to predict exactly how much time it will take to consider a particular issue. In such cases, the manager must determine for himself the maximum period of time that he can devote to discussing each issue, and strictly adhere to the established rules, otherwise the meeting may drag on indefinitely, and results will never be achieved.

Clarity of wording

When drawing up a plan or agenda for a meeting, care must be taken to ensure that agenda items are formulated as specifically as possible. For example, if you plan to pay attention to discussing ways to motivate employees of an enterprise, then instead of a general formulation “consider additional ways to stimulate work,” a specific list of possible methods will be much more effective. The discussion will go faster and more effectively if this agenda item looks something like this: “select the most appropriate methods of additional stimulation from the following:

Bonuses for exceeding production standards;

Quarterly, semi-annual, annual bonuses;

Free food;

Partial payment for medical services, etc.”

An agenda allows you to reduce unproductive time and organize the discussion more clearly, focusing on the main thing and not being distracted by unimportant details.

Summing up the results of the meeting will ensure control over the implementation of decisions. and will serve as an additional guarantee of the effectiveness of the meeting.

Summarizing

After the meeting, it is necessary to record its results, decisions made, assigned tasks, indicating deadlines and responsible persons.

Work schedules

Scheduling meetings, drawing up a workday schedule, weekly and monthly plans allow you to organize work within clearly defined calendar intervals. But not all work in an organization begins on the first of the month and ends on the thirty-first. Most production cycles and projects under development are not time-bound to the beginning or end of a month or year.

For example, when building a house, calendar deadlines for completing one or another part of the work are determined and, in parallel with this, a schedule of time costs necessary to complete the construction stages is drawn up in order of priority: construction of the box, interior decoration, glazing, creation of an internal communications system, electricity, gas, and water supply, etc.

In addition to developing calendar plans, schedules are usually drawn up for certain works necessary for the successful implementation of the production process.

The parallel use of work schedules and calendar plans allows for more precise regulation of time costs for the entire process.

Although drawing up schedules and plans in itself takes time, it is more than worth it in the hours and sometimes days that high-quality work planning allows you to save.

Thus, the manager has in front of him a schedule that indicates the time required, for example, for the complete interior decoration of a house, and a calendar plan that indicates the timing of finishing each entrance. If, for example, the schedule provides for the complete finishing of a five-entrance house in 60 days, then the manager, planning to start work on the first day of the month, will assign the task to his subordinates to finish the finishing of the first entrance by the 12th.

Considering that some deviations almost always arise, the manager has the opportunity to reduce the time required for completing simple and predictable work, thereby allocating a reserve for unforeseen time expenditures for complex work and fraught with surprises. Thus, although calendar deadlines will vary, the entire set of works will be completed on time.

The main thing here is not to get too carried away, trying to foresee all the possible nuances of the future, but to remember that, having ensured the completion of the most important tasks, it is easy to achieve the completion of secondary ones. However, by scattering your attention to details, you can end up with nothing, without achieving either strategic or current results.

PARETO RULE

In general, this rule states that 80% of the results of the system are provided by 20% of the costs. This law was derived by the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto in the 19th century. While studying the distribution of wealth, he drew attention to the fact that most of the funds are concentrated in the hands of a smaller part of the population, and from this he derived the proportion 20:80, which illustrates not only the distribution of wealth, but also a fairly wide range of various phenomena.

In relation to the use of working time, this law means that only 20% of the time spent on a specific task provides maximum effect. Subsequently, the amount of effort spent on obtaining a unit of utility increases, and in the end it turns out that the results obtained are absolutely inadequate to the costs.

Example

When cutting the lawn with a lawn mower, you most likely will not achieve that all the blades of grass are the same length, but you can achieve, although not ideal, but quite acceptable, results in a fairly short time. If you continue to work, trying to get a completely even “carpet,” then, after spending a few days on additional measurements and cutting, you will get approximately the same thing, but at a much higher cost of your time and effort.

If after 10 minutes of conversation the client confirms his agreement to the deal, there is no need to spend another half hour telling him how lucky he is. This time can be spent much more effectively by trying to gain agreement from other clients.

Key Takeaways

For a manager, the Pareto rule is useful because it leads to two very important conclusions.

Don't try to do everything too carefully

Prioritization has already been mentioned here, and it is obvious that the list of tasks of paramount importance will be small. This group of tasks is the work that should be done 100%, since the achievement of the main goals of the organization depends on the thoroughness of their implementation. It is not at all necessary to work out all other matters in detail, wasting your time on it.

In each case, it is necessary to determine the moment when it will be considered completed

It is difficult to create closure in management work. The manager is constantly in search of new ideas, ways to improve the efficiency of work, and sometimes more and more new ideas that arise in the process of performing any work lead to the fact that this work cannot be completed. To avoid this, the manager must always imagine a specific practical result that needs to be achieved when solving a given problem. As soon as such a result is achieved, the work must be stopped immediately, since further efforts spent on its implementation, according to the Pareto rule, will be used unproductively.

Thus, the Pareto rule once again confirms the importance for a manager of such a quality as the ability to focus his efforts on the main thing, without being scattered on the secondary. Clearly defined goals for professional meetings and consciously asking questions that need to be answered when studying information will actually allow you to get maximum results with a minimum amount of time and effort.

The 20:80 ratio can also be used when analyzing some other aspects of a manager’s activity. For example, in the area of ​​professional contacts, it is highly likely that only 20% of meetings provide the bulk (80%) of effectiveness. Likewise, with regard to the information that a manager has to study every day, it can be assumed that only a small part of it (20%) will be truly useful.

Even after learning to perform his daily professional tasks with maximum efficiency, a manager will not look like a promising employee in the eyes of management if he does not strive for something else.

Assumptions

But this law also has another side. By focusing his attention exclusively on priorities, a manager risks finding himself among too limited a range of phenomena, which is fraught with missed development opportunities.

Therefore, it is not worth limiting your activities only to those issues that are of immediate practical importance, even if this is explained by saving time. When meeting people, you can never know in advance who exactly will be the most positive interlocutor, and when studying information, you can highlight those very useful 20% no earlier than having studied all 100%. Therefore, the use of this law must be approached creatively.

A development-oriented manager will always be able to include time in his schedule not only for the most important 20% of tasks, which provide 80% of the results, but also for other activities.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLANNING

In an effort to increase the efficiency of using his working time, a manager at a certain stage is faced with the problem of changing his work habits. Studying the time spent during the day, the manager will inevitably come to the conclusion that a quantitative reduction in the time periods allocated for this or that work does not give too global results. In order for the time saving situation to be assessed as a real breakthrough, qualitative changes are necessary.

And here the manager needs to think not so much about what he does during the working day, but about how he does it. In other words, he must consider his work skills in detail and evaluate them in terms of efficiency and opportunities for improvement, i.e., determine for himself the directions of personal professional development.

Communication with colleagues, reading literature, including specialized literature, and attention to the problems of subordinates, although they do not directly affect productivity, create a comfortable atmosphere, improve the psychological climate in the organization and, as a result, work towards the same productivity.

Work habits analysis

Identifying your work habits is a task that may seem simple only at first glance. As a rule, a person does not think about how he works, he simply completes the task, and often it does not even occur to him that certain actions can be performed differently. Therefore, trying to remember what everyday actions can be classified as work skills is a completely useless undertaking. These skills have already become second nature, you use them without thinking about them, and trying to remember something on this topic will only waste your time.

Having before his eyes a real picture of the actual time spent over a long period (at least two to three months), the manager will already be able to get some idea of ​​his work skills. But if you get creative with these notes, you can increase their usefulness several times over and get a much more complete picture of your personal work style.

The benefits of a diary

Keeping a diary has long gone out of fashion, but in vain. Following hackneyed stereotypes, many people think that keeping a diary is the prerogative of old-fashioned or too young young ladies who have nothing better to do.

For a journal to be truly useful in defining and assessing your professional identity, you need to answer a few questions about how exactly you should write.

Daily recordings of one's actions and impressions can bring enormous and very real, practical benefits to a person who wants to learn more about himself.

When to record

Keeping time records in itself takes time, and many managers will say that they already don’t have a second to spare, but here’s another diary. And in general (another big question), will there be any benefit from these children's games? What can you answer to this? Yes, learning time takes time, but without learning how you spend your time now, you will never be able to learn how to spend it more effectively.

Therefore, without being distracted by emotions, it is better to try to determine whether there are 10-15 minutes during the day when you will not be disturbed and you can calmly summarize the work done and record them in writing. This could be the time before leaving work for home, when the subordinates have already left, all the work has been done, the office is quiet and the atmosphere is quite suitable for briefly concentrating and remembering how the day went.

Evening time at home before going to bed is also quite suitable. Even in the noisiest families, at these moments everything usually calms down and you can devote some time to yourself. When recalling everything that happened during the day and reflecting these events in writing, you must remember that records are kept only for personal use in order to most accurately reflect your own work habits, so you should neither embellish your actions nor try to flaunt modesty.

What to write down

In order for your professional diary to contain as much useful information as possible and be as specific and concise as possible, you need to divide each entry into three positions.

1. What exactly did you do at work today?

2. How did you carry out these actions?

3. Why did you do this work this way and not otherwise?

How to increase the usefulness of posts

To analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of time use, it is not at all necessary to immerse yourself in lengthy reflections on what is written in your diary. Such an assessment can be made right there, in these same records. To do this, you just need to come up with a few symbols for yourself that will show you how well or poorly a particular task was completed and whether you have any comments about the way it was performed.

By approaching each of the activities performed in a -h..day from these three points of view, you h You will be able not only to give yourself a full account of the use of your working time, but also to create the prerequisites for analyzing and assessing the effectiveness of this use.

The system of conventional signs will quickly become a habit and will not require much effort.

Conventional signs

In order not to bother yourself too much, it is better to use the simplest symbols. For example, an exclamation point placed in parentheses after a specified task may mean that, in your opinion, it was completed “excellently.” And if the entry is underlined with a straight line, it means that problems arose during execution that should be thought about.

The benefits of using a system of conventional signs are obvious. Reviewing your notes over several weeks will give you a clear picture of your individual work habits and the strengths and weaknesses of your particular work practices.

results

Having decided how and when you will take notes, you need to be patient and carefully fill out your diary for several weeks, without missing a day, without making concessions to yourself, and without trying to explain your laziness as an illness. If you do everything right, you will be rewarded handsomely in a relatively short period of time, since your records will allow you to determine:

The share of time from the total budget that is spent on each type of work;

A proportion reflecting the relative time spent on basic functions related to management;

Time spent on repetitive tasks associated with daily practice;

Time spent on one-time management actions.

As you keep track of how you perform daily repetitive tasks throughout your records, you will see that there are many opportunities to save time on these tasks.

In addition to these purely mathematical calculations, your diary will give you a lot of useful information that cannot be calculated digitally, but is of a qualitative nature. Surely, half of the work you do can be delegated to other employees without damaging the business, and this is a lot of free time that can be spent with much greater benefit, improving, for example, your qualifications.

Analysis of the working day using a diary

By carefully considering the things you have to do during the day, you may encounter amazing discoveries. For example, it may turn out that you perform many functions simply out of habit, observing a certain ritual, but performing these functions does not bring any practical usefulness.

By analyzing the entries in your diary, you can mentally draw for yourself a typical pattern of your working day and identify all its shortcomings and bottlenecks.

Sometimes it turns out that a manager spent time solving certain problems without thinking that the results of these tasks may not be needed soon. For example, instead of reviewing all correspondence at the beginning of the workday, it is much more effective to instruct the secretary to sort letters and documents and provide information on a particular issue at the very moment when the issue becomes relevant.

A leader must do the most important work first and spend his time on priority tasks.

Analysis scheme

Having compiled an approximate list of daily tasks based on entries in the diary, you can begin to rationalize them. The tasks on your list can be made much more efficient by clearly answering the following questions:

What is the real purpose of this work, is it really needed, what should its results be, is it possible to do it more in a simple way;

What is the priority level of this work, is it mandatory or can it be completely excluded from the list of daily work;

Is it possible to delegate this work?

If each of the daily tasks is adjusted taking into account all the listed items, planning the working day will be much more efficient. It is on this basis that you need to create an updated, more optimal schedule for your working day.

For a new plan to be truly effective, it must be flexible.

Plan flexibility

Planning your working time does not mean that you need to create a rigid schedule in which all your movements will be outlined minute by minute, and stick to it at all costs. Moreover, such a policy is likely to lead to unproductive expenditure of time, since some planned, but unexpectedly disrupted meeting can confuse the manager, and he will not know what to do with this unexpected break.

A real plan for the effective use of your time should, in addition to the main, initially intended goals, also include additional ones. In this case, if there is an unexpected cancellation of any events, the manager will only need to look at the list of planned additional work to understand how the resulting time period can be used with the greatest benefit.

Time to work with subordinates

In addition to flexibility, when drawing up a new optimized plan for using working time, you should more clearly regulate the time you spend working with subordinates. To do this you need:

Establish clearly defined hours during which subordinates can contact the manager, and explain that at other times they can disturb him only if we're talking about about an emergency problem;

Require subordinates to present as clearly and concretely as possible the essence of the issue for which they are turning to the manager;

Take it as a rule that when turning to a manager with any problem, a subordinate must also offer possible ways to solve it.

When creating an updated budget for your working time, you need to analyze how much time in the past was spent assessing all sorts of facts that are not directly related to the case, as well as making management decisions that were not necessary. In the new budget, such unproductive time expenditure must be avoided.

Sometimes external circumstances develop in such a way that it seems to the manager that in one or another area of ​​its activity the organization may be about to face serious threats. He begins to take action to prevent the perceived threats, and then it turns out that the situation is not so critical at all and he wasted his time.

A manager who wants to use his time effectively must deal only with practical matters.

To prevent losses, a manager in his work must rely on real facts, and not on premonitions, and solve only those problems that really exist.

Optimization of the working day

Having analyzed his work habits, determined ways to improve them and developed a new, more optimal scheme for planning his working time, the manager receives a real opportunity to improve the efficiency of his management activities and opens up new prospects for further professional growth.

2. METHODS FOR MINIMIZING TIME LOSS

In the process of analyzing and developing new, more efficient ways of using working time, it is necessary to take into account some practical recommendations to reduce wastage of time.

Do only one thing at a time

Full concentration on a specific issue will allow you to solve it quickly and with the maximum number of useful results.

Bring simple, daily repeating tasks to automation

Actions that we perform automatically, we eventually stop noticing and, therefore, we do not spend any time or effort thinking about them. But, of course, first you need to very carefully analyze your working day in order to determine which simple tasks you need to do yourself and bring them to automaticity, and which are better to delegate to subordinates.

Don't blame yourself if you didn't get something done

The feeling of guilt in itself is an extremely unproductive factor, and it is even more inappropriate in a work environment, where the basis of any decision should be, first of all, pragmatism. The fact that you didn't have time to do something is not a reason for unnecessary emotions, but rather a symptom showing that you should pay extra attention to planning your work day.

Having resolved the issue, it is best to forget about it as soon as possible, since this matter is already done and you need to move on to another.

Your time is yours alone, and only you can decide how you use it.

As you strive to optimize your performance, you must always be mindful of the people with whom you interact and influence each other.

There's no point in wasting time perfecting something that could be used in a rough draft.

An effective boss is an effective subordinate

Even if you managed to find the ideal formula for the working day and not a single minute of your time is wasted, this will do nothing if your subordinates are performing poorly. Therefore, while educating yourself, you need to simultaneously educate your subordinates, teaching them to cope with their responsibilities more effectively and making it clear that you, as a leader, will demand constant improvement from them.

Don't try to be perfect

When starting a new task, the manager must clearly understand the acceptable degree of its completion. If you are conducting a preliminary meeting with a potential client, it is not at all necessary to order a booklet illustrating your proposals from the printing house. It will be enough to sketch them out by hand on a piece of paper and mention them in a conversation, and work out in more detail only those areas that will interest the client.

Learn to read correctly

There are various techniques for quick reading, but what is important for a manager is not the ability to read the maximum number of pages in a short time, but the ability to highlight the important in the text and ignore the unimportant. While reading, it is useful to take notes in the margins and highlight or underline what you find important. All of these techniques will make reading effective and ensure that attention is focused on the information that is truly necessary and useful.

Avoid Ceremonies

Sometimes managers want to show their importance by emphasizing that they can only be contacted through a secretary or by appointment, or they establish complex multi-stage procedures for reviewing business papers. Such a policy not only negatively affects the achievement of the overall goals of the organization, but in most cases also interferes with the work of the manager himself. It is only necessary to streamline such contacts by assigning special hours when each employee can address his question directly to the manager.

In order for working time to be used effectively, interaction patterns with employees should be simplified as much as possible.

Take your time

“Make haste slowly,” says the proverb, and it’s hard to argue with it.

Calm, measured implementation of planned tasks is the key to successfully achieving the intended results. In a state of time pressure, when it is obvious that the work will not be completed on time, in addition to temporary ones, psychological factors also operate, which is why the likelihood of making mistakes increases many times over. Therefore, it is best not to let things get to this point, and if an emergency situation has arisen, you need to try to adjust the original plan and rearrange the work so as to minimize the negative consequences. It is strictly contraindicated in such situations to escalate the atmosphere and provoke even greater nervousness with your behavior.

Use office equipment more actively

Modern industry produces a huge number of auxiliary tools that allow managers to more effectively organize their production process. This includes complex technical means, such as a computer, copier or scanner, and ordinary desktop desks or multi-colored folders that allow you to sort documentation and quickly find those papers or letters that are needed at the moment.

Plan your vacation

You need to rest and relax when you are tired, and not when the opportunity arises. In the midst of a busy day at work, it may not appear at all, or by then you will simply collapse. In order to constantly be in good shape throughout the entire working period, you need to take short but fairly frequent breaks for relaxation.

An effective manager should not neglect auxiliary tools, because if used correctly, they will help him save a lot of time.

Sometimes just closing your eyes and leaning back in your chair is enough to feel a surge of new strength.

People around you will learn to value your time when they see that you yourself know how to value it.

Agree on your schedule

When planning your own work time, you should not forget about the time of others. Employees of one organization are in constant interaction with each other, and when setting a time for meetings or conferences, it is necessary to coordinate it with the plans of their colleagues and with the work schedule of their subordinates.

Know how to say “no”

Responsiveness is an excellent quality, but a leader who is taken away from work for every little thing will never complete the tasks for which he was put in this position. Therefore, when coming into contact with subordinates or colleagues, immediately clarify how much time they may need, and if at the moment you do not have such time reserves, reschedule the meeting.

Love order

Sometimes, when analyzing his working time for the day, a manager is surprised to see that almost 10% of it was spent turning over and rearranging a heap of papers piled up on his desk. Each document has its place: here is a rule that will allow you to organize your work efficiently and have the right paper in your hands exactly at the moment when it is needed.

Chaos on the desktop, which takes extra minutes to find the necessary papers, quietly leads to significant loss of time.

Always set a goal

This is perhaps the number one tip for using time effectively. If you do not strive to achieve a goal, then you do not need time to implement it. While keeping long-term, strategic goals in mind, one must not lose sight of current, day-to-day results. By constantly keeping in mind the result you are striving for, you will, without noticing it, act much more organized and, without wasting your time on trifles, you will be able to devote all your attention and energy to the main thing.

When starting to do work, you need to know the exact answer to the question why you are doing this.

What do you have in common with this person? You, like him, have 24 hours a day to develop. When you wake up in the morning, no matter who you were yesterday, you start over with a clean slate. You must learn to completely control and direct your life. Here are some tips and techniques to free up your time and use it more effectively.

How to free up your time

Determine how much time you are spending now

We live in an age of distraction. Therefore, we must pay attention to what we do and what we spend our free hours on. Determine what you spend the most time on (activities that will not help you achieve your goal).

Be honest with yourself. Assess how often you sit in social networks, watch YouTube or TV. This doesn't mean you have to give it all up right away. You just have to be aware of how you manage your time. Only you can choose what to invest your time in.

Optimize your sleep and wake up earlier

Choose the best time to go to bed and when to wake up. Try breaking your sleep into cycles that last 90 minutes. It will look something like this: 1.5 hours > 3 hours > 4.5 hours > 6 hours

Have you ever felt sleepy after eleven hours of sleep? Because you woke up in the middle of the cycle.

Or how did you feel refreshed and full of energy after three hours of sleep? Again, cycles.

By developing the habit of waking up early, you can spend a few hours focusing on yourself and your goals. Here are some tips on how to do this:

Go to bed at the same time

Gradually wake up earlier (If you currently wake up at eight in the morning and want to wake up at six, start at 7:50, then 7:40 and continue in the same vein until you achieve the desired result)

At first you may feel a drop in energy, but this is normal: this is how your body gets used to the new schedule. In such cases, try to sleep for 20-30 minutes.

Make good use of your dead time

Dead time is time spent on activities that do not require serious mental effort. These include, for example, shopping for groceries or working out at the gym. Try to do something else useful at such moments. For example, listen to audiobooks, podcasts, practice languages ​​on Duolingo or Memrise.

How to use time effectively

Set Goals

You must manage your resources wisely. If you don't set goals, you'll just be wasting your time. Therefore, it is very important to allocate your resources correctly. You must know what you are aiming for.

Targets work like a camera lens. If you point the lens and focus correctly, you will get a clear photo. If not, the photo will be blurry.

Try planning a year in advance; Set three to five major goals for the most important aspects of your life (work, health, relationships, personal growth, travel). Your goals must be specific. All you have to do is write them down on a piece of paper and start moving towards them.

Identify activities that will bring maximum results with minimal effort.

Here you can apply Pareto's law or the 20/80 principle. According to this principle, 20% of effort produces 80% of the result, and the remaining 80% of effort produces only 20% of the result.

Ask yourself:

If I could do one thing on my list all day, which one would bring me the most benefit and bring me closer to my goal?

Then ask yourself the second question:

If I could complete one more task on the list, what would it be?

Finally, ask yourself about the third task.

Create a morning ritual

An effective morning ritual is a great way to start your day. It should consist of the most useful activities that will help you achieve your goals.

For example, if you want to start a blog, you should write at least one article per week. Try writing something every morning for 30-60 minutes. Here are some tips to make your morning ritual even more effective:

Drink water

Your body has just survived six to eight hours without water. Give him a chance to recover.

Do something good

Do something you're proud of, like making your bed.

Play sports

It's best to start the day with exercise.

Delegate, eliminate or automate tasks

We usually think that we can do everything ourselves. Among all your tasks, find those that do not bring any benefit. Choose which ones you can delegate to someone else. See if you can remove some things from your list or automate them.

For example, Zdravko Cvijetic spent at least two hours preparing food every day. He decided to save this time and began ordering delivery from restaurants. With these two hours free, he could do useful things that would help him achieve his goals in the future.

Block time or “put a meeting with yourself on your calendar”

Spend time alone with yourself and make sure that you are not disturbed at such moments. Use this opportunity to focus on actions that will help you achieve your future goals.

Break your work into periods

This is quite an interesting tip. You can use the Pomodoro method. The technique involves breaking tasks into 25-minute periods followed by short breaks. This will help maximize your productivity and avoid burnout.

Enter the flow

Flow is the time when you are completely immersed in a task and one hundred percent focused. It's important to understand what you're working on and how it will help you achieve your goals in the future. Tip: One of the best ways to get into flow is to find the right music.

Daytime sleep is important

Of course, after completing a serious task, you will need rest. In this case, find a quiet corner in your office or home and close your eyes. You don't have to fall asleep, just let your body relax.

Remember the time buffer

A time buffer protects us from anything that might go wrong. If you have an appointment at 3:00 p.m., arrive at 2:45 p.m. Just in case. If you have a project due by July 1st, complete it by June 28th.

Don't worry if things don't go according to plan

Even if you become an expert in time management, you will still encounter unforeseen circumstances. Usually this will not be up to you. If someone is late for a meeting with you, first exhale. Take this moment to read a book or listen to a podcast.

Watch what you spend your time on

Keep track of your core activities throughout the week and then evaluate their importance. This way you can see the reasons for inefficiency and fix it next time.

Rate your results

Once a week, take thirty minutes to evaluate your current results. What was productive? Focus more on this. What was ineffective? Delegate it, eliminate it, or automate it.

Set aside one day for routine tasks

Dedicate one day to routine tasks - for example, buying groceries or cleaning the apartment.

Say no to meetings that don't have a specific outcome.

At his previous job, Zdravko Cvijetic constantly asked his colleagues before meetings what their outcome would be, and if there was no such outcome, he simply did not come there or came only when his tasks were discussed. Thus, he did not waste time on useless things and did something more important.

Say no to email until you're done with your morning routine.

Don't check your email more than twice a day.

Say no to things that don't align with your goals.

It is very important to learn to say “no” and thus make your life easier. Remember: you don't say no to others, you say yes to yourself.

Reward yourself

Your life shouldn't be planned out until the last minute. After a productive week, rest.

Develop a nightly ritual

You had a very productive day. It's time for you to rest. Think about what was pleasant or good that happened during the day.

Technological detox

An hour before bed, turn off your laptop, phone, and other electronic devices. Talk to your loved one, read a book, or get ready for tomorrow - think about your tasks, what you will wear and where you will have lunch.

Conclusion

It may take you a few years to develop these habits, but trust me, the results will be amazing. You must understand that you will not get back the time you wasted, so live every day as productively as possible. Of course, you won't be able to follow all of these tips perfectly, and you shouldn't strive to do so.

Think about the small things you can control. You decide for yourself when to wake up, when to complete the first and second items on your list. When you do these small things, nothing else matters anymore, other problems are no longer under your control and you don't have to worry about them.

Try to put these techniques into practice and you will see that you can achieve much more.

Hello! In this article we will talk about the rational use of working time.

Today you will learn:

1. How to plan working time and how to use it wisely;
2. What is meant by the term “rational use of working time”;
3. What results can be achieved if you prioritize correctly.

According to studies, a very large part of people do not know how to plan their working time. It turns out that even when working according to a strict schedule, people do not have time to complete the amount of work. In such situations, rational use of working time helps. This is what we will be talking about today.

Staff working time and efficiency

Working time is the period during which employees must perform their job duties at the workplace. The question is how effectively the staff's working time is used, because it often turns out that things just turn into an endless string.

Factors influencing the effective use of time

This indicator is influenced by quite a few factors:

• Working hours;
• Labour Organization;
• Employee performance;
• Working time planning.

What is the priority

In any work, the result is important: how much the goals and objectives that were set were achieved. But in order to achieve the planned results, you need to start building a workflow. That is why the principles of rational planning are introduced into the labor process.

Methods for implementing time management

is a phrase that means nothing to many people. Therefore, we will simplify it somewhat and clarify that it includes organizing working time and increasing the efficiency of its use.

It is worth listing the positive aspects of this tool:

• There is a favorable and calm atmosphere in the team;
• Increases stress resistance of employees;
• The level of performance of each employee increases;
• The level of personal responsibility and self-organization increases.

Planning work time.

Every entrepreneur has heard about this tool at some point. But not everyone knows how to apply it in practice. As a result, time is simply lost, but it is irrevocable, it cannot be accumulated and returned back. There are simple ways to plan that do not require huge expenses.

Let's look at the planning process step by step.

It is better to plan the coming working day the night before. At this time, you can analyze what has already been done, and also draw up a plan taking into account all important circumstances. For planning, you can use both the old proven notepad and modern gadgets. It is important that you see which tasks have already been completed and which are yet to be completed.

You still won’t retain all the information in your head, but you may well forget something important. So write it down.

Setting priority tasks.

This is a very important point in planning. You can implement it simply: on a piece of paper, draw a square, which needs to be divided into 4 more squares.

Then scatter all the tasks that need to be completed into 4 points:

• Urgent and important;
• Urgent and unimportant;
• Non-urgent and important;
• Not urgent and unimportant.

This way, all the tasks will be before your eyes every day and you will see what needs to be done first, and what can be postponed for a couple of hours, or maybe days.

Setting goals.

Any successful entrepreneur understands that setting goals is a condition for achieving good results. However, often managers do not explain to employees what the company's goals are, what each of them must do to achieve success.

As a result, people do work that is mostly meaningless and brings no practical benefit to anyone. And all because they simply don’t know why this is needed at all. How can this situation be changed?

1. Clearly formulate what the company’s goals are and why they need to be achieved;
2. Explain to employees how important the functions they perform are to achieving the overall goal: people need to understand that their work is important and beneficial;
3. Record the goals that were achieved and the results of each employee.

Correctly set goals motivate employees and increase their performance.

Pareto's law.

Its essence is the following principle: if you spend only 20% of the effort, you will get 80% of the result. At the same time, it is important to exclude all unnecessary tasks from the list and focus only on the important ones.

Factors that distract from the main work

Most of them are simply the root of evil in any company, from large holdings to small firms. Therefore, we will pay special attention to them.

Stressful state.

Every person at least once in his life has been in a state when work simply does not come to mind. It is difficult to concentrate at such moments. Drink some herbal tea and get to work.

State of fatigue.

To be productive at work, get enough sleep. Lack of sleep has a bad effect on the general condition of the body.

A real horror for any employer. Employees constantly check their page during working hours, read posts, but do not concentrate on work at all. Therefore, management has to resort to radical measures: prohibit access to the Internet by written order, and then check the visit log of each employee. Although it doesn’t always help either.

Cellular telephone.

If you don't expect urgent calls, just turn off the sound.

Multitasking mode.

When an employee tries to complete many tasks at one time, a failure occurs and nothing happens. To prevent this from happening, organize your working time correctly.

Feeling bored.

One of the most dangerous factors. If a person is bored, it is natural that he will look for a way to escape from work. Stimulate your interest in work: for example, if you submit a report ahead of schedule and receive a bonus, you will be able to make a purchase that you have long dreamed of.

Hunger.

It may seem strange to some, but if you are hungry, you won’t be able to work normally. There is only one thought in my head: when will I eat? To prevent this from happening, have snacks and watch your diet in general.

How to stop getting distracted

To work productively and efficiently, you need to get rid of the habit of constantly being distracted. Colleagues, gadgets, and just thoughts can distract you. How to become the ruler of your time, we will discuss further.

Get rid of time wasters.

Try not to be distracted by personal matters or extraneous conversations during working hours. In addition to the fact that your time is spent browsing the next website or talking on the phone with a friend, you will also incur time costs to get involved in the work process again.

Of course, you need to take breaks from work. We are not robots, there must be rest. But a specific time must be allocated for this.

Another simple tip: Leave home problems outside the office. This will only be for the good. It is necessary to separate personal problems and work process.

Don't be distracted by your colleagues too often.

Imagine: you are completing a complex task or writing a lengthy report that needs to be submitted in the near future. And you’re so afraid of not being on time, and then your colleague asks unnecessary questions. They may be within the scope of work, but it is catastrophically at the wrong time.

If you have to work in a noisy environment, still distribute the work so that you are not constantly distracted. If you know for sure that you won’t be able to concentrate, try changing your office for a while. The measure is effective if appealing to the reason of colleagues discussing a new film is useless.

Do some planning.

Write down all the things that need to be done. And look through this list from time to time. You can set a reminder in your phone that will help you not to forget something important.

Distribute all work by time of day. Perform the most difficult tasks in the morning and evening, and during the day, when you can be distracted at any moment, do those tasks that do not require particularly serious attention.

Send correspondence or check email in batch mode.

Instead of being distracted every hour, set a specific time to check the contents of your email inbox. And if you need to send several faxes, collect them throughout the day and send them all at once.

In the next part of our article, we’ll talk separately about organizing the manager’s working time.

How can a manager rationally organize working time?

Do you manage to get everything done in a working day? If not, then you represent the vast majority of managers. A number of analysts have studied the working hours of the average manager. The findings were disappointing: only 8% out of 100 implement all their plans during the day.

The reasons for this are as follows:

• Rush;
• Lack of time planning;
• Improper organization of work;
• Low level of motivation.

Formula 60:40.

If you follow it, then the part of the working time that you plan should not exceed 60% of the total working time. This is a period of planned activity.

The remaining 40% of the time should be divided into 2 parts, the first is reserve time for unplanned work, the remaining 20% ​​is allocated for management work.

Thus, if you plan your working time correctly, you can significantly gain time. This means there will remain the opportunity to engage in self-education and fruitful activities.

Staff motivation

Important for everyone: you are a manager or an ordinary employee. When setting goals for a day, a week, a month, you need to understand what the result will be. Motivation is an excellent tool for increasing the performance and efficiency of staff. In this case, you can use both motivation in material and intangible terms.

Example. The management of a large oil company in the Russian Federation has set a goal: to create a solid business reputation, while involving employees in this process. A motivation system was developed, which implied the following: if within six months all departments of the company fulfill the tasks assigned to them and at the same time exceed the plan, employees will be offered bonuses of a choice of material or non-material nature.

As soon as the system was implemented, staff turnover decreased by 20%, and employee loyalty to management increased by 50%, becoming almost 100 percent.

Conclusion

To summarize, I would like to note that there are many methods that teach the rational use and planning of working time. We talked about the most popular ones.

But whatever method or tool you use, be sure to plan, analyze, and take stock of your daily activities. This will allow you to identify all shortcomings and use your working time with maximum efficiency.

Create your individual time management system and incorporate the techniques that are most effective for you. The techniques are described below. Success will come when you use this system constantly.

1. Don't rely on memory

Write down your tasks and relieve your brain.

2. Make a list of priorities

This will help you concentrate on the main thing and will not allow you to waste time on trifles and secondary tasks.

3. At the end of each week, set aside time

To make a plan for the next week. This is not wasted time; it will pay off handsomely by increasing your productivity.

4. Don't expect to remember an interesting idea.

Always have a notepad handy to jot down your ideas. Alternatively, carry a voice recorder.

5. If the other person's demands don't match your goals.

Say no. You have to learn this.

6. Before you take action, think, but not for too long

A little reflection will save you from rash actions and wasting time.

7. Improve yourself!

Make time in your plans for self-improvement.

8. Be aware of what you are doing

You must understand what you are spending your time on. Your deeds should move you towards your goal.

9. Effective techniques

Include in your individual time management system those techniques that are most effective for you and use this system constantly.

10. Assess yourself for bad habits

They waste your time. Make a list of such habits and get rid of them one by one. The most effective way is to replace a bad habit with a useful one.

11. Don't do other people's work to make yourself look better.

So, you will waste time that you could use for your own promotion.

12. Keep a journal

Where you can record your progress towards your goals. Complete and review this journal regularly to ensure you are moving in the right direction.

13. Not every problem can be solved in the best way

There is no need to become a perfectionist and, for example, rewrite a business letter 20 times to achieve the style of Leo Tolstoy.

14. Don't overload yourself with too many tasks.

If you have urgent matters and important tasks that will take up all your time, then secondary tasks can be postponed until a more favorable time.

15. Don't be fooled by efficiency

You can effectively complete a task that is not currently a priority. In this case, you cannot say that you are using your time effectively.