Many people are familiar with the situation when there is not enough time for anything: a person works most of the day, doesn’t get enough sleep, has no time to play at the PlayAmo casino login site or just sit quietly, and postpones the rest to perform more tasks. In this case, planning can help. Let’s find out how to rearrange the schedule so as not to overwork.
Understand What’s Missing Now
To get to point B, it’s worth determining what’s not satisfying at point A.
Decide why you decided to change the approach to your time: for example, you work all day and stopped seeing your friends. Or, on the contrary, you’re having a lot of fun, and you’re about to start a new life in the dust at home. Perhaps you don’t get enough sleep or eat at work.
Keep the “falling asleep” area in your head while you plan.
Make a Plan for the Day and Week
Planning helps you spread your workload and optimize your energy and time expenditures. Often the list consists of “large-scale” cases: work tasks, meetings. This approach loses the little things that add up to hours. For example, you distribute the time for the week among work and leisure, but do not add cleaning – you will have to sacrifice something and get upset that the time is not enough again.
Write everything out:
- Work time.
- Household chores – cleaning, cooking, shopping.
- Leisure time – hobbies, friendly gatherings, dates.
- Self-development – learning, sports.
If you are new to planning, try one of these methods.
Eisenhower Matrix
The method helps you prioritize. Divide tasks into four categories:
- Urgent and important – finishing a presentation for your defense, taking your child to the doctor, and other force majors.
- non-urgent and important – additional education, training, and anything related to self-development, goals, and values.
- Urgent and unimportant – chores and routines that can be delegated. For example, checking the mail, taking out the trash, and other people’s tasks at work.
- Non-urgent and unimportant – watching TV shows, scrolling through social networks, and simple work tasks. These are better left for dessert when the main things are done.
The ideal picture: there are almost no burning tasks, most of them are long-term tasks related to development.
The “1-3-5” Method
Plan nine things for the day: one large, three medium, and five small.
Task 1 is the priority, an important thing that must be done today. Proceed to it when you have the most energy. This includes reports, speeches, and other tasks that can be broken down into steps.
The next three things are important, but can be rescheduled without much loss of energy: planning meetings, noncurrent tasks.
The remaining five are little things that don’t take up much effort or time, but can be discouraging if you accumulate them. For example, if you constantly put off checking your work email.
“Running List”
This method is suitable for those whose tasks often flow from day to day.
On the top line on the left, write out the days of the week, and on the right, in a column, the tasks. When the task is done, put a cross in front of it on the desired day of the week. If it needs to be moved, put an arrow on it the next day.
Scheduling helps you assess your time and say “no”: for example, to give up a task when the day is already full. In such a situation, you can suggest an alternative day or replace the task in the list “for today” with a more important one.
Consider the Road to the Office
Travel time to work is a buffer zone. The longer the road, the less enjoyment we get from the work process. Planning on the road reduces the degree of dissatisfaction. You can prioritize work tasks or check them against your goals.
You don’t have to make that part of the day efficient: looking out the window, listening to music, or chatting with commuters reduces the feeling of dissatisfaction from a trip on public transportation.
To spend time usefully, you can:
- Do some planning.
- Learn languages.
- Listen to podcasts.
- Read books.
Leave Time for Spontaneous Decisions
It’s tempting to fill your calendar to the brim with things to do to free up the weekend. At first, this approach may be effective, but later it will become an excuse for procrastination: you will feel disgusted with the cases, you will want to put them away and get stuck in the recommendation line.
Free up a couple of hours a day for adventures and force majeure. So the anxiety of not having time to do something will be reduced because there will be time and will be able, for example, to agree to an unexpected walk.
Go to Bed at the Same Time
You need resources to be effective. During hectic periods, sleep often suffers: it seems that it can be neglected to get more time and sleep later. But there is a paradox: stress at work worsens sleep, and lack of sleep reduces efficiency.
Three things are important when planning sleep:
- People’s sleep norms vary individually, but for young people and adults, they usually range from seven to nine hours.
- To get enough sleep, go to bed at the same time. Preferably before midnight: at this time the level of cortisol, the stress hormone, is minimal.
- Sleep consists of five to six cycles, each cycle lasts about an hour and a half and includes two phases: slow and fast. To wake up more easily, sleep time should be a multiple of 90 minutes: that way the phases do not get disrupted.
Every body has its own nuances, try experimenting, find the sleep time that works best for you and stick to it.
Eat on Time
Change takes strength. Food can be more than just refueling, it can be an opportunity to switch from tasks to rest.
There are many rules for eating. We suggest you start small: eat at the same time. That way, your body will steadily produce the substances it needs.
To get all the nutrients you need, try the plate rule: half the meal will take up vegetables and fruits, a quarter will take up proteins, and another quarter will take up whole-grain foods.
If Something Goes Wrong, Don’t Get Upset
It takes from 18 to 254 days, on average 66 days, for a person to develop a new habit. The most important thing is to find your own comfortable way to plan and allocate time. Praise yourself for your successes and take small steps toward your goal.
Depending on your physical and psychological condition and external factors, the schedule will change: some days you will work more, some days you will rest more. To build a comfortable daily routine, observe yourself: what amount of load is optimal for you, how much time you need for certain tasks.
Don’t be afraid to experiment. You will kill several birds with one stone: you will build a daily routine that suits you, and you will learn to listen to yourself and understand your needs and desires.
