What to plan. Effective planning and organization of the working day: methods, rules and why it is important

When we meet successful multifaceted personalities, we sigh and shrug our shoulders: how do these people manage to do everything? Are they awake? Does their magic clock have twice as many divisions? Perhaps they are just special?

Yes and no. Of course, the idea of a magic clock is science fiction, that’s for sure. But, as a rule, people who organize their day effectively do not really lie in bed for half the day - getting enough sleep for them is a matter of technique, the secret is in the routine. And this regime, hated since school years, or rather, its more flexible and interesting variety - time management- makes them special. Having mastered tricks to help you plan your time, and with the help of self-control and discipline, each of us is capable.

You can't stretch time. So change yourself

We are accustomed to consider time pressure (from the German Zeitnot, “trouble with time”), a constant lack of minutes, hours and days, as synonymous with demand, need, and busyness. I work day and night, I sew myself up, I have absolutely no time, I don’t have time for anything! Admit it, often these words become a kind of screen, a shield, a means of protection from the discomfort of real life. And “time-pressure-aholics” do not expect anything good from her, although they understand perfectly well that it is impossible to withstand a constant workload for a long time; behavior and psyche change irreversibly. And, frankly, “things are not going through the roof.” In order to do something thoughtfully and with soul, you need to stop from time to time and look around. In the daily endless gallop of time pressure, you cannot find a minute for this procedure.

It’s sad but true: today many large companies use the barbaric policy of “burnout” of personnel for their corporate purposes. A fresh employee is loaded at the very least; he remains in place exactly until his work enthusiasm dries up and continuous time pressure dries out his brains. How to recognize such employers and what to do with them is a topic for a separate conversation, but today we sharing the secrets of planning your day. These tricks will allow you to look at your workflow differently and change it for the better.

Start now. And don't stop!

Plan your time to get more done, it's actually not difficult. There are two fundamental postulates, surprisingly banal. The first one is if you want to optimize your day, just start doing it. Try different strategies according to your character, field of activity, circumstances. Some of us need a tight schedule (at least at first), while others only need minor adjustments to their daily routine and habits. The second “open secret” is that time management This is not a pill that you just need to swallow once and cure yourself of carelessness and unpunctuality forever. This is daily painstaking work, the efforts to complete it are directly related to the success of the result. And do not forget that the most interested judge and spectator is judging you - you yourself. Therefore, “netting” will not work.

Time management is a whole philosophy of developing skills and using devices and techniques that allow you to plan your time and use it rationally to achieve goals. Initially, time management was developed by American researchers to improve productivity, but practice has shown that putting things in order on the clock face also benefits your personal life.

Today, hundreds of time management techniques are known and actively used, and this list is constantly expanding. Modern time planning strategies are based on the use of clocks and alarm clocks, all kinds of diaries, “task sheets” and organizers, computer day planner programs, the distribution of priorities and motivations, the use of natural rhythms of human life that interfere with the use of time effectively (the most common of them is withdrawal syndrome, “putting aside”).

Certainly, time management is a whole science, which is not surprising - correcting deficiencies always takes much more time than acquiring them. If you are interested in these techniques, you can study and test them yourself - especially since it is impossible and pointless to talk in one topic about how to learn to plan your day from the point of view of time management. But there are some tricks you can start using right now to make your workday more efficient.

Do you want to learn how to plan your day and stop wasting precious time? Try this first:

Make room for what's important

Any day consists of many things - small and large, important and not so important, urgent and enduring. In order to learn how to plan your time, you need to sharpen an imaginary scalpel to a shine, allowing you to separate priority tasks from non-priority ones. Of course, this does not mean that you can forget about small and less important matters - no, they also need to be done, but they deserve attention in proportion to their magnitude. A common mistake is to “for ease” do first what is simpler and... unnecessary. What do we get as a result? Imitation of activity and irrational use of time reserves necessary to complete significant tasks. Be aware of what is happening - assign important and difficult things as priority.

Occam's Razor in reverse

But in order for big and serious things not to scare you away, there is the following trick: in order to properly plan your time, they need to be divided into several smaller ones. Then the “stages of the long journey” can be alternated with less important tasks, while simultaneously getting a lot done.

"Shrink" what you live by

In any list of routine tasks performed automatically, insidious time wasters are hidden. They disguise themselves as innocent and even seemingly important things. Revision required! Think about what your minutes and hours are spent on, remember everything and realize - do you really need this type of employment or leisure? Do you really need to log into Odnoklassniki every hour, does this really give you the necessary break from work? Do you really need and are interested in classes in an embroidery circle? Is it really worth talking to a certain boring colleague for fifty minutes in a row every day, for fear of offending him with a quickly curtailed conversation? This is your day, and there are only 24 hours in it!

Don't lose and don't get lost

According to modern research, a working person spends an average of 150 hours a year searching for lost items. That is, these things did not just mysteriously disappear at the behest of evil forces - they were out of place, and therefore they could not be found. An impressive figure, isn't it? Stop being part of these stupid statistics. Do not throw things, documents, files anywhere. Organize everything once, sign it, remember it, and keep it organized. This will help you plan your day better - because you won’t waste your precious time on the annoying search for “lost items”.

Consider your personality

When learning to plan your day, do not focus on the “average temperature in the hospital.” Be aware that each person has individual periods of efficiency and “uselessness”. Don't put off work until late in the evening, knowing that after eight in the evening you won't be able to figure anything out. Don't make early morning appointments knowing you'll have to get up two hours earlier than usual and be overwhelmed. Stick to these rules, only then will they make sense - it is impossible to plan your day if you have an irregular daily routine and may unexpectedly go to bed five hours later than usual. You can, of course, in the morning, just for fun, read the horoscope for today and, under the impression, change all your plans, but it’s up to you to decide whether it’s worth it. Prepare your new day from the previous evening, or better yet a week in advance for greater efficiency.

Banish perfectionism

And delegate authority more boldly. If you have someone to delegate some of the work to, do it. Attention, we are not talking about shifting your work to innocent people, but if you have assistants, you need to use their help. Just because they are doing something that is not your style is not a reason to take it all on yourself. When planning things, distribute tasks immediately, and not under pressure from circumstances - this will save time and allow you to plan your day effectively.

There is time for business, and time for fun

When drawing up a “task sheet” and a schedule for the day (week, month), plan not only your vacation, but also your rest. Perhaps at first glance this may seem unnatural, but in fact this approach is not only convenient for learning how to plan time, but will also allow you to make your leisure time more varied and see in perspective what kind of entertainment you are missing. // charla.ru

Who among us has not wondered what is the greatest value? Quite often, opinions differ on this matter. Some believe it is information, others believe it is time. Despite the fact that modern society has enough opportunities to save time, for some reason there is just not enough time. And the thoughts immediately come to mind: “Why is technological progress playing a cruel joke?”, “How to have time to do everything and do it well?”, “How to distribute and plan your day in order to at least partially relieve yourself?” Everything is very simple. You just need to learn how to plan your time correctly.

Rules to follow if you want to do everything

To keep up with everything and have time to relax, you should:

develop a specific plan;
prioritize matters that are minor in importance, without leaving them for later;
do not waste working time on unnecessary things;
analyze completed tasks daily;
depending on the importance, correctly distribute priorities;
to keep order;
develop the willpower to follow new habits.

How to learn to plan your day: stages of planning a manager’s time

It seems that it is not difficult to correctly distribute working time and determine the sequence of daily work, however, not everyone can do this. If thoughts come to mind about how to do important things on time and not get tired, it is important to learn how to plan and manage time correctly. A properly drawn up daily routine plan plays an important role here.

Do not forget about such an important factor as limited time. Time cannot be stopped, changed, or returned, which means the same applies to work, business, and our lives in general.

There are the following stages of working time planning:

developing discipline (learning to control your day is an important task for a successful leader);
determining the degree of importance of matters (it is allowed to plan no more than 3 urgent matters per day);
rational distribution of tasks into important, urgent, easy, simple, insignificant;
drawing up a step-by-step work plan;
getting rid of simple, small, easy tasks that take less than 10 minutes to complete (unloading the next days);
the manager’s refusal to do activities that “steal” time (watching TV series, spending many hours communicating on social networks, hanging out with friends);
determination of each thing in the house and at work its place;
getting rid of work trash (10 minutes a day is enough to sort through documents and throw away unnecessary things);
choosing a hobby for leisure.

In order not to lose friends and properly save time, you need to follow the rule: visit pages on social networks 2 times a week, set aside weekends to meet with friends, plan personal meetings in advance, reduce the time of “empty” telephone conversations to 15 minutes a day.

How to make a work plan

Fruitful planning is possible if you adhere to the following sequence of work:

Determine goals and objectives on the basis of which to develop a work plan. It can be short-term (for a week) or long-term (for a month, quarter, year).

Attention: A successful leader cannot deviate one step from the plan. You can make adjustments to it, for example, swap tasks, days of important meetings, plan events at a different time, but under no circumstances should you radically change them.

Distribute tasks and determine deadlines for their completion. It is important to learn to first carry out tasks that have a limited time frame and those that require a lot of effort. You can then plan for mid-term tasks and work that requires standard functions. Low-value work should be done last.

Mandatory marking of urgent matters that arose on the eve of execution in your diary or calendar (allows the manager to manage to do everything on time, without missing important points).

Analysis of all tasks, reducing the list of tasks (as far as possible).

To unload your day, it is important:

Follow the limitation of completing tasks: no more than 3 urgent ones, no more than 10 in total per day.
When planning, adhere to completing complex tasks at a more favorable time, preferably in the first half of the day, and performing easy tasks at the end of the work shift.
Do not carry out the next job without completing the previous one (it is important to plan tasks step by step, completing those previously agreed upon).
Do not leave unfinished tasks, do not postpone them to the next working day.
If there are still unfulfilled tasks, it is recommended to make a note about them in the calendar of important tasks, where you especially note them. If the same task “lives” stably in the diary for several days in a row, it is worth thinking about how to refuse it or simply transfer it to another person performing it.

Secrets of rational planning

You can plan your day correctly by:

assessing the work plan, adjusting tasks, creating a daily routine;
monitoring the execution of tasks, eliminating the simultaneous performance of several tasks (otherwise there is a risk of low productivity);
completion of started tasks;
eliminating obstacles that prevent the manager from completing assigned tasks, distract attention, and affect plans;
alternating work with rest;
time planning analysis;
continuous improvement of your work results.

Secrets of saving time for a manager

It is important to combine similar tasks, for example, combine negotiations, sort out correspondence, answer emails.
Creating a calm environment is equally important. This is necessary so that nothing distracts you from your work.
Limiting your working time will help you avoid unproductive results from business meetings.
The ability to prioritize is an important indicator of rationality and consistency of affairs, which affects the achievement of set goals.
Doing exceptionally important things allows a manager to achieve high performance in his work.
Distributing tasks among employees will help save a significant amount of time.
Step-by-step work is no less important. It is much easier to move towards your goal if you climb the ladder, starting with small things and reaching great heights.
Keeping a diary of important tasks will help eliminate the overlap of some tasks with others, and the accumulation of tasks at the end of the month.
It is better to make important decisions in the morning. This way you can create a feeling of success throughout your working day.
When making plans and schedules, it is important to take into account the true level of ability to work, since it is this that affects the final result of the work.

It will happen, but your lack of a life plan guarantees that life either flows by chance or unfolds according to other people’s plans.

Vision of my life: “Well, I’ll finish school, go to college, start working, then get married... Well, we’ll probably have a child, we’ll decide on an apartment, a car and a dacha. Then retire - and rest!” - not life planning, but reproduction of a standard template. This is a story about how it usually happens with people, and an acknowledgment that my life will flow like everyone else’s, along a well-trodden rut.

Life planning is the construction of a specific plan for your life for a year, 3 years, 5 and 10 years and beyond, where high and inspiring goals are set. The first person who began to plan his life (among famous people) was Benjamin Franklin.

Like long-term plans, life planning is a fairly rare phenomenon. Hardly more than 3% of the Russian population have well-thought-out plans for their lives, especially well-thought-out and written plans.

Most people live without setting any goals for themselves: setting goals is completely replaced by dreams, fantasies, grief, that “everything is wrong” and nothing at all: either the phone rang, or there’s a great movie on TV.

A plan is a leap into the future. Your daily plan is your future today. A monthly and quarterly plan is the future of an effective organization. Your plan for the year and for life is your future. There are few people who live in the future.

How many people do you meet who seriously plan their lives, in the evening they build a picture of the day ahead of them, in the morning they set tasks for themselves, make a plan for the day and implement this plan?

Why do you need life planning?

Both the most successful and the most worthless person on the planet have 24 hours in a day. But the first achieves a lot, while the second can get stuck in a swamp of failures. The secret of this discrepancy is how and with what these 24 hours are filled. The first one views life as a long-term project, and the second one, most likely, thinks little about the future - lives for today and nothing more. Life planning is important for those who approach their lives responsibly, who want to do and achieve a lot in life. Life planning usually attracts results and is alarming as it forces life into a certain framework.

What would you say to the builders who, getting ready to build your dacha, would ask for money in advance and say: you know, we won’t draw the project, this reduces the freedom of creativity, and in general we are not used to it. Whatever happens, we will build it. Would you give them money? There is a feeling that no. Now imagine that you are building a life. Do you have a project for your life? Is this less responsible for you? Would you give yourself money as a life builder?

Life planning is thinking through your life so that its result will definitely please you. It is necessary to develop business and life success, improve the ability to build relationships, strengthen your health and improve the well-being of yourself and your loved ones: create a life base. You can dream beautifully, but serious people think about the end result.

Vasya was a creative person, and working through sleepless nights, he wrote very soulful poems in his village. His girlfriend Masha and his friend Fedya liked the poems, as a result of which, based on common interests, Masha married Fedya, who also made good money as a machine operator. On this occasion, Vasya wrote another collection of poetry and sent all his poems to the city... When Vasya was dying, his soul was warmed by a small gray brochure: the poems were still published in a meager edition, although they were never sold out. Since Vasya was extremely poor, his funeral was organized by Masha and Fedya, who had long ago built a strong house, raised children and planted a beautiful orchard. Of course, no one could call Fedya, unlike Vasya, an exalted and creative person, but how would you evaluate the result of their life?

Moral: the success of a project is determined not by the strength and loftiness of intentions, but by the amount of results actually achieved. ("Formula for success or philosophy of life of an effective person")

Myths about life planning

A planned life is boring. Never true. A planned life allows you to accommodate a much larger number of events and adventures. Imagine that, when you were getting ready to go on vacation, you put your things into a suitcase somehow: it won’t fit much. And if you folded your things neatly, you filled the vacated spaces with small things - more would fit into your suitcase. It's the same in life.

The plan limits development. This is if the plan is small, simple and uninspiring. And if you wrote Maximum of Life and suddenly realized that there is very little time, and there is a lot to do, you will develop at triple the speed!

The plan does not give freedom of creativity. And that's not true. No one is stopping you from revising and finalizing your plan every day, month, year, three years, so that you can correct what has already been written and add something new.

A planned life prevents you from enjoying the present. Nonsense - it just gives, and with a reserve, especially if you plan it. And if you don’t know how to plan, you will enjoy the present only in fits and starts and to your own detriment. LookHurry up to live in the present

Smart planning

If you have established your life and feel that you are capable of great things and achievements, think about your Maximum Life.

Life can be amazingly beautiful - let's make it that way!

Perhaps you're facing a problem trying to figure out your life, or maybe you just want to organize your day. Either way, you'll need to make a plan. It's actually not that complicated. With a little effort, creativity, and the right tools, you can properly prepare a plan and start achieving your goals.

Steps

Planning your day

Take a piece of paper. You can write in a notebook, notepad, or create a text document on your computer, whichever is more convenient for you. Write a list of things that need to be done that day, including scheduled meetings. What are your goals for the day? Do you want to include time for exercise or relaxation? What do you absolutely need to do?

Create a schedule for yourself. What time do you need to finish your first task, project or task? List all the tasks, starting with the very first one, and schedule tasks for the day hour by hour. Be sure to include meetings if they are scheduled. Of course, everyone's plans are different, so we can't give you a universal schedule. In general, the plan should look something like this:

9:00–10:00: come to work, check email, answer letters.
10:00–11:30: meet Oleg and Natasha.
11:30–12:30: Project No. 1.
12:30–13:15: lunch (healthy eating).
13:15–14:30: review project #1, meet with Alexander to discuss project #1.
14:30 - 16:00: project No. 2.
16:00 - 17:00: start project No. 3, prepare materials for tomorrow.
17:00 - 18:30: leave the office, go to the gym.
18:30 - 19:00: buy groceries on the way home.
19:00 - 20:30: prepare dinner, relax.
20:30: go to the cinema with Dima.

Shift your attention to something else almost every hour. It is important to set aside some time so that after each task you can review how effective you were during that time. See if you have completed everything you need to do. Then give yourself a moment to rest: close your eyes and relax. This way you can move on to the next task efficiently.
- You will put off some tasks and return to them later. In such cases, do not forget to write down where you stopped.
Review your day. When most of the day is over, review how well you were able to stick to your plan. Were you able to finish everything you wanted? Where did you go wrong? What worked and what didn't? What distracted you, and how can you prevent it in the future?
- Remember, some goals may take days or even weeks to achieve, which is completely normal. Think in terms of small sub-points.
Life planning

Assessing your own roles
1. Determine what roles you play in life. Every day we play different roles (from student to son, from artist to biker). You need to think about what roles you play in life at the moment.
  - These roles may include traveler, student, daughter, writer, artist, worker, tourist, grandson, thinker, and so on.
2. Determine what roles you want to play in your life. Many of these future roles may be the same as those you currently have. These are the nouns you want to identify yourself with at the end of your life. Consider the roles you are currently playing. Are there any among them that bore you a lot? If yes, then they do not need to be played further. List the roles in order from most to least important. This will help you determine what you truly value in life and what matters most to you. But do not forget that this list may change significantly, as you are also constantly developing.
  - Your list might look something like this: mom, daughter, wife, traveler, glassblower, teacher, volunteer, backpacker, and so on.
3. You need to understand why you want to play the roles you want. Choosing a role is a great way to discover your calling, but the reason you want to play a role is because of its meaning. Perhaps you want to volunteer because you want to do your part to solve problems that are obvious to you. Or perhaps you want to be a father because you want to give your children a wonderful childhood.
  - To define the purpose of your role, you can imagine your funeral (this may seem terrible, but it works well). Who will come to them? What would you like people to say about you? What do you want to be remembered for?
Setting goals and planning
1. Set big goals that you want to achieve throughout your life. How do you want to develop? What are you trying to achieve? Think of it as a list of things you want to accomplish in your life before you die. These should be goals that you really want to achieve - not those that Do you think necessary. Sometimes it's easier to form categories of goals to make them easier to imagine. These categories include the following (of course, not only them):
  - Career/vocation; trips; family/friends; health; money; knowledge/intelligence; spiritual world.
  - Here are some examples of goals (in the order of the categories listed above): publish a book; visit all continents; get married and raise children; lose 10 kg; earn enough money to send your children to university; obtain a master's degree in Philology; learn more about Buddhism.
2. Set specific goals and set specific dates for achieving them. Now that you have your life goals in general, set specific goals. That is, determine the dates by which you need to achieve them. Here are examples of more specific goals than in the previous paragraph:
  - Send your manuscript to 30 publishing houses by June 2020.
  - Travel to South America in 2020 and Asia in 2021.
  - By January 2020, lose weight to 55 kg.
3. - Your goal is to print the book and send the manuscript to publishers by November 2020. At this point, you've already written half of it, but you're not entirely sure you like it.
4. Decide how you will achieve your goals. What steps will need to be taken to achieve it? Evaluate them and write them down. Let's continue the example of publishing a book:
  - From now until November 2020 you need to: A. Re-read the first half of the book. B. Finish the book. B. Redo the parts you don't like. D. Correct grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors. D. Give the book to a few critics you know and ask for reviews. E. Determine which publishers might want to publish your book. E. Submit your manuscript.
  - When you write down all the steps, what will be more difficult and what will be easier to implement. Perhaps some steps need to be broken down into even more sub-steps.
5. Write down all your goals step by step. You can do this in any format convenient for you: manually, on a computer, draw, and so on. And so - congratulations! You've just made a plan for your life!
  
  Review and adjust your plan. Like everything in this world, your life will change along with your goals. What was important to you at 12 may not be as important at 22 or 42. It is normal to change your life plan: it shows that you yourself understand the changes in your life and adapt to them.
Problem solving plan

Problem Definition
1. You need to know what results you hope to get from solving the problem. What goal do you want to achieve by eliminating it? You may be hoping for more than just one outcome. Focus on achieving the goal, the rest will come after that.
  - For example, your goal is to improve your grade in math to at least 4. Along with this, you hope that when you improve your grade, your mother will let you go skiing.
2. Determine what actions you are taking that are causing the problem. What habits contribute to its development. Take a moment and look at what you're doing wrong.
  - Your problem is 3 in mathematics. Look at what you're doing that's causing the problem: you talk a lot to your neighbor in class, or you don't do your homework in the evening because you recently signed up for soccer and all you want to do after practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays is have dinner and go to bed. sleep.
3. Consider what external factors are contributing to the problem. In addition to your own actions, which can cause a problem, external factors can also cause it. Think about what it could be.
  - You have a 3 in mathematics, and this needs to be corrected. Perhaps what's holding you back is that you don't really understand the material, not what you're saying in class. Maybe you were never good at algebra. In the end, you don't really know where to look for help.
Finding solutions and making a plan
1. Identify possible solutions to your problem. You can simply write them down on a piece of paper or use special techniques, such as making an associogram. Whatever you choose, find solutions to correct your own actions, as well as eliminate external factors that contribute to the development of the problem.
  - How not to talk to your desk neighbor: A. Sit away from him. B. Tell him that your grade in the subject is very low and you need to pay attention. Q. If you have a writing assignment, ask your teacher to move you so you can concentrate better.
  - How to do homework despite working out: A. Do some of your homework during your lunch break or when you have free time during the day so you don't have to do everything in the evening. B. Make a schedule for yourself and strictly follow it: after class you will have dinner and then do your homework. After you're done, you can watch an hour of TV as a reward.
  - What to do if you don't understand algebra. A. Ask a classmate to explain to you what you don’t understand (only if nothing distracts you). B. Ask your teacher for help. Approach him after class and ask if you could meet him sometime since you have questions about your homework. B. Contact a tutor or sign up for appropriate courses.