How to organize your day: methods of geniuses of productivity

The method of Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin (Benjamin Franklin) was the son of the soap maker, but thanks to self-organization and discipline he succeeded in many areas: politics, diplomacy, science, journalism. He is one of the founding fathers of the United States of America – he participated in the creation of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the country.

The portrait of Franklin is placed on a hundred-dollar bill, although he was never the president of the United States. He is credited with the authorship of such winged phrases as “Time is money” and “Do not put off till tomorrow what you can do today.”

Time for Franklin really had a huge importance.

Do you love life? Then do not waste time, because time is the fabric that makes up life.

Benjamin Franklin

At the age of 20 Franklin developed a time management system that he enjoyed throughout his life. Contemporaries called it the “Franklin pyramid” (sometimes there is also the name “pyramid of productivity” – productivity pyramid).

At the core of the pyramid are life values. These are moral guidelines for solving any problems. Franklin called them virtues.

For himself he defined 13 virtues: forbearance, taciturnity, love of order, determination, thrift, diligence, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, calmness, chastity and gentleness.

To daily work on themselves, Franklin started a special notebook, which led to the page for each life principle. Every page he spilled into seven columns (days of the week). Then he conducted 13 horizontal lines according to the number of virtues.

Thus, every day he focused on one of the virtues, and in the evenings in the squares marked misses committed on the way to “moral perfection.”

The next step of the Franklin pyramid is a global goal. It is based on life principles and answers the question: “What do I want to achieve by the age of N?” The global goal for a doctor, for example, may be to become a departmental under 35, and for a manager to start a start-up.

Benjamin Franklin is truly the forefather of to-do-planning. He always adhered to the routine and painted literally every step he took. Therefore further in its pyramid go:

• master plan – step-by-step instructions for achieving a global goal;
• long-term plan – goals for the next 3-5 years;
• short-term plan – tasks for the next year and month;
• Planning for the week and day.

All the steps of the pyramid are arranged sequentially – each following is based on the previous one.

Conclusion

To organize your day by Franklin’s method, you need to decide on the fundamental life principles, set a global goal and make a plan for achieving it.

For long-term and short-term planning, you can use one of the electronic tools or start a paper pad and implement the “Quick Records” system.

The Steven Covey Method

One of the followers of the Franklin system is Stephen Covey. This is a world-famous expert and coach in the field of management. Covey is a professional speaker and author of many books. One of them was included in the list of the most influential business literature of Time magazine.

This is the time-out book “Seven Skills of Highly Effective People”. Covey wrote it in 1989, but it became a bestseller only after the re-release in 2004.

The Covey concept is based on a sequence of seven skills.

1. To sharpen a saw, that is constantly to improve.
2. To achieve synergy, that is, to strive for mutually beneficial interaction.
3. Be proactive.
4. Try to hear first, and only then – to be heard.
5. Begin by presenting the ultimate goal.
6. To think in the spirit of “won – won”.
7. First do what needs to be done first.

Implement the last skill will help the matrix distribution of tasks and prioritization. Her Covey borrowed from 34th US President Dwight David Eisenhower (Dwight David Eisenhower).

All tasks are divided into four groups:

1. Urgent and important (need to be done as soon as possible);
2. Nedorchnye important (strategic tasks with a remote deadline);
3. Urgent not important (you need to do it quickly, but you can postpone or do it yourself);
4. Unremitting and unimportant (as a rule, such cases can be deleted or entrusted to third parties).

According to Covey, successful people are extremely rarely in time trouble, as they quickly deal with problems from categories 1 and 3 and sacrifice their deeds from square 4 without pity. At the same time, they assign 60-80% of the time and effort to solving problems from square 2, because they are the locomotive of progress.

Conclusion

To become more effective, at the end or beginning of the day, write out the tasks before you and ask them to prioritize them using the Eisenhower matrix (or the Covi-ko matrix as you like). To do this, you can use Eisenhower (iOS) or MyEffectivenessHabits (Android). Try to observe the proportion: 40% – important urgent matters, 60% – important non-urgent.

The Tim Ferriss method

Timothy Ferriss (Timothy Ferriss) – a popular productivity guru. Records of his public appearances collect millions of views, and the books diverge in the same huge editions.

No wonder – who does not want to “work 4 hours a week, not sticking out of the office” from a call to a call, and at the same time live anywhere and grow rich “? The same book by Ferriss became the number one on the bestseller lists of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

His method stands on two whales:

1. Pareto’s law: 20% of efforts give 80% of the result, and the remaining 80% of efforts – only 20% of the result. This means that you need to focus on activities that are really important.
2. Law of Parkinson: the work fills all the time, released on it. This means that the task should be allocated exactly as much as necessary to carry it out.

To manage more, do not need to increase the duration of the working day. On the contrary, cut it, focus only on the really important. Leave the rest aside, outsource or delegate.

The approach of Ferriss corresponds to the planning technique 1-3-5. Its essence is simple: one important thing is entered in the list of cases, three medium and five small. There are nine in total. They are a priori distributed in terms of urgency, which helps get rid of the feeling of an emergency.

Ferriss – the opponent of multitasking and information overload. At simultaneous performance of several cases there is a defocusing of attention. As a result, productivity does not increase, but falls. The same is true of the continuous absorption of information. Constant checking of mail, instant messengers and social networks only creates a false sense of employment, but does not bring it closer to the goal.

But stress, on the contrary, Ferriss considers our helpers.

Fear is an indicator. Fear is our friend. At times he shows what not to do, but more often shows what is worth doing.

Tim Ferriss

It should be noted that Tim Ferriss is not the only one who aspires to productivity, working less. Stiver Robbins (Stever Robbins), the author of the book “9 Steps to Working Less and Manage More”, offers for this method of “active days”, when on a certain day you assign yourself a “controller” who will monitor progress.

Conclusion

This method will suit you if you can not follow a strict schedule and to-do-lists for you do not work. Build your day so that 20% of the time occupied the most complex and important matters. The rest should go on as usual. In other words, if you need to hold a business meeting, then you need to choose the day, time, duration and strictly follow the schedule. The rest of the day can be devoted to any current work.

The method of Gleb Arkhangelsky

Gleb Arkhangelsky is an expert in the field of time management, the founder and head of the company of the same name. Its peculiarity is not in the creation of original developments, but in that it sets out the methods of time management simply and easily, adapting them to domestic realities.

Arkhangelsky is the author of several popular business books: “Work 2.0: breakthrough to free time”, “Time formula”, “Time drive” and others.

The latter is most popular. The “Time-Drive” tells about the importance of planning, goal-setting and motivation, and also gives effective methods of time management and struggle against procrastination.

• “Frogs”. Everyone has boring tasks that are constantly postponed for later. These unpleasant things are piling up and psychologically crushing. But if each morning starts with “eating a frog”, that is, the first thing to do is some uninteresting task, and then go on to the others, then gradually things will be sorted out.
• “Anchors”. These are material attachments (music, color, movement) associated with a certain emotional state. “Anchors” are needed in order to tune in to a particular task. For example, you can accustom yourself to work with mail to classical music, and whenever you are too lazy to unload inbox, you only need to turn Mozart or Beethoven to catch the necessary psychological wave.
• “Beef steak from an elephant”. The larger the task (write a dissertation, learn a foreign language, and so on) and the harder the deadline, the harder it is to begin to implement it. Scare is just scale: it’s unclear where to start, if there is enough strength. Such tasks are called “elephants”. The only way to “eat an elephant” is to cook “steaks” out of it, that is, to break a big business into several small ones.

It is noteworthy that Gleb Arkhangelsky pays much attention not only to streamlining work processes, but also to rest (the full name of his bestseller is “Time Drive: How to Manage to Live and Work”). He is convinced that without a good rest, which includes a healthy sleep and physical activity, it is impossible to be productive.

Conclusion

Plan your every day. Todoist, Wunderlist, TickTick and other similar programs and services will help you with this. Difficult large-scale tasks are divided into simple small ones. In the morning, do the most unpleasant work, in order to do only what you like in the remaining time. Develop triggers that will help you cope with laziness, and do not forget to include rest in the schedule.

Method Francesco Cirillo

Perhaps you do not know the name of Francesco Cirillo, but you’ve probably heard about Pomodoro. Cirillo is the author of this famous time management technique. In his time, Francesco had problems with his studies: the young man could not concentrate, he was distracted all the time. A simple kitchen timer in the form of a tomato came to the rescue.

The essence of the Pomodoro method: the length of time allocated for work is “tomato”. One “tomato” = 30 minutes (25 minutes for work and 5 for rest). Start the timer and work with maximum impact and minimal distractions for 25 minutes. The signal sounds – it’s time for a five-minute break. Then restart the timer.

Thus, the productivity is measured by the number of “tomatoes” performed per day. The bigger, the better.

In order not to spend 25 minutes to come up with business, a list of tasks must be prepared in advance. In it, you can also mark the number of whole “tomatoes” (a cross is placed opposite the task) and distractions (an apostrophe is placed). This allows you to determine how long it took to perform a task and how difficult it was.

The Pomodoro method is affordable and flexible. Do you want to – conduct a to-do-list on paper and measure the 25-minute segments with a kitchen timer, and if you want – use special services and applications.

According to Cyrillo, the optimal duration of the “tomato” is 20-35 minutes. But, having mastered the technique, you can experiment and change the intervals for yourself.

In detail with the method Francesco Cirillo can be found here.

Conclusion

At the beginning of the day, make a list of cases and perform them, measuring the time with “tomatoes”. If you are distracted for 25 minutes, put the symbol ‘opposite the task. If the time has expired, but the task has not yet been completed, put + and dedicate the next “tomato” to it. During a five-minute break, completely switch from work to rest: walk around, listen to music, drink coffee.

So, before you are five basic time management systems, with which you can organize your day. You can study them in more detail and become an apologist for one of the techniques, or you can work out your own by combining various techniques and techniques.

GTD – an alternative to time management

David Allen (David Allen), creator of the GTD methodology, is one of the most famous theorists of personal effectiveness. His book “How to put things in order: the art of productivity without stress” was named Time magazine as the best business book of the decade.

The term Getting Things Done is on hearing, and many mistakenly identify it with time management. But even Allen himself calls GTD “the method of increasing personal effectiveness“.

That’s how the expert in this matter Vyacheslav Sukhomlinov explained the difference between time management and GTD.

GTD is not a time management. Time management is impossible. In days all have the same number of hours. It’s not the amount of time that matters, but what you fill it with. You need to be able to handle large flows of incoming information, determine what actions are necessary to achieve the goals, and, of course, act. GTD is about this. This is a certain way of thinking and living. And GTD is about the state of the flow and the reduction of psychological stress.

Vyacheslav Sukhomlinov

Are you ready to argue? Welcome to the comments. What do you think more in GTD – time management or personal effectiveness? Also, tell us what techniques help you organize your day.

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave