Family, children, work, favorite hobby - in the modern world it seems unrealistic to have time to do everything. You either fail at work or face disappointment in your personal life. How to manage everything and not go crazy - TOP 10 tips and tricks
In this article:
Analyze your day Plan your day Set priorities Set specific goals Learn to delegate responsibilities Don’t leave important things for later Find time to relax Don’t forget about choices Don’t waste time on unnecessary things Some things can be done at the same time
Analyze your day
Photo by Georgia de Lotz on Unsplash
Effective time management is based on clear timing.
Take a notepad and a watch and start recording in the morning what you are doing and how much time you need for each task. Also take into account the time for rest and the intervals when you go on social networks and correspond with girlfriends.
Note what you do, start time and end time. Collect how many minutes, hours were spent on work, spending time with children, relaxing, tasks around the house, and also how much time was wasted.
Repeat this exercise every day for a week or one or two days every week for a month. Such an approach will allow you to get a more complete and adequate picture, since this will make it more difficult for you to deceive yourself and hide unproductive pastime.
Then collect the data you receive into one table and determine how much time you spend on various things. Most likely, after such an analysis you will be able to find the reason why you do not have time to do anything.
Listening to natural rhythms
Feel yourself, pay attention to natural rhythms. It is much easier for women to do this than for men. Nature itself has given us at least two bright clues: our monthly and lunar cycle. Our mood depends to some extent on both our personal and the lunar calendar.
Are you angry and irritated, or have no strength and want to cry? This often happens before “special days.” Monitor your emotions at different periods of your personal cycle.
Listen to your feelings. Are you full of energy and eager for great achievements? Are your feelings and emotions heightened and at their peak? Maybe it's a full moon today? Many people note the influence of the full moon on their emotional state. Find out what lunar day it is today - there is a lot of information on this matter on the Internet. Perhaps your observations and recommendations from the lunar calendar will give you the key to understanding your emotional and physical state, and this is the first step towards inner peace and harmony.
Plan your day
To get everything done and not go crazy, set a plan for the current day the night before. Write down the tasks, indicate the time period for their implementation, add a reserve for force majeure situations. Everything must be spelled out clearly and specifically.
During the day, try to do what you planned. If you don't have time to do something, note the reasons. Constantly check your plan. Set a goal to exactly accomplish what you planned, do not look for unnecessary excuses if you failed to do this.
This is not a one-day exercise. Make short-term plans constantly. The technique will allow you to organize yourself, see the full picture of the events and actions that you perform.
However, you can ask a completely logical question: why can’t you make a plan for a month or a week at once? The problem is that life is constantly changing, making adjustments, and some things lose relevance.
Because of this, it is easy to abandon what was previously planned. The whole idea of having a clear plan and getting it done becomes meaningless. Life again turns into a jumble of events that you cannot control and regulate.
Three factors for forming a healthy habit
To get used to concentrating on the main thing, you need firmness, discipline and perseverance. All three qualities can be developed.
First , make a firm decision to develop the habit of completing any task.
Secondly , force yourself to exercise in a disciplined manner, repeating the techniques you are going to master over and over again until you bring them to automaticity.
Third , persevere until the habit takes root and becomes part of your personality.
Sit down, relax and imagine yourself from the outside, as if through the lens of a video camera. Imagine yourself in the future. Who you are? Where are you located and what do you do? What do you need to do in the present to bring this picture closer or change? Think about what qualities you have and what you need to improve. Any improvement in life begins with self-improvement. You have an unlimited ability to learn and develop new habits and skills. And having learned to immediately take on important work and see it through to completion, you will have to step up the gas - because now both your career and your whole life will rush along the fast track (Get out of your comfort zone. B. Tracy).
After conducting a study, psychologists at Stanford University came to the conclusion that work productivity (both professional and household) decreases if the work week lasts more than 50 hours. In other words, if you work 70 hours a week, this shows only one thing: you manage to get exactly as much done as more successful and organized people manage to do in 50.
But how to organize your time to get everything done? This question is asked by many women who are in a hurry to succeed in their careers and at home. We analyzed a number of psychological studies and identified the following key habits that are observed in successful people.
Set your priorities
An important part of time management is the ability to choose what you should and can do first. Let's say you have several tasks ahead of you, and all of them are urgent. Determine their order:
- The child must make an appointment with a doctor;
- Make a report at work;
- Finish reading the book;
- Book vacation tickets.
Agree that you won’t be able to set priorities correctly if you don’t know the background of each task. Therefore, when determining what is more important to you at the moment, you should have as much information as possible.
Make lists of big and small things to do
There are things that literally take 5-7 minutes: making a call, sorting out mail, checking something, or setting a task at work. But they are the ones that often take up time and are also easy to forget.
Make a special list of small tasks and open it whenever possible. For example, in a traffic jam, while cooking pasta, in line. So you will spend this short period of time usefully.
If you work at home, divide tasks into those that can be done simultaneously and those that require full inclusion. Do the first in parallel with cooking or when the child is playing with construction equipment, and the second - in the time allocated for work. For example, when the baby is under the reliable supervision of his grandmother or is sleeping.
Set specific goals
Any goal or task must be specific, clearly defined and clear.
How to manage everything and not go crazy?
If you haven’t taken a vacation for a whole year and worked on weekends, then you need to rest. Just to speak vaguely about it is to say nothing. But if you clearly define that you plan to take a week off, turn off your phone and go to Dubai from such and such a date, this will be a specific goal.
Use multitasking correctly
You can combine two tasks - one that requires attention, and one that can be done automatically. So, it’s easy to peel carrots and answer your child’s questions at the same time. But combining two similar activities that use the same area of the brain is not worth it. For example, talking to your husband and reading a work document.
You can also combine some tasks with what you do on a regular basis. For example, while walking with a stroller, listen to books in English and improve your language skills, and while your eldest son is studying in a circle, sort out work correspondence.
Learn to delegate responsibilities
The main problem due to which people fail to achieve anything is the inability to delegate responsibilities to others. This applies to both work and home.
- If you feel like you are getting stuck in the office, tell your boss that you don’t have time to complete the work and explain the reason.
- If you are the boss, identify some of the responsibilities that do not require your close attention, and delegate them to your subordinates.
- At home, ask your children and husband to help you. Also invite them to take on some responsibilities. For example, check the garbage every morning, throw it away, buy food for the day.
Create a family calendar
A work calendar is a common thing: it helps you remember deadlines and not miss meetings and business meetings. And in everyday life, we often forget to visit the doctor as planned or pay for kindergarten. Create a similar family calendar.
Write down the dates of school meetings, paying bills, meetings with friends and relatives, holidays, visits to the clinic and other things that are not related to work, but are no less important in life. You can hang the calendar on the wall or use mobile applications that remind you of the event in advance. The main thing is not to keep everything in your head.
Find time to relax
No matter how strong a person is, his resources are limited. Working your butt off, fulfilling all the orders of your superiors, you must understand that one day your strength will dry up.
To prevent this from happening, rest regularly. Regularly means you need to get enough sleep every day, take days off during the week, and go on vacation every six months.
No matter how important your position at work is, there is always time to recuperate. Having rested, you will work more efficiently and be able to see new opportunities.
Enjoy the benefits of civilization
Don't go to a salon for a manicure - let the master come to your home. Don’t waste time shopping - now both clothes and food can be ordered online. Don't go to the bank or post office to pay utility bills. When buying a complex/expensive item, you can make a choice by reading the specifications and reviews online, and then quickly buy it at the nearest store. This way you won’t spend the whole day visiting retail outlets and comparing offers.
Use home gadgets that make cleaning, cooking and other household chores easier. Think about what applications, online stores and household appliances can save your time.
Don't forget about choice
When you drive yourself into a corner with obligations and work, you often forget that you have a choice. For example, you can change your job, move to another position, or simply tell your boss that you need an assistant.
People around you get used to the fact that you are part of the 20% of employees who do 80% of the work. It's convenient for them to have it that way. However, remember that you can refuse to be like this and choose a different life.
Also in the family. If your husband is another child for you, physical and spiritual intimacy is a thing of the past, you have a choice not to live with him, to make your life easier.
Monitor your sleep patterns. Do something nice in the morning
Strictly follow your regime. Get up and go to bed at the same time. To wake up fresh and rested, the brain needs to go through certain stages of sleep. If your routine goes astray, you will feel sluggish, tired and irritable. In such a state, you definitely will not have the desire to work.
Find something to do in the morning that will make you wake up faster. Start the day with your favorite activity and then you will get into the work process faster. This could be a creative hobby or physical activity.
Don't waste time on unnecessary things
Any person spends a lot of time on unnecessary things. He scolds children, makes scandals, sits on social networks, and collects gossip.
If you feel that you are going crazy from lack of time, and at the same time you find yourself interested in social networks, conduct one experiment. For the whole day, do not go to your page on social networks and do not read news sites.
Believe me, if you go online in the evening, it will take you 15 minutes to find out what happened during the day.
Yes, you may not have time to leave a comment or like on your friend’s page. But if you write her a personal message or call her, the satisfaction from communication will be more complete.
People often don’t want to spend time walking or playing sports, believing that earning an extra thousand is more important. But if you analyze your life over several years, you will see that the opportunity to enjoy nature and active recreation gives much more.
Time management for women. How to manage everything without going crazy?
Maybe we should leave everything as it is, and we don’t need any ideals or aspirations?! Children, family, work, cleaning on weekends, vacation to the sea a couple of times a year... Everything is like everyone else, a C, not entirely bad, but not a dream - but somewhere in the middle! So we live, comforting ourselves with the thought that things could be worse. But is this really the life you dreamed of and wanted?!
The success of a woman in our time is determined not only by her ability to organize family life. Today, women take on the task of making money; it can actually be very difficult to keep up with everything, so more and more often women are looking for convenient planners, notepads and applications that can make life a little easier.
Finding a strategy for allocating personal time on your own is not so easy. And you are wrong to think that in your case you need to plan your day in a special way. The general principles of time management bring order to any chaos in your head. But this useful science also welcomes an individual approach, because all people are different and planning the day has to be carried out in different conditions, with different initial moods. It is the personal approach to the distribution of time that gives rise to a number of specific mistakes that most often creep into an impeccable to-do list.
1. Plan your day
This is a must for any woman; without a plan, as you know, 80% less is accomplished. If your ideal daily plan is to do a lot of what is possible and even more of what is impossible, then such a distribution of time is already fundamentally wrong. It is impossible to do everything, especially since a considerable part of a woman’s day is consumed by daily small routine duties.
Important tip: If possible, start your to-do list with your most significant tasks for today. This way you will not only complete the priority task, but also maintain your positive attitude. After all, completing a big task before lunch will bring a particularly pleasant feeling of contentment and faith in your capabilities. And the rest of the day will then be productive, because you will already know that everything is working out for you.
2. Divide large tasks into small ones
Very often, the daily plan includes tasks of planning a vacation or organizing a child’s birthday. But this is fundamentally wrong, since each such task should be divided into a list of smaller tasks that need to be planned. For example, planning a vacation can be divided into the following stages: choosing dates, determining a country or city for a trip, a route, buying tickets, booking accommodation, collecting things, preparing documents... By adding one small task to the list, we can complete the entire task in one or two weeks , but if you leave it as is, without a description, with a high probability it will be transferred from one list to another day after day.
3. Define the end goal
It is important to be motivated, it is important that you strive to be an active and successful woman. And to do this, you need to imagine where you are going and include points in your days that will help you gradually overcome the stages in achieving what you want. It is the lack of a global vision of the goal you are striving for that, as a rule, gives rise to a boring routine life. But by doing small things every day, we eventually get closer to the life of our dreams, no matter how trite it sounds.
4. Rest and love yourself
Don't overexert yourself with tasks if you are not physically or mentally ready to handle them. The days are very different. Illnesses or problems, even minor ailments can unsettle you for the whole day, and not just one. A woman is influenced by the weather, the phase of the moon, and cyclical periods in the body. On bad days, there is no need to add to the gloomy bouquet a feeling of guilt towards yourself for not fulfilling your personal plan. Get back to normal, and then you will be able to again cover many different activities during the day, and even leave time for the simple and complex joys of life.
Learn to love yourself, praise yourself for personal achievements, even invisible to others. Underestimating yourself is the flip side of unwise time management. And the rational distribution of time for a modern successful woman is based largely on the fact that she enters a new day always well-rested, that in her diary important items include self-care, doing something you love or are creative, and time to communicate with family and friends .
And only then does time management make sense for you if you don’t make the main mistake of planning a women’s day - don’t neglect yourself, don’t sacrifice yourself to a meaningless list of things to do. After all, this ordered list of things to do in your head and on paper is needed not in order to methodically drive yourself into routine and fatigue, but in order to have time to live for yourself, drawing energy from happiness and tranquility.
Some things can be done at the same time
Lack of time is one of the common reasons people cite when explaining that they do not have a hobby, opportunities for self-development, or activities with children.
However, some things can be done in parallel. For example, reading a book on the way to work, listening to music or an audiobook in the car. You can take your older child on a business trip to show him new places and spend free time with him.
However, there is a limit here too. It is not recommended to work or surf the Internet when you are putting your child to sleep. You should not read or write work letters while crossing the road. Any action must be performed wisely, in a safe and respectful manner.
Recharging with morning energy
Morning is the best time to devote it to yourself and your activities. To do this, you need to learn to wake up a couple of hours earlier. This will help you not only recharge your batteries, but also redo things that are important to you, and set yourself up for a new productive day.
What is recommended to do in the early morning hours? Gymnastics, meditation, energy practices and other wellness procedures. In addition, you can use this time for those activities that you like: reading books, watching movies, hobbies, and so on. It is important that these things give you joy and vigor!
Washing children's clothes
Some parents claim that in nature there are children who never get stains on their clothes, fall into puddles, or tear their pants on tree branches. They talk a lot about such children, but no one has ever seen them. If you regularly deal with stains from paints, markers, fruit and soup, congratulations - you are the mother of a normal, living child! Therefore, if your child brought a “gift” from kindergarten, pour stain remover on this place immediately, and not a week later during washing.
Cheat: don’t skimp on children’s art supplies! The strokes of Chinese felt-tip pens wash off from children's clothes worse than marks from branded water-soluble ones. Cheap plasticine causes more trouble in cleaning and leaves nasty greasy stains on clothes, floors and furniture. Gouache washes off very poorly, so before dispensing paints, it’s worth taking off the young artist’s branded T-shirt.
