Time management: live to work or work to live

Leonid Zverugo

wrote this on Май 3, 2014

The rhythm of our life is hardly calm and measured. Not everyone can cope with lack of time, all hands' job and time troubles, which don’t contribute to personal effectiveness. Emotional stress blocks productivity, leads to fatigue and apathy. Therefore, to avoid becoming a victim of stress or even worse chronic fatigue syndrome, let's do time management.

All successful people are very productive. They work long hours and do a lot of work, but it's not the same. Productivity primarily means the result, not the process. If you intend to increase your productivity, do not back down and repeat what all successful people do until it becomes your second nature.

This series of articles will introduce you the basics of effective time management. We will give you the answer to the main question of the modern manager: how to get more done? We’ll offer you advice on the organization of working time and rest, motivation and goal-setting, planning and prioritization.

Thus, we begin!

We're all in the same position when deal with the inexorable passage of time. Whatever welfare we may have, we still have very little time. We have about 200-400 thousand hours remaining until the end of our life. And the most important fact is that time is irretrievable. Lost time, unlike the lost money, can not be returned.

Time management is one of the most essential skills today. The information is more diverse, events occur faster, you need to react faster, meet deadlines quicker, while somehow finding time for recreation, hobbies, family, friends...

Time Management is not just plans and timing. This technology allows you to use irretrievable time of your life in accordance with your goals and values. Will you use a rigid or flexible scheduling, timing or self-motivation, Outlook or paper notebook - there is no difference. Technique is secondary. It is important to find your personal life goals and allocate time in accordance with them. Spend irretrievable lifetime on what you really want.

Steps to create a personal time management system

We introduce you a brief overview of the upcoming articles, based on the book of a famous Russian time management expert Gleb Arhangelskiy. Each of them corresponds to a logical step in creating a personal time management system. At the end of each article, the corresponding step will be detailed in a few specific recommendations.

1. Rest. Spending a minimum of "initial investment of time", organize competent rest during working hours and after hours.
2. Motivation. Master the methods of "setting" on the difficult and unpleasant tasks to reduce the time spent on them.
3. Targeting. Formulate personal values ​​and set long-term goals to make your dreams come true.
4. Working day. Adjust personal planning system of the day using the "hard" and "flexible" tasks to plan realistically and always have time to perform important ones.
5. Planning. Organize context planning and medium-term planning based on a "Day - Week" and ensure confidence that you will always meet the deadline.
6. Priorities. Learn how to weed out unnecessary things and highlight key tasks using clear criteria - so always finding time for the most important things.
7. Information. Implement techniques of filtering, storage and rapid transferring of information, to keep it under control.
8. Time-consumers. Use techniques to identify time-consumers to save your time.
9. "TM- bacillus". Convey "TM- bacillus" to others, so they use of their time and yours more reasonable.
10. TM manifesto. Use irretrievable time of your life in accordance with conscious personal values ​​and priorities.