How to be effective at work. Video: How to increase the efficiency of your activities? Motives. Why am I here

Irina Davydova

Reading time: 6 minutes

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In general, “super productive” people are no different from ordinary people - except, perhaps, that they know exactly how to use their time correctly so that time works for them. And work efficiency does not depend on the amount of time spent, as some people think, but on a competent approach to work. As our Thomas Edison used to say, time is our only capital, the loss of which is completely unacceptable.

How to become effective and succeed in your career? Here are some techniques that really work!

1. Pareto's Law

If you haven't heard of this principle yet, it is formulated as follows: 20% of your efforts produce 80% of the results. As for the remaining 80% of efforts, they will give only 20% of the results.

This Pareto law allows you to predict results in advance and work more efficiently. The main principle is to do 80% of your work in the 20% of the time when you are most productive at work. The remaining 20% ​​of the work can be completed in the remaining time.

Naturally, priority is given to the most important tasks.

Video: How to increase productivity and how to become effective?

2. 3 main tasks

Nowadays, almost everyone has diaries: it has even become fashionable to write down long to-do lists for the year, for the month in advance and for “tomorrow.” Unfortunately, few follow these lists. Because the lists are too long and it is extremely difficult to organize yourself. What should I do?

In the morning, while you are drinking coffee and a sandwich, write down your 3 main tasks for that day. There is no need for long lists - only 3 tasks that you must complete, even if you are lazy, have no time, have a headache and are running out of milk.

Get yourself this healthy habit, and you won’t even notice how your business will improve.

3. Do less, but do better

What does it mean? During the day, choose the time you need for relaxation. At least half an hour or an hour. It is not necessary to swing in the lotus position or turn on Nirvana at full blast in the office - choose your favorite method of relaxation, which will be acceptable in work conditions - and relax.

It is important to relieve stress, even out your breathing, and concentrate on calmness and your own success.

And remember that after work time is ONLY FOR REST! No work in the evenings or weekends!

4. Breaks are required!

Buy yourself a timer and set it for 25 minutes. This is how much time you are given to work without interruption. After the timer beeps, rest for 5 minutes. You can play darts or even play a mini-game of ping pong - the main thing is to take your mind off work.

Now you can turn the timer back on. If the task is complex, then the timer can be set for an hour - but then the break must be increased accordingly.

5. Going on an information diet

The habit of staying up to date on social networks and news sites takes up a catastrophically large amount of time. If you count how much time you spend looking at the news feed, photos of friends and comments from users you don’t know, you will be horrified - you could earn 2 times more money (if, of course, you have piecework work).

What to do? Completely eliminate this “fad” from your schedule for at least a week - and compare the results at work.

6. Looking for a clear goal

If there is no goal, then it is impossible to achieve it. If you yourself don’t know what exactly you want to accomplish, for example, today, then you won’t have time.

The plan must be clear, and there must be one. For example, make a specific “piece” of the order so that tomorrow you can move on to the next stage. Or writing a report for an abstract week, but for two days and not an hour more.

Strict boundaries will force you to hustle and accomplish more than you thought you could. And no favors for yourself!

Video: How to increase the efficiency of your activities?

7. An incentive for yourself, your beloved (beloved)

Find an incentive that you will definitely allow yourself after the work week. For example, the trip you dreamed about, etc. One day you will get tired of working just for the sake of work, and no techniques will then help increase efficiency and cope with depression.

Therefore, love yourself today - and learn to relax, then tomorrow you will not have to strain yourself more than the situation requires.

8. Phone - only for business

Get rid of the stupid habit of talking on the phone. Firstly, you are taking away your precious time, and secondly, it is harmful to your health.

If you are embarrassed to interrupt your interlocutors, then use tricks that are common even in modern “statuses” of users, for example, “If you immediately say that your phone battery is running low, you can find out the main thing in the first 2-3 minutes.”

9. Learn to say “no”

Unfortunately, excessive softness and shyness does not allow us to refuse and say “No” to our relatives, colleagues, friends - and even strangers.

As a result, we do other people's work, listen to other people's problems, sit with other people's children, etc. At the same time, our personal life remains on the sidelines, and our working time is filled with solving other people’s problems.

What to do? Learn to say no!

10. Learn to use a diary

Of course, an electronic one is better - it will remind you of important matters. But don’t give up on paper either.

The diary disciplines and unloads memory overloaded with numbers, meetings, coordinates, plans, etc.

11. Start work before everyone else

Getting to work when no one has arrived yet, or when everyone is still drinking coffee and telling jokes, is much more pleasant. The absence of colleagues usually allows you to better tune in to work and quickly get involved in the work day.

Get up early, drink coffee beforehand (find a nice cafe for 20 minutes of personal joy in the morning) - and get to work first.

12. Learn to sift out the not-so-important things from the very important ones.

We get busy with thousands of things, waste precious time on unnecessary tasks, and then we wonder where we spent so much time, and why now, instead of resting, we need to finish all the orders that are already “burning.”

And the whole point is the inability to distinguish between the important and the secondary.

13. Do all the important things at once!

Don’t put off all urgent matters for an hour, two hours, or until tomorrow. Calls, urgent letters and other issues should be made in the process of work “as the play progresses”, so that later they do not snowball on you in the evening or at the end of the week.

14. Check your email and instant messengers only at designated times.

If you constantly respond to people's letters and messages, you will lose up to 50% of your working time. Productive people leave checking emails for after-hours.

And, in addition, use sorting letters by importance. There are letters that really require urgent answers, and there are those that can lie unopened for a week without harm to you - sorting them will save your time and nerves.

15. Use modern technologies so that they work for you, and not vice versa!

With the advent of new technologies in our lives, many have become lazy and unfocused, which means unproductive and ineffective. But remember that the Internet is not needed for “hanging out on social networks”, an automatic error correction program does not make you literate, and an electronic “reminder” does not do things for you.

Effective and productive people set filters, set priorities, use special apps to make life easier, and can protect themselves from the destructive effects of technology.

A friend of mine told me that she recently had an extremely productive day. She managed to read much of what she had not had time to read. She managed to do several tests. The friend was proud that she had accomplished a significant part of her plans in one day. I listened to her carefully, but I still didn’t understand what she did. Where is the result? She never got around to practical work and planned to read many more books and articles before starting work.

Like most people, my friend puts off projects until later, until she is “ready.” And when all the books are finally read and the tests are passed, people complain that they have no energy, time or motivation.

In my opinion, productivity is the optimal ratio of quality and quantity of work completed in a minimum amount of time with a minimum of effort. In other words: do as much as possible, as best as possible, and as efficiently as possible. Here are some tips on how to achieve this efficiency.

1. Wear a watch. Plan your time taking into account biorhythms. After what period of time do you get tired, start to get distracted, and want to eat? How long does it take you on average to complete a certain type of task? Take breaks, change activities by the hour. They are preferable to a smartphone because they are not distracted by social networks and games and are always in the same place.

2. Set goals before you start. Think about the purpose for which you will do the work. Without a goal and a plan, you can quickly lose focus and efficiency. If you know why you are doing it and complete it point by point on time, you motivate yourself to continue.

3. Get rid of clutter. Understand what is stopping you from being productive. Can't start working? Set an alarm for a specific time. Spending too much time on details? Be specific about your goals and set a time frame for achieving them. Worried too much? Learn breathing exercises and other relaxation practices.

If you have a negative attitude towards work, you will not be effective.

4. Turn off your smartphone. Gadgets are a special type of obstacle to efficiency. If you want to be productive, don't fool yourself with small breaks from work to check social media and email. If the gadget is turned off, you will not be distracted by signals and will have to spend time getting it out and turning it on, which means you will use it less often.

5. Work on your thoughts. If you have a negative attitude towards work, you will not be effective. Try to think differently. If you say, “This job is so boring,” try to find what you like about it. Or start doing it differently. For example, you can “persuad” yourself to do difficult work while listening to pleasant music.

6. Schedule a “productivity hour.” During this time, every day you will do something that you have been putting off for a long time or doing slowly and in a bad mood. At this hour you should concentrate as much as possible and try to get as much done as possible. Working intensively on complex tasks for an hour will give you flexibility in scheduling the rest of your time.

7. Attack difficult projects early in the day. In the morning you are full of energy and can focus on work as much as possible.

If you feel tired, take a short break, otherwise mistakes in your work cannot be avoided

8. Take minute breaks. If you feel tired, take a short break. This is much more effective than overcoming fatigue at the expense of work. If you're tired, you work slowly, make more mistakes, and get distracted more often. Get up, walk around the room, wave your arms, legs, bend over, take a deep breath and exhale.

9. Make productivity a part of your life. Being an effective person is much more pleasant than sitting through the working day from call to call, trying not to stress.

About the expert

Clinical psychologist, director of the Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Therapy in Chico, California.

I decided to write an article on how to become effective because so many people ask similar questions:

Alexander,
how to be more effective in life;
how to be more effective in business;
how to be more effective during the day;
how to be more effective in business;
how to become effective in everything

And other similar questions

The first rule of efficiency:
Always set tasks clearly and specifically.
Every task must have a due date

We make decisions using intuition. But thanks to our brain we carry out certain plans. And specificity is very important for our brain. If the brain does not understand what exactly needs to be done and there is no clear definition of the task, then it will not even take on such a task. There will simply be a lack of motivation.

For example:
Reach a new level of profitability (it is not clear what a new level is)
Attract 10 new clients (clear, understandable task)

For each task, be sure to set a deadline. When there is a specific time and end date, our brains have limitations. Thanks to restrictions, the brain works more efficiently and quickly.

Second rule of efficiency:
Focus on only one task at hand

Focus determines the amount of energy invested in a particular activity. Each task requires a certain amount of energy from you to complete. The more energy you put into a second of time, the faster you will complete this task. So focus determines how much energy you invest.

When you focus only on the current task and nothing else exists for you, you are maximally immersed in the process, then, as a result, you find a solution as quickly as possible. And if you get distracted, do one thing, then another, then a third, then back to the first, you get tired. Then don’t be surprised why you feel like a squeezed lemon. Switching attention requires more energy than maintaining and completing a task where attention is already located.

Please remember that sequential completion of tasks leads to their faster completion compared to completing all tasks at once. Moreover, you save your strength and energy.

When performing 5 tasks sequentially, you will switch your attention only 5 times. And if you do 5 tasks at the same time, you will switch your attention thousands of times. Then don’t wonder why it takes so much time and energy.

The ability to focus is a fundamental quality of effective people.

Third rule of efficiency:
The more tasks you have, the more you will get done.

Our brain evaluates the number of tasks assigned and the amount of time allocated to these tasks. Accordingly, he determines the amount of time for one task. This all happens unconsciously, but our brain clearly sets time limits for itself.
Remember how you did during a test at school. The more tasks there were, the faster you took on solving them. The faster you tried to complete them. And when there were few problems and they were simple, then we did nothing for 15-20 minutes, and only then took on the solution.

Fourth correct efficiency:
Unload your head

The more things you keep in your memory, the less effective you are, because retaining information requires energy. And instead of directing this energy to creation, you will direct it to remember, and then to remember. Write down all your to-dos in a diary, or on your phone, on your computer - it’s up to you, the main thing is to make it convenient and you have quick access to your to-dos. You won't have to remember which task needs to be completed after the current task. This will save you from switching attention from one task to another. Only after you complete a task, open your diary, mark the completed task and take on the next one on the list.

Fifth rule of efficiency:
Planning saves time and effort

Before you take on any tasks, make sure you have a planned path to your goal. Make sure you have a plan for today. Often businessmen turn to me for coaching so that I can help them become more effective in their business. They work and work, but something doesn't happen. But it doesn’t happen because they go to the goal in a random way. Many people lack clear planning of the path to their goal. They seem to go to the goal in a random way. Only goals are set, and a plan for achieving this goal is either absent and created as actions progress, or it is very vague.
I am a proponent of the fact that a plan must be created and written down. And then, if the need arises to change the plan, we change it, but again prescribe a new plan. I will teach you how to create wealth!

Every 10 minutes spent planning saves 100 minutes in execution.

To be more effective, before you start doing something, plan your work.

Sixth rule of efficiency:
Set goals

Our brain is a tool for achieving goals. No goals - the brain doesn't work. This is one of his main tasks - to achieve his goal. Even if you don’t know how, in what way, what to do, just set a goal. And let your brain work and think about how to achieve your goal. Believe me, he was created for this. In less than a couple of days he will build a path to achieve his goal. I'm not saying that this will be the right way. But I know for sure that if you follow this path, then perhaps the path will change, then change again, but sooner or later you will come to the goal. The main thing here is just to start the process of achieving the goal, and then you will see. When this comes later, the brain will again figure out what to do

To be more effective, always set goals!
And the more goals you have, the more effective you will be.

Many businessmen use coaches and trainers to help them be effective in business. A coach helps set goals, plan their achievement and monitors the process of achieving the goal. A person always works more efficiently when he has to report to someone.

Now you understand how to become effective.

If you need my help, I'm always ready to help.

If you don't like going to work out and want to work out at home, then yoga or Pilates are perfect for you. Don't know what to choose? Then conduct simple home exercises with elements of both health systems.

These popular fitness trends focus on health and overall strengthening of the body. We invite you to pay attention to the ideal training complex, which we compiled. It will help you relieve tension, make your joints more flexible, straighten your spine and improve muscle tone. Spend just 10 minutes a day training and you will soon notice a positive result.

Yoga and Pilates exercise

Lie on your back. Raise your body at the same time and pull it towards your bent knees. The palms should face up.

If you do these simple exercises every day, you will notice how quickly your health will improve, your knee pain will go away and your muscle tone will increase. Such activities will also help lift your mood.

How to become effective? How to increase personal effectiveness? Such questions are often asked by people who feel that they are wasting their time somehow incorrectly and ineffectively.

In that video I've shared 5 tips to improve your personal effectiveness and productivity. Thanks to them, you will be able to do much more things at work and in your personal life than you did before. I constantly try to use these 5 tips in my life. And I wish you to put them into practice to become more successful, efficient and productive.

Here they are - 5 tips:

1. The power of concentration.

2. Break long tasks into intervals.

3. Minimize the number of switches from one task to another.

4. [Exercise] Write down ALL your actions every day for a week.

5. Don't keep anything in your head. Write everything down on paper.

Full video text:

Hello everyone, Konstantin Balakin is with you again. In today's episode we will talk to you about personal effectiveness, or personal productivity, namely about 5 tips that I use to increase the productivity of my day and complete tasks faster and better. So, if you are interested in this topic, then let's go.

So, the first tip is the power of concentration. It is important to understand that when you start performing a task, you need to concentrate on it as much as possible, because in our world now there are a lot of distracting stop factors and distractions that prevent us from performing our task productively. I want to give you the following example. Have you ever watched a juggler in slow motion and see how he manages to juggle so many balls? In fact, if we look closely and watch in slow motion how he does this, we will notice that at a certain moment in time he does not look at all the balls at the same time, he concentrates his gaze and his attention specifically on a certain ball. And until he finishes, catches this ball and transfers it to another state, he will not switch to the next one. It is important to understand that at a certain point in time he concentrates on one ball and no more. It’s the same with tasks: you must highlight the task in its entirety and concentrate only on it.

Let's now move on to the second tip. It is associated with the performance of long-term tasks, time-consuming tasks. You have probably encountered the fact that if a task takes a large amount of time, then if you perform it continuously, you cannot do this task effectively, and then, concentration is lost, you are distracted by something and thereby the task drags on for even more time. A tip on how best to complete such tasks is to break them down into intervals. One very good example of interval technique is the Pomodoro technique. This is a non-Russian technique; it is connected to a timer in the shape of a tomato, which can be set to certain intervals. These segments are most often measured at 25 minutes, followed by a 5-minute break. The trick is that during these 25 minutes you must fully concentrate on the task, not be distracted by any stopping factors, and after these 25 minutes, take a 5-minute break, the purpose of which is to completely switch and unload your brain from that task which you performed. In this way, we seem to be deceiving our brain, we relax it and after a 5-minute break we return to the task again, but the brain perceives this as a new task and performs it with the greatest productivity. I use this technique all the time at my work. It brings very great fruits and results, I really like it, I advise you to use it too.

The third tip is related to switching, namely in order to minimize the number of switches from one task to another. There is an interesting psychological fact: when we begin to perform a task, at first we do not actually complete it, but we tune in to complete this task. We accelerate, we prepare, we form some actions in our brain. But in fact, we begin to perform a task productively only after 10-15 minutes. It turns out that if we have already started to complete a task and we are interrupted or distracted, then if we devote time to the person who distracted us, it turns out that we slowed down this task, then devoted 5 minutes of time to that person, answered some easy question. But when we return to the previous task, it turns out that again we spend 10 or 15 minutes on acceleration, thereby losing this time if we had not switched to distracting some other person from our work. Minimize the number of switches and you'll complete tasks much faster.

Fourth life hack, or I even call it an exercise that many time management gurus recommend. The way to improve your productivity and efficiency is to write down everything you do throughout the day every day for a week or a month. This exercise makes it very clear to understand and realize, and generally analyze, how much time we actually spend on work, and how much time we spend disconnecting, switching, who disturbs us and when, and how this affects our productivity. It would seem to be a very simple exercise, but in fact, if you perform it, it is not so simple. The result you will get after completing this exercise will not take long to arrive. You will really understand how you spend your days and what you spend them on. In fact, after analyzing the information you recorded during the day or week, you will understand that you spend a lot of time during work not on the work itself, but on any distractions or activities not related to work. After this, you will be more attentive to these distractions and will spend more time directly on the tasks that need to be completed.

And the fifth final tip is that never rely on your own head, but be sure to write everything down on paper. I’ll give you an example: for example, you are at a meeting, agreeing on some tasks. At first glance, it seems to you that you have remembered everything, and when moving from the meeting room to your workplace, you think that you have remembered everything and will definitely do it flawlessly. In fact, when you come to your workplace, or, moreover, when you are distracted by some other tasks, you simply then forget about the agreements that you reached in the negotiations. Or you simply concentrate on some task, complete it, a colleague comes up to you, says something, you told him: “Yes, I will do it,” you remembered and again immersed yourself in your task. In fact, you think that you have memorized this task, but as you dive back into your routine, into your concentration, you simply forget it. I have experienced this myself more than once. Therefore, I have already fixed for myself that all thoughts and all tasks must be written down on paper. Then I transfer them to my planner and set a reminder so that I don’t forget about this task.

That's all. These were 5 life hacks that I use on a daily basis in my life to be more productive and use my time more efficiently.

Let's recap and summarize:

1. Concentrate on completing tasks, the importance of concentration is mandatory;
2. Be sure to break long tasks into segments. I use the Pomodoro technique;
3. Avoid switching, because when switching to a new task and returning to the original one, we again spend 10-15 minutes accelerating to get back into the same rhythm with which we worked before the switch;
4. This exercise. Try recording everything you do during the day for a week or two, and then analyze the data you wrote down. You will be surprised how inefficiently you spend your time;
5. Don’t count on your own head, but be sure to write everything down on paper so as not to forget it and not look uncomfortable in front of the person to whom you promised something.

That's all for today. I hope you found this video helpful. Be sure to use these tips and these practices in your life. If you liked it, be sure to like it, share it with your friends and leave your comments on what other ways you use to improve your productivity. I am very interested to hear your opinion. That’s all for today, thank you very much for your attention, Konstantin Balakin was with you. Live a balanced life, for now.