10 lessons that I have learned from their experiments with time and productivity

For a whole year chris Bailey, Winner of the degree of control theory and journalist, studied the problem of personal productivity, read scientific papers, talked to influential people and experimented on himself. As a result, he made ten main conclusions on how to become the master of your time, which you will learn from this article.

10. Pay attention to the most important tasks first and foremost

In every field of human life (health, family, work, entertainment, finance and so on), there are only one or two things that are really important. For example, at work, you probably will be able to identify one or two priorities on which 80-90% depends on the success of the business.

The surest way to achieve more in less time — is to find such basic tasks and to exert maximum effort to promote them. As a result, you get the maximum return per unit of energy, time, money.

9. The three most important secret of the effectiveness (and also the most boring)

These tips are so commonplace and known that turned into iced cliché. Although, maybe that is speaks of their faithfulness and universality, because not all the smart people for hundreds of years in a row to repeat a false statement?

One can endlessly experiment with the latest techniques for improving personal effectiveness (and I do), but they will eventually be summarized as follows:

• good food;
• enough sleep;
• exercises.

These tips are repeated so often that people no longer believe in them. But believe me, as someone who has experimented with dozens of different methods for improving productivity, I I can conclude that it is not do nothing more for you than nutrition, good sleep and physical exercises.

8. There are no universal techniques

Every few years there is a new theory and a new productivity guru, who claims that he had discovered the most important secret of all time. Every day thousands of pages of published advice on the correct organization of labor, that promise to make you successful, happy and effective person. The truth is that a single and absolutely suitable for all methods do not exist.

You can start follow the advice do early in the morning and feel of this enormous discomfort; you can start working on the interval method, but was surprised to see that they have become much less keep pace. Therefore, first of all, listen to your feelings and quantitatively measure the completed tasks. What is perfect for one person may not suit you perfectly, so that no one piece of advice regarding the performance will not work very well for people 100% and 100% of the time.

7. Forming good habits automatically makes you more efficient

I am convinced that the best way to change lives — is to change our habits. Approximately 40-45% of our daily activities is automatic, in obedience to the power of existing habits. For example, you can spend a few months to get used the morning to get up an hour earlier, but when you do yet achieve, this habit will work for you every day, giving additional time for self-development and training. Yes, the acquisition of good habits can be difficult, but then it will be repaid to you a hundredfold.

6. There are only three components of productivity: time, energy and attention

With all the variety of productivity enhancing techniques they somehow try to solve three issues: how to better manage time, how to use their energy and how to save the note.

I think that all three components are essential and equivalent, if you want to be productive every day and every minute. Some people have a huge amount of energy, but they can not concentrate, and all their efforts are sprayed. Other people are able to appreciate the time, but their efforts are not sufficient to achieve a good result. Productive people have to remember about these three pillars on which stands the productivity, and to give them an equal amount of attention.

5. There is no one winning strategy, but there are many tactics

If there is any important secret performance, then I must say that in the year of their experiments I had never discovered. But I felt hundreds of tactical tricks that help me better manage my time, energy and attention. You will find their description in my other article.

Productivity — It is the result of tens, and maybe hundreds of your small actions that you do every day. There is no one secret, the knowledge that will make you successful, but there are a variety of activities that help you manage your resources.

4. Too heavy or prolonged destroys your productivity

During his one-year experiment, I tried different variants of organization of labor. I worked a few weeks on 90 hours, and then put up a discharge of 20-hour working week. Much to my surprise, the number of completed tasks in the weeks not too different. The thing is that when you know that you have little time, it is committed to working vigorously. If you have a lot ahead of time, then it begins procrastination, and the work goes without undue stress. As a result of works known rule that the work takes so much time, how much is allocated to it.

However, if you work with a higher rate of return, it will burn out after a short time and feel a deep fatigue. Thus, neither too long nor too heavy work does not lead ultimately to increased productivity, as misusing your main resources — time and energy.

3. The best way to enhance motivation — it is to know exactly what you are working

The most motivated (and productive) people different is that they always know the answer to the question why and for what purpose they serve. When you are engaged in an activity that has meaning to you, consistent with your values ​​and with that, what you believe, you can be productive without too much effort.

If you are constantly busy and can not afford even a minute of rest, it does not mean that you are a productive person, — rather the opposite. Efficiency is not about how much you are busy at work, and in what kind of results you have achieved in the most important matters to you. When you always know why you do something, you will automatically become more motivated and productive.

2. The quest for productivity does not make sense, if you suffer as a result

Whatever great goals in front of you were not, what would be important tasks you have outlined, it is not necessary in the course of their execution to try to jump through. You can give all the best to the full, you can achieve excellent efficiency, but it would make no sense if you feel unhappy with this. In the end, the supreme goal of all is you and your positive emotions rather than higher production figures.

1. Productivity — it's not how much you have done and what you have achieved

In the beginning, when I had just started his experiments, I thought that the productivity is very easy to measure. I began to write down the number of written pages of books read, sent letters and so on. But over time I realized that this is not entirely correct. Sometimes, there are days when all quantitative indicators are going wild, but really I have not moved a single step. In quantitative terms in those days, I showed productivity miracles, but really nothing useful and did not.

So always remember that an important email may be more significant than an hour picking in the mail, and one well-written page is worth a whole chapter. Do not get carried away with quantitative indicators, so as not to fall into the trap of false productivity when you all day long steep like a squirrel in a cage, and in the evening can not say what you really made.