Principles of the Life-system
My system consists of three services and a GTD algorithm. If you read the book Getting Things Done (GTD), you will find even more useful things there. If you want to use another system or services, then it will evolve and adapt. Therefore, I want to show you what principles you need to adhere to so that you can build your system based on any approaches and services.
1. The system serves you, not vice versa. There is no need to update it for the sake of what it exists, or that these are the rules. Any of your actions with the system should benefit you. Simplify the system as much as possible;
2. The system should be flexible and adapt to the situation. It is important that it can be used for any tasks: personal and work ones;
3. Quick access from all devices should be provided. From your phone, computer, and browser. Therefore, we give priority to cross-platform services;
4. Adapt your rhythm of working with the system to suit yourself. Don’t follow the rules blindly. If it is more convenient for you to do a weekly review not on Monday, but on Friday, then do;
5. Be flexible. Be a person of purpose, not process. If you see an action or decision that multiplies the chances of success, then forget about the rules. The result is more important than compliance with the process;
6. Try to keep no more than 3 elements in focus. Three tasks for a quarter, for a week, for a day. There will always be more of them, but you should know the main three and be ready to give up the rest if necessary;
7. Analyze the system. Which tasks were stalled, which passed easily, which are constantly being transferred. Fix the blockers, find the reasons and adjust the approach;
8. The action is mandatory. It is better to take a millimeter regular step than just postpone the task, waiting for better conditions;
9. Divide tasks into comfortable parts. Move gradually. There is no need to rush and work in the feat mode. It may work for small tasks, but for complex tasks it is fraught with collapse;
10. Don’t keep anything in your head. Write down all the ideas and thoughts in your system. Very popular advice and very correct. Write everything down, then process it.
“The brain is not designed to store ideas, but to create them…”
David Allen
Time management
“Managing your time” is what meant by time management. It sounds very strange, since time cannot be controlled. I can’t rewind it and go to work instead of university in 2006. You can’t get more time or slow it down. Time is limited and irreplaceable. But we can manage the allocation of our time and use it more efficiently. As I wrote earlier, my acquaintance with books on personal growth began with books about time management. At some point I began to think that I had read all the books, and there was nothing new to find on the topic. I thought I knew everything, but at the same time I didn’t have time to do everything I planned.
For a long time I did not understand what I was doing wrong, but I felt a strong relief after Radislav Gandapas’ statement. After the performance, one guy asked him how he was doing everything. Trainings, books, family, children, speeches, interviews. In response, Radislav did not give a speech that inspired everyone, and did not tell his rules of life. He replied that he didn’t have time for anything. He said, “If you do everything in time, you’re a bum and lazy pants,” and then told them what he didn’t have enough time for.
About family time, new books and other projects. Anyone who really understands time management will never say that time management will allow you to do everything. Time management will allow you to have more time and allocate time for the most important things. Therefore, accept it, you will not have time for everything, but you can use your time more effectively to move towards the goal faster, without wasting it on extra steps.
“Sooner or later we all come to the conclusion that it makes sense to do time management”
Valeria Polyakova
If you want to study time management, then read Maxim Dorofeev’s book “Jedi Techniques”. It contains most of the necessary information about time management in one place. Pump up time management until you feel that your time is under control, but it is still not enough. This is a sign that it’s time to move to another league, where you need to read about focus, selectivity and energy management. To save time, below I will give the time management techniques and tips that I use myself. I want to tell you about them, because these techniques and tips have passed natural selection. I use them every day and I feel that it works. I have grouped all the information into 4 groups: understanding, planning, attention and tools.
Understanding
1. Understand that there will be no magic state when there will be enough time. You need to accept that there will never be enough time for everything. Just understand and forgive the time, take it for granted, but do not forget that there are the same number of hours in a day for everyone. Time must be used correctly and effectively! You and Jeff Bezos have always had the same number of hours in a day.
2. Be aware of motivation. Why do you need to have more time? To achieve success at work, to do personal things or to fulfill a dream? Understand why you want to become more efficient and improve your self-organization. From the first chapter, you know how important this is.
3. Napoleon’s plans are dangerous. Always remember about the criteria of goals, the zone of proximate development and common sense. If you want to do more, plan less. If, analyzing the results, you see frequent failures, always check whether you are taking on too much.
4. It is important to analyze time. Analyze successes and failures. What were the signs of the tasks that worked out and did not work out. Use analysis to understand your capabilities and resources.
5. Learn to say “no”. Just learn. “Say no” is easy to write in a book, but in real life and at work it is very difficult. You need to study psychology, negotiation and practice in order to safely refuse for yourself and others. I would single out three important tips. The first one. Try to refuse small things, and then bigger stuff, explaining why you can’t help now. Explain the reason to people and look at the their reaction. You will be surprised, but nothing terrible will happen. You will not be fired from work, relatives will not disown you. If people react negatively to the fact that you also have your own life and deeds, if they directly show discontent that you prioritize your interests rather than theirs, then there are a lot of questions for such people. Second one. Do not succumb to the pressure of time. Don’t give your consent to anything right away. You have a calendar now. You can always say that you first need to look at your plans, think, and then you will be able to answer. Third one. Learn to refuse yourself, too. Practice prioritizing and analyzing your decisions for effectiveness.
6. Stop the wheel. When you feel that you are like a squirrel in a wheel, and you don’t have enough time for anything — stop. Exhale, make an overview of goals, plans and tasks. You may make mistakes due to non-working processes, but you cannot fix them due to lack of time. It’s an endless vicious circle. It is better to stop and fix a system error instead of constantly extinguishing fires.
7. Keep a balance of work and rest. This issue was particularly acute due to remote work. We used to have rituals. I washed my face, dressed, ate, went to work, drank coffee, got to work. In remote mode, everything was erased. It is no longer clear where personal and working hours are. One gets the impression that he has woken up and is already at work. This also applies to those who work a lot or, on the contrary, are not busy with anything. People need to solve problems, achieve goals, relax and switch their attention. Each person has their own ideal balance, so you need to take the time to calculate it.
Planning
8. A draft plan is better than its absence. Every year, quarter, month, week and day should have clearly defined goals, the achievement of which will help to achieve the desired result. At the beginning of each week and each day, at a specially designated time, plan your work and transform everything into task lists.
9. Task lists. Start with significant tasks for the week and divide them into small subtasks. Group interdependent and similar tasks into blocks. Then distribute everything by days in the task manager. Checklists can be used for detailing. Formulate the result: if it cannot be evaluated, you will never finish the task.
10. Schedule of the week. Based on your plan, you need to make a schedule of the week, scattering meetings, calls by day, and assigning a time for each taking into account biorhythms. Having a clear structure, it will be much easier to readjust if necessary. Having a lot of suspended tasks, you will have to spend extra resources for readjusting.
11. Deadlines. Parkinson’s first law states: “Work fills the time allotted for it.” Even if you don’t know how long it will take, still set a deadline — it will be a guideline. If you don’t have time, then at least you will understand how much time it will take next time.
12. Prioritize. Much has already been said about this in this book. Upgrade this skill. It is important to understand what to do first and what can wait. It seems that everything is urgent — but the failure of each task has its own consequences. You will always have to make a choice and be responsible for it.
13. Always plan the next steps. Banal advice, but not always people take it as a rule after a discussion, meeting or top-level planning. Have you come up with something? Test the idea for the following steps. Can you proceed with them? Do you understand what to do next? It happens that it does not work out right away, and it is still necessary to disassemble or clarify the details. In work, it often happens that people have agreed on something and went about their business. It is unclear what the next steps are, no one has started doing anything. Always plan real first actions, responsible and deadline results. Make sure that all participants understand and accept the following steps.
14. Keep bumpers in mind. Having a plan does not mean that you will follow it. All day long, your plan will be bombarded with calls from colleagues, unplanned meetings and unforeseen circumstances. Put extra time on any task and be happy if you don’t have to use it. Try to make a meeting for 45 minutes instead of 1 hour. You will be pleasantly surprised that you can cope with this time and get an extra 15 minutes. Do not plan the work in the calendar end-to-end. There should be a white space. It’s like a spare tire in a car that can save you at the right moment.
15. Consider your biorhythms. You can write a separate book about night owls and early birds. There are many studies and debates on this topic. In order not to complicate things, just analyze when you can think well, when it’s better to do routine, when you don’t think anything anymore and can only do physical labor. For example, I studied English in the evening after work, as there was free time in the calendar. But after a working day, I was not even able to read something simple in English. After suffering a little unnecessary violence on myself, I moved classes to the morning, and everything went as it should. I also tried reading books at different times, measuring how many pages I read and what I learned.
I realized that it is better to read books in the morning, and articles can be read almost at any time. In Microsoft To Do, my content consumption is divided into separate lists. Each type of content has its own time. On my way to work, I consume work — related content, and on my way home, I consume content based on my interests. I was also exposed to the advice of successful people to get up at 5 in the morning. I didn’t practice morning magic and meditation, but I realized one main thing. Everyone is asleep in the morning, so they can’t distract me. In the morning, my time belongs only to me. I spent a year experimenting on what time I should go to bed and get up. When the ideal time of 7:20 was found, I felt the effect and rearranged my calendar according to biorhythms. Morning is a very popular time.
Getting up early won’t make you productive, but you are productive at certain hours. It is useful to find this time and use it to the maximum. There are tables with biorhythms, but everything is very individual. It is better to track your biorhythms yourself and adjust the schedule to them. I refer this advice to the field of biohacking, where I am not an expert. Therefore, I want to highlight the importance of biorhythms, but it is better to understand the topic with those who understand biohacking. Pay attention to the content that the CEO of Zoon.ru Ilya Mutovin makes on the topic of mental health. You will be fascinated!
Attention
16. Multitasking does not exist. Multitasking is harmful. A bunch of non-fiction books will show you links to research with evidence. The level of concentration drops, attentiveness is lost, it is easy to make a mistake and it is difficult to use critical thinking. Solve one problem, then move on to the next. It seems that you can watch a webinar and like memes at the same time, but you will just waste your time. Watch the TV series “Mind Games”. In one of the episodes, the main character said that he was multitasking and doing a great job. They put him behind the wheel of a car and asked him simple problems to solve. Watch what happened next.
17. Keep less in mind. We have already done a lot for this in this book. Don’t rely on your super memory. There are so many distractions right now that any incoming information is like a dream in the morning. You try to retell it, but it vanishes in seconds. I am always surprised by managers and designers who ask a lot of questions during mentoring or casting, but do not write anything down. We talked and moved on. Wasted time. Do not load your memory; remember only the most important things. At university I was taught that an engineer is not someone who knows and remembers everything, but someone who knows where to look.
18. Focus and study the skill. If the task is difficult, then you should become a downshifter while working on it. Turn off everything, get away from people, put on headphones and work without being distracted by anything. In this mode, you will do much more and better. It’s not just about fighting multitasking and the flow of information. It’s about the focus of attention and the ability to concentrate. Focus is a concentrated beam of attention at one point. Attention is the energy of consciousness directed at a certain object or action. We need to learn to focus on the strategic, tactical and operational levels of life. Unexpectedly, but you also need to learn to defocus in order to see the whole picture and not become a slave to what is in focus.
The strategic level shapes your reality, or, in other words, your picture of the world. The tactical level organizes you and helps you manage projects. The operational level provides immersion in the task. Depending on your worldview, you experience a variety of emotions that contribute to the release of hormones. They affect your health and productivity in different ways. Depending on a person’s attitude to life, new neural connections are formed in the brain, and it learns to see the negative or positive. People who are always dissatisfied with something and see negativity everywhere simply do not know how to do otherwise, as they daily strengthen the neural connections responsible for their whining.
At the tactical and operational level, the same story happens. When you focus on working on a project or task, you form neural connections that are responsible for doing this work. When the neural connections are formed, the impulses will run faster along them, and you will be more productive to do the same work. If you are doing something for half a minute, distracted by notifications, or interrupted, then you are wasting your time. The quality of work suffers, and neural connections are not formed. Defocusing can be done forcibly when you are reviewing the system. You can look at your goals, tasks, ongoing events, resources and opportunities. Look for other ways or new opportunities.
You can change priorities or change your focus. The focus is necessary to make sure that you are not running like a herd of sheep into a narrow gate when there is simply no fence on the sides. Focusing needs to be learned and provided with a favorable environment for it. If the advice seems banal to you, then read Cal Newport’s book “Deep Work.” A lot of it is devoted to why concentrated work is important, and how to do it correctly. Being able to focus is comparable in complexity to prioritization and is also among the top challenges facing a person in the modern world.
This is due to the fact that it is necessary to fight not only with distractions, but also with our brain. After all, it does not like uncertainty, so it worries, strives to do the simple and understandable, is afraid of missing something and wants to control everything. The cult of the Internet and the stressful work environment add fuel to the fire, which further complicates the situation. Most often, productivity is replaced by activity. Simple tasks can be measured, but mental work cannot.
There are no quick ways to learn deep work, but it works for me: scheduled slots for focused work, a place isolated from people, isolation from gadgets during work, noise-canceling headphones and music, analysis of distracting thoughts, complete immersion even in simple tasks, doing what you love before focused work. These actions help you focus better, but they won’t teach you how to focus, so you need to set aside time to study the topic if you want to find your own ways to use time effectively.
19. Rest without a digit. Cal Newport wrote about it in a book, but I realized it myself a long time ago and later found confirmation in books about the work of the brain. If you work with information on a computer, then relax without a phone and any digital systems. Go to the park, go outside, draw on paper, just do nothing, but let your brain switch. This is not just a tip to take a break to gain mental strength.
There is a default system in the brain, or it is also called a passive mode network. For example, you sat and thought about a difficult problem for a long time, you didn’t come up with anything. Give yourself a break, switch. The default system will work for you. Like a washing machine. It works, you rest. You also had that moment that insight comes at a time when you are not thinking about a problematic situation. The default system helped you. So don’t interfere with its work. Rest properly. The life hack is so simple that I didn’t believe it myself for a long time. I didn’t understand what it meant to go and rest if the task wasn’t solved. There are problems here, and I’m going to waste my time? It was only when I started doing this that I saw that it worked and greatly helped the ability to focus. Therefore, I agree with the philosopher from YouTube “Going to the river”:
“If there’s nothing to do — go on then, peel potatoes and cook, treat the neighbors, I don’t know, do something to someone else, wash the floors, sweep the entrance”
Sergey Simakov
20. Forget the word «procrastination». Do you really think that some process with a fashionable name prevents you from starting the task? Stop looking for a weapon to fight procrastination. There is no procrastination. Procrastination is a word that justifies unwillingness to act.
If attention is the energy of consciousness, then when you postpone things for later, do not want to make decisions or act, it means that you do not have this energy. This can happen due to incorrect properties of goals and objectives, lack of physical energy, commitment, unconsciousness, etc. You need to look for the reason why this happens. Don’t look for life hacks to overcome procrastination. Don’t waste precious time. Look for a solution in motivation.
Tools
21. Update the system and maintain order. Order on the table, order in the head. Leave creative clutter for creative tasks. In moving towards the goal, clarity and order are important. Everything should be organized so that you are sure that you trust your system, and you can rely on it. If you search, remember or sort it out again every time, you won’t get far. Keep your digital and physical spaces in order. It’s clean not where they clean, but where they don’t litter.
22. Set up work with Inbox. If you don’t have one, then try to make one. If it does not work, then organize several queues for each thread. Schedule a time when you disassemble them. I have three of them: Microsoft To Do, Mail and Telegram. There is more inside each of them. For example, Telegram has many channels with yourself on various topics. Microsoft To Do has different queues: “someday”, “shared backlog”, “family backlog”. Often people laugh that I’m crazy when they find out about it. In this natural way, I managed to curb the incoming flow. It’s easy and familiar for me. I am sure that for most people their amount of information is smaller, but it is important for everyone to immediately organize the order at the very beginning. Without sorting the information at the input, the whole point of the system disappears.
23. Integrate the calendar into all processes. You need to try to make sure that at work and at home people can see your free slots in the calendar without you and make appointments for you. This way you will save time on communication about making appointments. At work, we masterfully work with Google Calendar, but in everyday life I often had to answer the question: “When can you (meet, pick up a package, go to the hospital)?” It is constantly necessary to look at the calendar, answer, move meetings, look again. For example, my wife and I started using a shared calendar. Just like at work, we throw meetings to each other and see free slots. It goes without saying that the calendar is up-to-date.
This way we can plan things for a week without much discussion and not forget anything. Not everyone will succeed in this way at home, but at work the calendar is a must have. You can use different services for different purposes. There are not so many of them in the field of calendars. In addition to Google Calendar and the standard calendar in the phone, I advise you to pay attention to the services Calendly and Motion. The latter synchronizes the calendars of different accounts and moves events in between them. It’s a great thing if you have several calendars.
24. Regulate communications. There are people who tell a minute story for half an hour. They cannot be avoided, as it usually happens at work, or they are your acquaintances. To speed up the movement to the point, use restrictions and clarifications. When such a person calls you, tell them that you have 5 minutes, and ask them to tell you the main point, and then the details. For meetings, use the questions: “What is the meeting agenda? What is the goal? What is my role in this meeting?” Also try setting appointments for 45 minutes instead of an hour.
Ideally, offer to solve the issue in the mail and ask to write the most important thing. For non-system people, you will be a bore, but chances are that you will save time for yourself. Someone will realize that they still don’t have enough information to contact you or arrange a meeting, someone will decide that you are not needed at the meeting. For example, we agreed in the red_mad_robot design lab that a person may not attend a meeting if there is no agenda. This greatly sharpens awareness and makes you appreciate time. Don’t let those who don’t value their time waste yours.
25. Use checklists. My time management at school started with checklists. Every day I made checklists for the day and crossed out the completed ones. A simple, powerful and up-to-date tool. Today I often use checklists as instructions for processes or their verification. Checklists are used in any profession where mistakes cannot be made.
They are used to not miss anything. In everyday life, checklists can be used for everything. You can make a checklist of travel fees, for a shopping list, for writing articles, etc. If you often do time-consuming tasks, then why carry out the verification process from memory every time? Make a checklist once and just go through it. This will definitely increase your self-organization. The checklist also contains gamification and the probability of bringing the matter to an end is higher. Take a look at the website 365done.ru. You will find a lot of interesting things in ready-made templates and you will be able to make your own.
26. Use a digital draft. Organize the possibility of recording in a digital environment in any convenient way. Microsoft OneNote, notes, or a text editor. In order not to rewrite your notes from the sheet when you write down information at a meeting or during a phone call. For large drafts, I use Microsoft OneNote or the Xmind card mining service. For the little ones, I use the Sublime open text editor. I have it open all the time, I write the sources of texts, long messages or numbers into it. It stores a canvas of text from the very beginning of the year. When you restart your computer, Sublime saves everything by itself. Oh, how many times did it save me when I found the right text or numbers through the search, so as not to write or invent anew. There is no search on paper, and it is easier to lose it.
27. Use mind maps. They are also called intelligence maps. The principle of mind maps is the same as that of neural connections in the brain. It is based on the core from which the connections depart. A word is set, and branches come out of it, in which information concerning the main thesis in the core is spelled out. Most likely, you have seen such large cobwebs of words that spread in all directions. The cool thing is that you can visualize the logical structure of everything. This view helps to structure everything, and our brain experiences an orgasm. Because you can immediately see the big picture, everything is clear, and you don’t need to keep a big web of thoughts in your head. You can build hierarchies, relationships, accents and comments. Mind maps are a very cool tool not only for taking notes, but also for thinking. There are many services to make a mind map. The simplest and free online service is Coogle. I use the offline program Xmind. If you’ve never heard of mind maps, you’ll be thrilled when you try it.
28. Work with mails in the devoted time. Another banal piece of advice, but I still see people who immediately respond to my letters in the mail. Mail is not a messenger and not a way of urgent communication. I even check the messenger by time, because if I start answering everyone at once, I will be there from morning to night. Set aside time to check your mail, once or twice a day. You will find this advice in any book on time management. It does not mean that the mail is an unimportant dump of information. This method of communication can be considered non-urgent by default. For example, in red_mad_robot, if you write to the mail, then by default you have the right to reply within two days. If something is urgent, they write to the Telegram, and then call you.
29. Disable (almost all) notifications. I would like to add “and go live in the forest.” It’s a joke, of course, but there is some truth in it. Notifications seem like a harmless little thing, but in fact they are uncontrollable distractions that make you feel stressed. Therefore, they have a bad effect on health. Go to your phone settings and disable all notifications. So that there is not a single red dot on the icons. Live in this mode for a couple of hours, make sure that nothing terrible has happened. Enjoy that the phone has stopped controlling you for a while. Ideally, you can leave it that way, but in life some notifications are still useful.
They help to remind you of an important matter or not to miss an advantageous moment. My wife and I, when one of us doesn’t pick up the phone, say to each other: “I called you, free apartments were being given away here, I needed your consent, but you didn’t pick up, and they won’t give you an apartment then …” Again, just a joke, but such situations really happen. For example, I have repeatedly been in the first place to receive documents, as our friend was walking past the Department of Internal Affairs, saw the queue and wrote to me. If my notifications had been disabled — this would not have happened. There was a case when my friend won a cool car for me at an auction at very favorable conditions, but I didn’t see his message, and I didn’t get that car.
Therefore, after disabling all notifications, you need to enable notifications only for the most important information. Look at the phone screen and ask yourself the question: which notifications will help you, and without which ones you can totally survive. I am sure that you can do without notifications from food delivery services, online stores or updates. Not to mention social media and entertainment. You need to open them when you decide to do it, and not when they lure you with another like notification. Notifications about banking transactions or from specific people in the messenger can be important.
Keep the most important things to a minimum. If the FoMO effect does not let you go, then read the articles on this topic. Don’t let others control your attention and life. Disabling notifications is one of the best decisions I’ve made for myself. Some people switch the phone to black and white mode and delete applications so that it ceases to be an attractive toy, but I did not feel the effect of this. Digital minimalism is the next step, for now start with notifications.
30. Use the software to the fullest. Take the time to understand in more detail the services that you will use. Google their main features and life hacks from other users. For example, in mail, set up folders and shortcuts for emails. Configure the rules so that emails are automatically added to the desired folders. Learn more about Telegram, because it’s not just a messenger. Use “Favorites” and separate chats with yourself. Figure out how folders work. Pavel Durov gave us just a gift from heaven of this killer feature. You can easily separate work and personal communication or group message streams by topic. Turn off all notifications of chats and channels, and leave only those that are important.
Disable the message counter in channels. There are a lot of settings and features in Telegram, be sure to study them. Figure out how tasks and reminders work in Google Calendar. Customize it for yourself to save time on routine. When you become a time management guru, you will be able to start services that automate the work and put the work of other services together. Start with IFTTT to understand how they work. Then you can deal with a very functional Integromat. For example, you can use them to set up automatic notifications about a meeting in Telegram from Google Calendar or automatically collect files from mail to cloud storage. Think of scenarios of actions for optimization, and there will be tools. Always try to simplify your system, automate your routine, study someone else’s experience — and keep only the best solutions for yourself.
Using the techniques above, you will be able to stabilize productivity and get a little more time for yourself. For a long time, I doubted whether to write about them, since time management is a topic for a separate big book, but I decided to show what techniques I use to manage the expenditure of my time. They are very general, and many more details can be found inside. Time management is the hygiene of productivity. This list is definitely enough to support it. I hope you will not stop there, you will experiment further and discover new techniques for yourself. Don’t forget that you won’t be able to free up time and increase productivity forever. Don’t become a prisoner of time management. Learn to prioritize correctly at all levels in order to apply time management to really important things.
“It’s more important to do the right thing than to do things right…”
Peter Drucker
