Self-control: How to take control of your time and life?

Chapter 19 Mastering Time (2)
My suggestion to the students is that when doing their own time management, they can learn from some company's assessment mechanisms-manage themselves as a company, if they want to save time, they must control tasks, and my time must be "effective time". ".Excellent companies will abide by a principle when recruiting: when the number of people who can be assessed increases, I will try my best to scroll down!In the same way, if you have too many thoughts, you should try your best to eliminate those unimportant or unrealistic thoughts and impulses, and keep some really important and worthwhile things within the scope of your time.

For example, some things that do not seem to be so important at present or are not worth arranging time to do right away, you can put them aside first.In the not-too-distant future, if you have enough time, you can see if these things are worth doing.Don't put these things that can't be clearly judged first, because just a judgment process is enough to delay you for a long time-in this process, I don't know how many things that have been clearly important are delayed .

It is impossible for us to complete all the ideas in a day, just as it is impossible for a company to satisfy the wishes of every job seeker when recruiting.Corporate recruiters can do their part by taking the best few applicants in and developing them into individuals who can make significant contributions to the company.

Then, you complete or advance those very few but most important things every day, even if too many ideas fail to be implemented, become "thinking cannon fodder", and become worthless or even completely lost in the passage of time. You have forgotten, so what?What matters is that you've gotten the most important things done, making "me time" extremely productive.

Setting steps is not as important as establishing importance

Let's discuss how to plan your own time (schedule) and the importance of dividing events.In other words, prioritization determines how efficiently you use your time.Generally speaking, things that are of great help to our career (important goals in life) and cannot be delayed should have the highest priority; secondly, things that can promote our own development (significantly helpful to solve things) Things that require a long process can be listed in a secondary position or second order; things that are scheduled as low priority are those that are not of great importance (although it is worth doing or must be done, the value is not too high) .

The principle established by the importance: the 20th law.Only 80% of things play a role in promoting 80% of our lives, and the remaining 20% of things can only play a 20% role.Analyze the importance according to this principle, and you will find that it is well-founded to allocate a lot of time to the [-]% of things.

The problem is how we judge, because the priority distinction between events cannot always be clearly distinguished, and important events will not be labeled on it, telling you that it is very important and needs to be arranged first.In many cases, when we are faced with a lot of things we want to accomplish, it seems difficult to make a ranking. We don’t know who should come first and who should come last, and we wish we could do everything together.This is what most students have experienced. In order not to delay or miss important things, they will do a lot of things at the same time, so they become unable to focus, and it is difficult to do well. As a result, they do not do well.

If this happens to you too, what should you do?I think you might as well leave this difficult problem to your subconscious mind, which is commonly referred to as "gut feeling".The method is very simple:
1. You can temporarily remove all the list of things from your eyes or mind, that is, forget them; 2. After your mind becomes blank, ask yourself which thing comes to mind first, and it must be in the first place. Time, don't think too much, let the subconscious mind decide; 3. The most important thing is often the first thing you think of, it is found by the subconscious mind, and then gradually go back to find the second priority.

This method may not be 100% accurate, but for people who are often indecisive, it is worth a try.When I recommended this method to students in the course, the feedback I received after one month proved that it was quite effective and helped students establish a correct judgment mechanism.Through this method, students begin to realize how to analyze the importance of things and how to establish the priority of doing things.

A Reasonable Plan: Responding to External Interference

Time must be planned, this is the most important piece of advice I can give you.We must give ourselves a "golden time" every day, which is not exchanged under any circumstances.What to do next?Make a schedule and plan these "golden hours" reasonably.

The difference between people lies in the use of time. For example, a person's fate is determined by what he does between eight o'clock and ten o'clock in the evening, and the efficiency with which he uses these hours.A person's fate is also determined by his judgment of his own time: "There are only 24 hours in a day, how can I arrange them? How can I prevent myself from lamenting the past like running water, and not regretting my confusion yesterday?"

When I realized that time must be used to the fullest, I created my first time plan for myself: Set aside two hours each night to read, think, or have meaningful discussions with colleagues.At the beginning, I didn't have a clear goal, such as from seven to nine, or from eight to ten. The plan was general at first.Sometimes I put my work at 09:30, and sometimes I advance it to 06:30 or 08:30. After a week of persistence, I found a pattern for myself: every evening from [-]:[-] to [-]:[-] is my best working time.

Anyone must go through this stage. Only by trying and working with yourself can you make this time plan as reasonable as possible.Then you will find that your life is changing.

After years of persistence, success will beckon you.At that time, you will be able to feel the great changes in your body.You no longer struggle with games, movies, soap operas or WeChat every day until the early hours of the morning and are reluctant to rest. Instead, you can control your behavior well and have a positive attitude towards life.

Your plan must be as free from distractions as possible. What is "interference"?In addition to his own unstable willpower, more interference comes from the outside world.For example, when you are about to start an important project, someone comes to you for help: "Hey, Kelly, I'm in trouble, please drive to my rescue." ”: A friend is throwing a party.When you are about to read for an hour according to the plan, your wife insists that you go to the balcony to help her dry clothes, and the child runs over with a toy and asks you to disassemble it for him to see the mechanism inside, or accompany him to the Playing football downstairs - that sort of thing happens a lot.

Sometimes, even if we have complaints in our hearts, it is impossible for us to reject all "interference" from others.This is a basic feature of human relationships. Once you close the channel for others to "interfere" with you, you also close the channel for you to "interfere" with others.None of us can guarantee that we don't need others, so it is difficult for us to control this complicated situation.My suggestion to you is that since there is no way to shield yourself from interacting with the outside world and completely eliminate "interference", you must take this factor into account when making your own time plan.

First of all, find a reasonable response plan to deal with those unpredictable external disturbances.These disturbances interfere with our personal time management. You must find a reasonable solution to make your time management stick and become a correct habit.Otherwise, the time you arranged will always be disrupted by external interference and become a useless plan, so why do you still spend time on this worthless plan?
In this response plan, you must abide by two principles:
1. Focus on the big and let go of the small: During the planning process, consider the possible interference factors in advance, and screen out which accidents are worth suspending the plan, and which interferences must be ignored.

2. The direction does not change: If the plan is very important, you must stick to the direction, and any interference cannot invalidate your arrangement.In other words, you must have the courage and willpower of a strong man to cut his wrists and be able to say "no" to interference. "No, Eric, I'm working on a very urgent project, so sorry, I can't help you with this. If you will wait, I can spare half an hour tomorrow morning at [-] o'clock to help you solve the problem .” Use this flexible method of refusal to keep your plan going.

Second, mentality is the most important.If you have a good attitude, you will be able to stay calm, have more ideas and plans when facing difficult problems, and be more decisive and precise in dealing with key issues.People with poor mentality often affect their control and grasp of the overall situation because of a certain change.When the unexpected happened, they fretted: "Why did this happen? I was so unlucky!" The slightest disturbance could derail his "great" plans and derail his efforts.Over time, the difference in destiny between people caused by the difference in mentality will appear.So you must have the ability to respond calmly and unhurriedly, no matter what accidents happen, you must not mess up your position.

How to establish a good attitude?The most important thing is that we have to correctly view these external disturbances.It is a very good way to simplify "disturbance" to "change".You must understand this: everything in the universe is changing all the time, and there is only one thing that remains constant, and that is "change" itself.However, I think this is not enough.Our expectation of "unchanging" will never change, our perseverance and willpower will not change, and our determination will become stronger and stronger.When you are ready to establish a stable state of mind for yourself, you can instill a command in your subconscious mind: "I thought of this a long time ago, so it came out as I expected, and I will be very careful next time." Resolve these disturbances quickly." In this way, you can prepare yourself mentally for any disturbances, and it is easy to remain calm.

Finally, don't rigidly arrange the plan, you must develop a schedule that can be changed flexibly.No matter when we manage time, it is impossible to expect that everything in this day will be carried out step by step according to our pre-conceived idea.Everyone can't predict what will happen in the next second, just like you are using the Internet or writing emails, you can't guarantee whether the network will be interrupted after a while, and whether the emails you have finished will be sent when they are sent. Sudden disappearance - this means that most of your work day may have been wasted.

Would you be angry?If you are angry about this, it means that you are scheduling your time very rigidly: "I have to get the email out." Or: "The Internet must be good, there must be no surprises!" Since the world is always changing, Why are you still so rigid?Therefore, when doing time management, when you see the arranged schedule, the first thing you have to tell yourself is: "This schedule will definitely change." Only when you are ready in advance, arrange a buffer space , When you really encounter disturbances and changes, you will not appear flustered and frustrated.You already know that there will be changes in advance, and the changes will occur as you arranged, so you have enough time and planning to solve the obstacles caused by these changes.

The focus of time management is not time, but to determine the importance and priority of things, so as not to be overwhelmed when encountering problems and changes, which will lead to emotional loss of control.A reasonable plan should consciously set aside buffer time for important things.For example, a commercial banquet starts at 6 o'clock, and it is only a 40-minute drive from your home to the banquet venue. You should also schedule your departure time around 4:[-] or even earlier, because you have to consider "possible traffic jams."For these spare time, I would not suggest you to stay in a daze or take a short errand, you can do some important things during these time, for example, if there is a traffic jam, you can listen to music, call some customers, communicate what you did not have yesterday Negotiated contract.

Of course, it is not so easy to set aside some buffer time for yourself, which requires skill and the permission of the environment.I think the more important thing is that if you want to do this, you must have enough confidence and certainty in your work efficiency and focus, otherwise it is easy to lose control due to improper time arrangement.If you can't set aside a buffer zone for yourself, that's okay, you can fall back to the next best thing, and use those planned but unimportant things as a reserve buffer area-if you really need to spare time, temporarily Sacrifice these things that are lower on the list to ensure that important things get done.

In the end, I don't ask you to finish all the things on the schedule before going to bed every day, but as long as the most urgent and important things are completed, and the important but not urgent things have made some progress, you can feel at ease. Urgent but unimportant things can be considered to be "outsourced" to others, and unimportant and unurgent things can be done or not. Maybe when you look back in two days, you don’t even bother to look at the goals you set at the beginning. glance.

(End of this chapter)