Hello dear readers!

I am sure that each of you faces periodically or constantly with a lack of time. Alas, there are only 24 hours in a day and we can’t increase the amount of time in any way. But it's up to us to make the most of it.

This does not mean that all 24 hours need to be stuffed with business. This means that these 24 hours will be enough for us to have a harmonious day, where there will be time for work, rest, ourselves, etc.

Therefore, if you, too, feel like a cornered squirrel in a wheel, then it's time to stop and change something. What exactly - I will tell a little lower.

To get started you need imagine your perfect day(you can even have two - a weekday and a day off :)). In what mode would you like to spend it? Think and write down your ideal daily routine (wake up at 7.00, have breakfast at 7.30, etc.). By the way, in order for this ideal mode to be at least a little tied to reality, you can make a timing of a real day, at the same time looking at how much time it takes to do certain things.

Separately, write down the things that you need to do during the day (do not forget about the routine - wash the dishes, fold things, make the bed, etc.).

*Working time and work issues are planned separately. That is, now we are simply creating a base, a kind of template for the day. It will be a guide, show the way where to move.

And now a very important point - correlate the number of cases with the amount of time. Is it realistic to do it all (add some unforeseen circumstances)?

Personally, I sin precisely with this - I plan a lot of things, and then I get upset that I don’t have enough time and I don’t have time for anything. In fact, not enough time, but too much to do :).

Think about what things are superfluous, and what can be delegated to someone. Thus, you can save both time and effort.

Now that you have an idea of ​​your ideal day and a to-do list, you can start creating that day. For each of us, this process will be different, because everyone has their own problems with time.

I would highlight 2 main reasons for lack of time.

First - wrong time management. There are a huge number of methods and systems of time management. Try and choose the best set of tools for yourself. Ready-made systems are rarely suitable for anyone, so don’t get too attached to one, but choose what suits you best at the moment.

You can start with the simplest ways, which we wrote about in the article "". Or start working with the Eisenhower matrix, according to which all cases are divided into urgent important, not urgent important, not urgent important, not important not urgent.

By the way, it is by this matrix that you can sort out the tasks for the day and you will immediately understand which tasks are superfluous. It will also help you prioritize correctly, which will allow you to be more productive.

We wrote in more detail about the Eisenhower matrix.

So, to summarize, the first step should be time management and optimization. For starters, don't spend a lot of time learning techniques. Elementary planning of the day and the Eisenhower matrix will already give the first results.

The second reason - concentration(more precisely, its absence). A few years ago, we were less distracted. Now Wi-Fi is available almost everywhere and our smartphones / tablets regularly distract us with messages. Either someone on the social network updated the photo, then they wrote a message to you, and there spam or just a letter came to the post office. And you seem to be wasting seconds on this, but in the end, you get more than a dozen minutes in a day. And add here the time that it takes to get back to work, you get several hours.

Do not underestimate the influence of external stimuli. If time management has been popular for the last 10-20 years, now the ability to concentrate on one thing and manage your attention is becoming more and more important.

For the sake of curiosity, you can conduct an experiment - how much your productivity will increase if you do not get distracted by calls, letters and messages for at least half a day, and better the whole day.

Ideally, you need to come to the conclusion that you will have a specially allotted time to respond and respond to such stimuli. And no “I’ll drop in for 5 minutes on VK, Instagram”, etc.

If you have important work to do, it is best to turn off all notifications altogether and focus on it as much as possible. Believe me, you will be pleasantly surprised by your productivity and you may even have a few “extra” hours in a day.

So, competent planning, reasonable time management and maximum concentration will allow you to significantly increase your day. At the same time, you will be able to do more and feel better.

P.S. Yes, I did not discover America with this article. But almost always the most banal things are the most effective. The purpose of this article is to remind you of them and suggest a way to solve the problem of lack of time. Hope I got it right :).

Every year, Erica Anderson takes 5 weeks of vacation. At her New York City firm, she works full-time, blogging online, writing books, and answering customer calls. When she goes to rest, she asks her colleagues not to disturb her. “I can’t be like a machine,” Anderson shares. And this is a good lesson for those who do not know how to be distracted from work.

In the 1990s, when Erica started her own business, she had to work 80-hour weeks, she hardly left the office for long periods. But after some time, she realized that she needed a good rest and wanted to spend more time with her children. The problem was that she could not pick up and leave - the company simply could not do without her. Anderson had to make big changes in the process of work. She needed to learn how to share responsibility with other employees.

Vacation is not necessary!

Many of us have made it a rule not to use weekends for recreation. In 2015, research found that about 67% of executives canceled or postponed vacation plans because of work, and 57% didn't even plan to take time off. Americans, for example, are now mourning their days off, which “burned out” by January 1, 2017. This is a compelling reason to give yourself a break at least once in a while, because unlike our system, they do not add unused vacation.

Many of us know that the weekend helps to gain strength and energy, and it's also good for health. A little rest will reduce the risk of heart problems, for example. However, in practice, it turns out that when we do decide to take a vacation, we need to finish all current affairs in an accelerated time frame, which makes us tense up twice as much as usual in the last days. There are many reasons for this: it is important for us not to let down colleagues, not to look like a quitter or not to lose our job. It's even harder to take a vacation when everyone else is working. But consider that the vast majority of employees who prefer not to take a break simply don't know how to delegate their responsibilities and are afraid to let things take their course.

Many of us like to think that we are very important in our business, that our absence will be a real disaster for the company.

Everything is wrong without me

Many of us don't take vacations because we don't know how to delegate. According to statistics, only 30% of managers are ready to entrust their affairs to subordinates, and only 33% of them are considered by employees to be good delegates.

But why is it so difficult for us to shift the responsibility to someone else? Because we don't want to. We mistakenly believe that if someone does the work for us, then they will do worse. And this happens not only with business, but in everyday life too. It is known, for example, that casino players will never allow someone else to play instead of them.

It's an illusion of control

It always seems to us that we are irreplaceable and no one will cope as well with our tasks as we ourselves.

In America, this may be true. Their companies and firms do everything possible to prepare a particular employee for the performance of the assigned tasks as efficiently as possible. But in Europe or Canada, management prefers to see successful teamwork and interaction between people.

Work to live or live to work?

Europeans have a fundamentally different value system from the American one. While in America people go to work because they love what they do and dream of being successful in their field, Europeans do it to make a living. Individual achievements of an employee of a company in the USA are always noticed, appreciated and celebrated collectively. Events like this mean a lot to them. They try to prove to everyone and to themselves that they are professionals in their field and are ready to grow and develop in this all the time.

Learn to overcome the fear of shifting your tasks to colleagues

Erika Anderson came up with a support system in her company to help learn this collectively. Offering to fulfill the assignment to one of the employees, she asks him to evaluate what and in what time frame he can handle on his own, where help is needed, and what he is not ready to take on. In addition, a lack of time from an excessive amount of worries will not wait for him.

The company holds meetings and planning meetings to help determine who and what task in the project will be assigned. Thus, it turns out that several employees are involved in the performance of one task. This slightly reduces the individual level of responsibility of each of them, which means that at some point it will be easier for them to turn to colleagues for help.

best way out

Since the situation has worsened recently and many have stopped resting, many people with health problems, depression, and in the worst case, life expectancy will decrease soon. To avoid such a fate for yourself, we strongly recommend that you rest at least occasionally. Work brings money and provides an opportunity for self-realization, this is important for everyone. But will it be just as important if one day you just fall down exhausted and don’t get up? A short vacation will not be able to ruin your career, but on the contrary, it will give you the opportunity to sleep, refresh your thoughts and cheer up, so that later you can return to work with new strength and ideas.

But we always don’t have time for ourselves, which means that there is no opportunity to renew our strength, to feel like a full-fledged and happy person. Make friends with time is possible only when a person puts his own "I" in the first place. According to psychologists, it is important to set priorities correctly. Each person in the first place should have his own needs, beliefs and self-realization, he must love and respect himself as a person. In second place, a person should have a family, and in third place, his career. A person who respects and loves himself does not allow others to manage himself and his time.

Everyone even overworked person can do everything, it's quite real. It is important only to slightly change your views on your own affairs and does not strive to become an exemplary husband or wife. Most people don't even dare to think that they can have their own needs. And if they do something for themselves, they feel guilty that they have wasted time on their own interests or pleasures. They are afraid of being bad spouses, parents or children. To avoid this fear, a person needs the support of someone who will convince him that everything will be the other way around. And when he believes in this, he willingly begins to engage in his own development.

Many people live calm life without stress, they realize themselves at work, everything is in order in their families, but still they lack something for happiness. They start looking for ways to change their lives. The reason for this condition is that there is no time for oneself. What can you do to find time for yourself?

1. Plan your time. You need to plan your time flexibly, listening to the state of your body. Morning hours are considered the most suitable for mental stress. In the morning, the body is full of energy and receptive to accepting information associated with the work of the brain. Especially productive is the time before noon. Write down the hours when you will be engaged in intellectual work, transfer things that do not require much stress to the hours when the body should rest. Every night in the evening, write down in a notebook a list of the main things that you need to do the next day. Divide the list into two columns: write down the things you need to do in the first column, and the goals you want to achieve in the second column. Global and daily tasks must be real. Leave one day a week or a few hours free for self-care. If you are asked to do something during this allotted time for yourself, refuse them and say that you have plans. Use this time for hobbies, self-improvement, reflection, or just relaxing.

2. Find a hobby. Remember your hobbies for which you do not have enough time and energy after creating a family. Find a hobby that distracts and brings a lot of positive emotions to everyone's life. And set yourself a goal: “I want to do this and I will!”. Let's say you dream of going to a fitness club. Look at your notepad entries and write this hobby in the global tasks column. Choose the days and times that are convenient for you. Free this time from all household chores and work.

3. We must remember the wise saying: the more we hurry, the less we succeed. Don't forget to enjoy the present moment. Feel every minute of your life and listen to yourself. Admire the surrounding nature, chat with friends, take time for pleasure.

4. Develop your personality. Find out who and what is stopping you from taking care of yourself. If this is just your own laziness, you will have to look for ways to defeat it. Do not let relatives and work colleagues shift their responsibilities to themselves. Know how to refuse, motivating your refusal by the lack of time you have. Try to create a warm relationship with loved ones, as you know, spouses who live in peace and harmony, like all happy people do not watch hours. And in general, the passage of time depends on the desire of a person to live and understand the meaning of his life. And the stronger the desire to live, the greater the likelihood of a slow flow of time.

- Return to section heading " "

Table of contents of the topic "Problems of modern man":

If happy hours are not observed, then the very busy ones, in principle, do not have them. More precisely, like this: there seems to be time, but there are so many things to do that the next free minutes will not be soon. In this case, we and you are always ready: "Sorry, there is no time." Everything would be fine, that's just it. Don't believe? Evidence in this article.

Now tell me how often you say the phrase: "I don't have time." Let's bet that often. Every day, for example. But we have news - good and bad at the same time. All these complaints about lack of time are fairy tales. Lies, if you will. Do you have time. You won’t believe it, but there are as many hours in your day as there are in the days of all Nobel laureates, all triathletes preparing for, and all top managers. So while you are breathing and your heart is beating, you have time. Another question is that it needs to be organized and planned in such a way that later "".

The phrase "I don't have time" makes us weak and lost. We lost control and now we admit it. We sincerely believed the beautiful myth of multitasking and, with a smile on our face, got into a losing race a priori. And what? The upper vessel is inexorably empty, all the sand is already below. Time is over. We didn't make it again. Lost again.

The truth, as always, is simple and obvious. You are the only person who can manage your life, and therefore your time. I don't want to upset you, but most likely you waste it very often. For example, the average Russian spends four hours in front of the TV every day. We are generally silent about social networks - calculate for yourself and be horrified.

Of course, giving up the Internet and telethons will not teach you how to properly plan your time, but these four steps will definitely help. They will help you gain control and make time your main ally.

Ask yourself what things are really important to you

Cooking, yoga, date nights, part-time jobs, House of Cards, Skype with family, reading, hot bubble baths, hanging out with friends, pool workouts, and long (really long) naps on Sundays are all just as important. important, like your work, which means it has every right to exist in the list of important things. In other words, all things and phenomena that bring you joy deserve time. Let's do the arithmetic: you have 24 hours, eight of which you sleep and eight more you spend at work, right? So you have eight hours to do something else. Okay, let's face it, everyone's work is different, so free time can narrow down to four or five hours, but it's still enough to go to a workout, arrange a dinner for two, or watch a new Tim Burton movie.

Do you have free time. Recognize this fact and use extra hours in such a way that the work week does not turn into one continuous "Groundhog Day".

Find out what's stopping you

Be honest and answer questions (you don't have to fool yourself). Do you spend an hour or two every day browsing your Facebook and Instagram feeds? Does a hangover on Sunday mornings keep you from going to the gym? Can you spend half a Saturday just getting out of bed and making your own breakfast (instead of just picking up a book and reading in peace for a while)? Are you willing to date people you don't like or are not interested in just because you're afraid of offending or upsetting them? Do you think there are, in principle, meetings in your life that you can politely refuse?

It's time to analyze and identify those activities that steal your precious hours and in return bring only emptiness and a feeling of dissatisfaction. Think about how you can minimize the things that you don’t really need and replace them with those that make you happy and your life harmonious and conscious. Just imagine what could be better than sitting for two hours with an interesting book instead of a boring meeting. Bliss!

Make a plan

Before you try to randomly fill free hours with events (on the principle of “well, at least something”), it’s better to sit down at the table and try to plan this time. Agree, you are preparing for an important interview and are thinking about what you will serve on the table when you invite friends to Sunday lunch? Everything is the same here. Your daily routine should not be limited solely to those tasks that you need to solve at work. Running, walking the dog, meeting a friend in a cafe, reading Gunter Grass, a concert of your favorite band - all this defines your life and needs your attention, which means, damn it, deserves a place in the schedule and a couple of hours in the evening or in the morning. Yes, of course, you can do without planning, but then you risk missing out on a lot of really cool stuff. So, if you decide to spontaneously go to the theater for the premiere performance, there will probably be no more tickets. They will be bought up by those who plan their lives and want to fill it with bright and worthwhile events.