The crazy rhythm of life creates an eternal lack of time, exhausting with its monotony. Work, kindergarten, store, cooking, washing and cleaning... The day flies by like an arrow, and the next morning it’s work, home again... We don’t have time to engage in our favorite hobby, chat with our child, go to the theater. We forget to call our parents, meet with friends, and help our loved ones.
So life goes by in haste and bustle. Looking back at the passing years, we would give a lot for the opportunity to live them differently: enjoying every day, the smile of a child, the flight of a butterfly and the murmur of a stream. But what can you do to stop the inexorable ticking of minutes? Take a moment, stop in the endless whirlwind of worries and slowly think: “Why am I constantly unable to accomplish anything?”
Time Eaters
In American companies, constant delays of an employee after work are the reason for dismissal. Employers consider it unacceptable that staff do not have time to cope with their duties within the allotted hours.
If you're chronically short of time, it's likely due to a lack of self-discipline and an inability to deal with numerous distractions. In time management, factors that steal precious minutes from us are called chronophages. Let's name active time sinks that prevent us from being able to manage and succeed in life.
Internet
Problem No. 1 of the computer era is dependence on all kinds of gadgets. Often, in addition to email, an Internet user has several accounts on social networks, Instagram, forums, uses messengers and other applications. Such a person constantly looks through news feeds, letters and messages, puts endless likes and shares his favorite pictures and statuses with friends.
The insidiousness of the Internet chronophage is that it causes severe addiction. Just look at the people on the subway. 90% of them are completely consumed by smartphones. Meanwhile, if you analyze the value of the information you are viewing, you can safely assign it a garbage rating.
If you regularly update pages and, not seeing new messages, feel anxious, it’s no wonder that you don’t have time to do anything. The time has come to take restrictive measures.
What can you do to get rid of a habit that steals valuable time?
- Filter your email: unsubscribe from unnecessary mailings, and send particularly annoying recipients to spam.
- Turn off sound notifications, check your accounts no more than 1-2 times a day.
- Leave only those pages that are really important to you, delete the rest without regret.
- Control the duration of online communication, allocate a limited time period for it, gradually reducing it to a reasonable minimum.
In the free moments, do what gives you true pleasure. Chat in real life with old friends, go on a tour of your hometown, take up a creative hobby. Such activities allow you to appreciate the moments of life, to live here and now, and not to exist in virtual reality.
Clutter in the workplace
If your desk is cluttered with unnecessary papers, it will take a lot of time to find the necessary document. The same applies to folders on your computer. Do a spring cleaning of your files. Systematize them according to certain criteria: work, study, hobbies, correspondence, etc. Send documents that are no longer relevant to the trash. Clean your desktop of unnecessary shortcuts. It may take several hours, but the time savings will be many times greater.
In order to properly organize the workplace, special programs have been developed, for example, the Japanese 5C system. Its key points:
- sorting,
- maintaining order,
- keeping it clean,
- standardization,
- improvement.
By following these five rules, you will organize your workspace and learn how to use your time more efficiently. Smart Japanese long ago found the answer to the question: “Why don’t people accomplish anything at work?” The proof is the perfection of Japanese technology and the highest standard of living in a country standing on the threshold of the 22nd century.
The habit of doing everything at once
When a large number of tasks accumulate, many people begin to do them at the same time. By acting this way, it is impossible to get anything done on time. If things are resolved in an emergency mode, the quality of work suffers. Miscalculations and errors occur, which require even more time and effort to eliminate.
The way out of this situation is quite simple. Make a list of tasks every day, ranking them in order of importance. Follow this schedule even if you want to start from the last point. The most important principle of time management is not to leave big things for later. The traditional excuse is “I’ll do it when I have enough time.” In this way, you will not only not get anything done, but also accumulate a lot of unresolved issues. Deal with a global problem a little every day, and the result will definitely appear.
If you are not completing your task list in a timely manner, eliminating all other obstacles, you may be overestimating your actual capabilities. Another reason for chronic underachievement is the employer’s desire to dump an overwhelming amount of work onto one person, thus saving on staff salaries.
If the situation does not change, consider changing organizations. Otherwise, lack of time will develop into a problem of lack of health.
Communication with colleagues and acquaintances
This problem affects women more. In most women's groups, it is considered almost the norm to have long discussions on various topics: from cooking to politics. If you constantly discuss the affairs of your colleagues, it is natural that you do not have time to do your own.
Don’t be distracted by personal problems during working hours—you’ll have to compensate for this with free time. Communication within reasonable limits is permissible, the main thing is that it does not interfere with the performance of work duties.
Laziness
The most insidious time sink is able to disguise itself as others. It is laziness that makes you spend hours talking on the phone, watching endless TV series, instead of doing useful things. Psychologists have found another hidden reason why a person does not have time to do anything - procrastination. This intricate term refers to the habit of constantly postponing urgent matters under various pretexts.
It differs from banal laziness in that a lazy person does not worry about doing nothing. Being in a state of procrastination, a person realizes the harm of idleness. Despite the lack of physical or mental effort, he does not rest, but spends internal energy.
Plan things for the current day
It is better to make a plan for the coming day in the morning. It will take very little time, but the benefits will be enormous. To begin with, try to schedule your entire day in detail, including in the plan what you will be doing: to-do list, lunch break, shopping after work, cooking, playing with children or on the computer, communicating with relatives, rest and sleep. It is better to rank your to-do list in order of importance. This will help you concentrate on the most important tasks and leave less important things for last.
If for some reason it was not possible to complete the plan to the end, then you can check where the hitch occurred and where the unplanned time was spent. The same plan can serve as a document to identify additional temporary opportunities.
How to find out why I don't get anything done
To find your personal time sinks, start keeping track of your day. Make friends with an organizer and timer. With their help it is easy to do such a useful exercise.
Every hour, write down the specific fruits of your activities. Let us emphasize: not what you did, but specific results. If you were on Odnoklassniki, write: “As a result, nothing.” Have you prepared food? Write down: “Soup, cutlets, compote for three days.”
After a few days, analyze your personal efficiency. How many hours a day are spent doing useful things and how many hours are spent doing nothing? The conclusion is obvious. If you want to keep up with everything, reduce classes with zero efficiency. Replace useless minutes and hours with constructive ones.
Depending on the goals you are pursuing, spend them on acquiring useful skills, developing a business, or raising children. Build a ladder for the long term and take small but confident steps along it. Thanks to the ability to manage time, you will have a chance to overcome the daily routine and say goodbye to the unenviable role of “the squirrel in the wheel.”
Test “Why am I not getting anything done?”
Check your life for temporary leaks. Note the problems that you encounter at least a couple of times a week.
- Meetings at work.
- Conversations with colleagues.
- Putting things off.
- Telephone conversations.
- TV.
- Surfing the Internet.
- Reworking mistakes made in work.
- Conflicts with loved ones and children.
- Waiting in line, traffic jams, etc.
- Communication with virtual acquaintances.
- Lack of inspiration.
- Smoke breaks.
- Taking a long time to fall asleep or waking up slowly.
- Frequent tea parties.
- Unexpected guests.
The results depend on the number of items checked:
- 0-4 – You are capable of becoming a time management guru.
- 5-7 - “Thieves of time” have already begun to steal minutes of your life.
- More than 7 - Be careful! Chronophages follow you step by step. 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there, the sad result is 2-3 irretrievably lost hours.
Divide your work day into parts
You should not sit in a chair for 8 hours from bell to bell. If you work more productively in the morning, then it is better to do the most important and urgent things at this time, and the second half of the day is suitable for the usual routine.
Remember to take a 5-10 minute break every hour to rest your eyes and move around. The most important thing is that you plan your working day in accordance with natural activity, and do not force the body against its will. Then every matter will be argued faster.
What to say instead of "Okay"
The banal question “How are you?” often causes dissatisfaction. Standard answers are “Good” or “Normal.” Instead, you can ask, “Physically, mentally or spiritually?” If you don’t want to carry on the conversation, simply answer “Secret.”
Non-standard phrases instead of the word “Okay”:
- Great. I'm living the dream.
- It's like a fairytale.
- The best.
- Hello. How are yours?
- Alive and well.
- Like the stripes of a zebra.
- Happy and you know it.
- Compared to whom?
- As always, it's good and bad.
- Tolerable.
- What do you think?
- Everything is great, but no one is jealous yet.
Talk about it
It will be much easier to deal with the problem by putting it into concrete form.
Things can be greatly exaggerated in our imagination, especially if we are overwhelmed by them. There are countless times when I started telling someone how much pressure a project was putting on me—for example, that I had no ideas for an article, or that the problem was so complex that I had no idea how to solve it—and then By the end of the conversation, I was already fully inspired. Other times I'm so afraid that something will go wrong (or that something is already going wrong) that I become overwhelmed with these feelings.
Scientific research has shown that talking about feelings out loud reduces stress and discomfort. Brain imaging conducted at UCLA found that when a person is shown an image of an angry face, their amygdala becomes more active. This is the part of the brain responsible for activating the brain's alarm system - it lets you know there is something to be afraid of and triggers a response in the body to deal with the threat.
However, when subjects could name what they saw, simply putting their feelings into words reduced amygdala activity. Moreover, in this case, the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex was activated. Other studies have shown that this area of the brain is associated with processing emotions and finding words for emotional experiences.
So simply talking about your big project can help you get started. Also, if you talk to smart friends or mentors, they may have suggestions on how to start a project or relevant experience with similar projects. You can relax and become wiser at the same time.
