All You Need to Know About Time Management

How do you think a person feels who has read over a hundred books on personal development? Bored? Wait. I’m serious. There comes a time and place when you don’t need to read the words stuffed into sentences, because any thought seems obvious and banal. You want to send the whole industry to Valhalla and continue to work again, albeit not productively, but it’s not the lack of talent of authors or the incompetence of publishers. It’s all about our perception.

Time management is not a humanities science, and it does not need to be studied thoroughly. If you want to work effectively, then time management should be treated practically. Take time and do it. That’s the only way you can benefit from books, which you can find on Amazon.com numbering in the thousands on this topic.

Briefly about myself. At different times I worked in the office and on freelancing, I subordinated and managed, throughout this time I’ve identified for myself seven main rules that help me perform the work efficiently and on a daily basis.

Concentration

It’s difficult to do any work if you are always distracted, so wherever you work, you should have personal time, during which no one can disturb you. Many leaders of large companies for the first 90 minutes of the day lock their office and focus on the most important task. Often during this time, they manage to do more work than the rest of the day.

The same can be said of IT professionals. No matter whether junior or senior, you need to understand the problem and only then can you solve it. Tim Ferris, the author of the bestseller “How to Work 4 Hours a Week,” continually wears headphones, even if they do not play music, and as soon as someone tries to distract him, he says he is talking and asks to state the gist of the problem briefly.

Timer

A timer is a simple but effective tool. It allows us to divide our work into blocks, which is super important. Breaks allow us to regain strength and return to work with more efficiency. By ignoring breaks, the probability that you will stay cheerful by the end of the working day decreases greatly.

Depending on the type of work, your timer can be in an interval of 15 to 90 minutes. If you take a break and want to check social networks, set a timer for 15–20 minutes. If you need to create an important report, the time should be increased at least twice. If you are a programmer, then your timer should be set for at least 30 minutes, as any special needs time to get going in the work.

Lists

There was a time when, while studying in college, I worked as a project manager and led a blog on personal development. Only a proper organization of lists helped me successfully cope with this level of work. After the morning workout, I looked through the list that had been made previous day in the evening and concentrated for at least an hour on the most important task. After that, I switched to another type of work, so that the brain rested. Thus, I alternated creative work (writing articles) and technical (management).

Do not make your list endless. I advise you to limit yourself to 3–5 important tasks per day and not to touch other matters until they are fulfilled.

Offline

One of the best ways to focus on work is to disconnect from social networks. Even now, while writing this article, SelfControl is activated on my laptop, which blocks sites that can attract my attention. Thanks to it, I even theoretically rule out the possibility of distraction, and I have nothing left to do but work.

Usually, I start it at 11 am and put it on for 5 hours. During this time, any work that requires concentration gets done.

Sleep

Look at how much time successful people spend on sleep:

• Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX: 6 hours (1 am — 7 am)
• Tim Cook, CEO of Apple: 7 hours (9:30 pm — 4:30 am)
• Bill Gates, Co-Founder of Microsoft: 7 hours (12 am — 7 am)
• Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Group: 5–6 hours (12 am — 5 am / 6 am)
• Jack Dorsey, Co-founder of Twitter: 7 hours (10:30 pm — 5:30 am)
• Tim Armstrong, Chairman, and CEO of AOL: 6 hours (11 pm — 5 am)
• Barack Obama, President of the United States: 6 hours (1 am — 7 am)
• Jeff Bezos, Founder & CEO of Amazon.com: 7 hours (10 pm — 5 am)
• Ellen DeGeneres, TV Host: 8 hours (11 pm — 7 am)
• Donald Trump, President: 3 hours (1 am — 4 am)

Only Donald Trump, running for president, practically ignores it. All people on this list are extremely busy, but they realize the importance of sleep and give it at least 6 hours daily.

Food

It’s proper nutrition, not coffee, that gives us the energy to carry out important work. At a time when the Amazon company was making its first steps, there was a rule in their garage that forbade coffee. This was explained by the fact that programmers should draw energy from carbohydrates (fruits, cereals, bread), not caffeine.

This has its valuable logic because too much caffeine negatively affects the effectiveness of work, and carbohydrates are always able to feed our brains. But no doubt it is worth it to give up coffee entirely because in a small amount it positively affects our effectiveness.

Comfort

Previously, I underestimated the comfort and believed that a professional should be able to work in any place, which I aspired to, but after reading the excellent book “The 7 Secrets of the Prolific: The Definitive Guide to Overcoming Procrastination, Perfectionism, and Writer’s Block”, I looked at this situation differently. Such aspirations the author called “perfectionism.” I decided to listen to the author and began changing places of work periodically. During the day, I could work at home, then go to a coffee shop, then go back to the desktop. Surprisingly, keeping myself in comfort has helped me regain interest in writing articles and productivity in freelance work.

By incorporating at least a few of these rules from this list, you can do more work in less time.

Thank you and wishing you success!

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