Manage your time - expert advice

We will tell you about the most useful tools for working with the calendar, described by Daniel Browne - author of "The Source of Energy".

The Pareto principle states that the workfill in all the time allotted for it. Calendar is your tool for time budgeting, allowing you to effectively cope with any business or project you are working on. Unplanned time, most likely, will be occupied with work. Use the following rules to help you use your calendar:

1. The calendar should represent a real picture of how you are going to use your time.

It should be planned everything that is important for you and needs to be done. An exception can only be made for small tasks that you spend less than fifteen minutes.

2. Take time to define plans for specific days and weeks.

Detailed planning helps you saveConcentration on what you do at a particular moment, and not get out of the schedule. It is best to plan the day ahead the night before, when you have completed your work and have an idea of ​​what should be transferred to tomorrow. Making or adjusting the plan in the morning is advisable only if at night you come up with a creative idea or you remembered an urgent matter.

3. Get rid of the to-do lists.

Having written everything you need to do on paper, youfree your head, but the problem is that in your list of cases will not be limited to specific deadlines and, as a result, you will not know when you can fulfill them.

4. Use alerts for tasks that are tightly tied to the time.

If you have things to doat a specific time, turn on the alert or signal that reminds you of them. Despite the fact that alerts help keep the sense of time, it's better not to use them for cases that are not time-bound, because if reminders are received too often, you will simply stop responding to them.

5. Schedule the solution for tasks with flexible deadlines.

Usually things that do not require that theyengaged in a certain time, put on the lists, often forgotten about them or transferred the next day. By including them in your schedule, you will increase the likelihood of their solution. Take them for a time when you will most likely be able to solve them.

6. Make the calendar your best friend.

Even if you use an electronic diary withset alerts, you should from time to time refer to your calendar. This will allow you to get an idea of ​​the upcoming day. You need to view the calendar at least twice a day. Best of all, if you look into it every time you finish the next thing. Delete the completed cases or highlight them in color to see that the work on them is completed.

7. Break large tasks into smaller ones and plan their solution.

Often when working on large projects canIt seems that there is no need to plan anything, since it is already known what to do in the next few days or weeks. However, if you are not very organized, then an approximate idea of ​​what you are doing and the approximate time frame will impact your productivity, since the absence of time frames in the timetable will deprive you of a sense of urgency. Do not get off the track will help you to divide the project into subtasks and plan solutions for each of them in the calendar.

8. Do not forget to provide for breaks between the cases.

The main stumbling block in planning -lack of realism. When planning tasks without taking into account distractions or breaks necessary to switch to the next case, you risk losing focus, getting out of the schedule and facing the need to catch up with the rest of the time. Over time, you start to think that planning does not work, and you give up the idea of ​​ensuring productivity. If you provide rest, a break for lunch, time for the road and distractions, you will get a realistic picture of what you have to do and what your time will be spent on, which means that you can plan your day more efficiently.

9. Plan the time for preparing calls and upcoming meetings.

You must have been late for a meetingdue to the fact that you did not provide enough time for the road and the appearance of a hitch. By scheduling preparation time in your calendar, you will get rid of stress if you just need to figure out the route or look up the phone number just before you go out when you need to call the customer. Planning the time for the journey, find out the exact schedule of transport and provide the opportunity to intercept a cup of coffee along the way.

10. Schedule time during the day for unforeseen tasks and circumstances.

How often do your things go wrong? Every day, once a week? Provide in your schedule a time for unforeseen circumstances, and if they do not appear, you can always use it to perform other work. Analyze how much time during the day goes to unscheduled calls or breaks, and schedule it in your schedule. Most likely, first you will overestimate or underestimate the time you need, but with experience the accuracy of your estimate will increase.

11. Develop the habit of planning.

As soon as you have a new task, immediatelyAlso, put it on your schedule. If for any reason this is not possible, take a note in notepad, smartphone, tablet or any other device that you are using. Immediate entry of the task into the timetable, first, eliminates the need to remember what you need to do, and secondly, excludes the possibility that it will remain unresolved.

If you have to regularly monitorrequests or organize meetings, provide for them on the calendar time for a week, and then simply add items to the specified interval. In an electronic calendar, for example, in Outlook, you can place these items in the notes section. In the paper diary, where there is no place for all the items, you can draw them up as a separate list, tied to a given length of time.

12. Use only one calendar for planning work, and for all other issues.

When it comes to your life, between work andleisure should not be divided. These areas of your life are a reflection of how you manage your time. Using two calendars, you dissipate your attention and make it difficult to control the time.

13. Use the cell method.

Its principle is to divideday for several large time intervals. The maximum efficiency is provided by segments of not less than an hour and a half. The number of such cells can vary from three to six. The simplest is a day consisting of three cells corresponding to the morning, afternoon and evening periods.

Time intervals are nothing more than blocks of achievements, or a time when you will be engaged in the most important affairs.

One cell does not assume that it isonly one work task. You can schedule for this period any number of cases. For example, if the size of your morning cell is three hours, you can schedule four 15-minute and two-hour tasks in it. Combine several small tasks into 30-minute blocks or, even better, put them in the hour cells.

Feel busy us makesmall tasks, and large blocks contribute to the formation of thoughtful plans and give the impression that we have achieved our goal. Try not to fill the cells with routine or unproductive tasks. If you need a lot of time for administrative matters, create a separate cell for them. You must be productive, not busy. And do not forget to sum up the end of each interval.

Structuring the cells will help you make the most efficient use of the time allotted to the planned cases. In the cell, you should make something that is really important to you.

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  cell, or evening for relaxation;


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  cell, or a date for a date;


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  cell, or an evening dedicated to personal growth or learning;


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  cell, or an evening dedicated to children and the family;


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  a cell for communication;


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  cell for work late;


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  cell for going to the cinema;


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  cell for training.

14. Use your free time wisely.

Looking at the cells, you get an idea of ​​thehow much you have free time. Each of the five working evenings gives you three to six hours of free time. It's fifteen to thirty hours a week. You can spend them on anything: relax, socialize with family and children, dine at a restaurant, go to the movies. If you add to them the weekend (this is another thirty-six hours, or an additional six - twelve cells), then you will receive from fifty to seventy-six hours of free time per week! This is your time to implement a variety of projects - for example, to learn a foreign language, writing a book, etc.

Use these tips and you will be able tosignificantly improve their productivity, keep peace of mind, easier to control their lives and get more free time for themselves and their loved ones!