In my opinion, personal effectiveness as a movement is highly overrated. After all, there were empires, states, companies even before the 21st century, and there are quite a few successful examples. So people could be effective in the past? Of course, you say, then there was not so much information, the speed of life was not so high. And who asks you to process all the surrounding information ?! In it, 99% is informational noise, which keeps you in suspense and in a frantic rhythm: you have to be in time for everything! a new series of your favorite series! new photo on Instagram! new like on facebook! and so on ad infinitum. Sometimes work tasks are also interwoven into this: a new letter! new challenge! new call! new client!
I would divide this information into two streams: important and unimportant, or even critical / non-critical. Let me explain: a critical stream contains information that we need for further normal life: information that can weaken or improve our position at work, in the family, at the university, etc. For example, a task from a boss is critical information, ignoring which we can lose our job. which means we are likely to remain hungry in the bad sense of the word. An uncritical stream, in turn, contains information that does not positively affect our life in any way. For example, a new series of your favorite series. It will not make us better, will not lead us to our dreams and, by and large, will not affect our life in any way.
It turns out that yes, there is more information. But useful / valuable / important is no longer much. In addition, from childhood we learn to perceive information more than our ancestors. And the brain is the same muscle in this respect as others - the more we use it, the more it can, but I will talk about this in more detail in another chapter.
So back to personal effectiveness. In my experience, in order to be more effective than the majority, it is enough to filter the incoming information flows. This will unload your time from unnecessary actions and worries. The second important rule, in my opinion, is to correctly switch between different information. For example:
before thinking about these things, the beginning of my working day looked like this:
9:00 Coming to work
9: 00-9: 15 Coffee
9:15 Sat down to do the task
9:18 - 9:21 Someone called
9:21 - 9:25 I remembered what kind of task I wanted to do
9:25 - 9:30 I remembered exactly how I wanted to do the task
9:30 - 9:50 Someone greeted Chatting
9:50 - 10:00 I remembered what
kind of task I wanted to do 10:00 - 10:10 I remembered exactly how I wanted to do the task
10:10 - 10:20 Spat and went to smoke
After thinking , I turned off all the phones and by 10:00 I had time to answer a couple of emails, and after the shutdown and notifications by 10:00 at least one task was already done!
At the same time, no one was hurt and I did not miss any critical information. critical information has the ability to always find you, even with the phone off.
Now the second: correct switching between tasks.
Here, of course, everything is very individual, but the following set of rules works for me:
- In the morning or in the evening, make a to-do list for the next day. At the same time, be sure to leave a reserve for force majeure.
- Before proceeding to the next task, be sure to check the list and meditate on it for a couple of minutes, imagine how and what I am doing on some point from the list. For what point the brain "hooked" that and perform.
If this article was interesting to someone, or even useful, or maybe just a pleasant syllable, then I will try to expand it to several chapters "On the most diverse", in which I will try to describe without embellishment my personal research and reflections on various, but very pressing topics ...
I would also like to hear the opinion of experts, where I am wrong, or what I did not take into account.