Time cannot be managed, why are the elites still mentioning Time Management Part I

November 1, 2020 | 4 min

Do you always feel that you don't have enough time at work? Or is it difficult to use your time efficiently? Sometimes, I doubt myself again: I have so many tasks, but I don’t know how to deal with them? The elites in the workplace will tell you: you need to learn "time management".

However, David Allen, founder of GTD (Get Things Done), pointed out that "time management" will mislead people to "manage" their "time", and time is constantly generated and passed, which cannot be managed. In fact, "time management" requires people to ensure that their activities are completed within a certain period of time, so as to realize the rational use of "time", a continuous resource.

One principle

Going back to the concept of "time management", in a nutshell, using strategies and techniques to help people get work done and achieve goals.

Three sentences

Know yourself. - Socrates Before making changes, we need to clearly feel the existence of time and know how we use it in order to prescribe the right medicine. Think of time as an intangible asset, create a sense of urgency due to the loss of assets, and discover which assets can be better utilized. This stage is also a process of deeply understanding yourself and laying the foundation for making a time plan that suits you in the future.
The real joy of life is to commit to a goal that you think is great. - Bernard Shaw When dealing with life, we must have a sense of mission, and a sense of mission means setting goals in life. Perhaps, we are still in the stage of uncertain life goals. However, we need to be clear: goals as short as one year (short term), goals as long as three to five years (long term). Through this process, we will form a road map in our minds to achieve our goals (without discussing whether it is correct), know what we need to do, increase our self-confidence, and at the same time, we will eliminate some unrealistic or irrelevant goals.
The starting point of gong is self-analysis, and the secret of success is self-reflection. —— Chen Anzhi Work is not fair everywhere. We need to reflect at all times to adjust the direction of our pursuit of goals, find a psychological balance, and recognize that what to do is conducive to achieving our goals.

Five suggestions

Learn to judge quickly Think back to whether you spend a lot of time making judgments, and the results are still unsatisfactory. In fact, quick judgment allows us to spend our time where we need it most. People have to trust their intuition, often the first choice is correct. In many cases, the outcome of things does not matter what judgment you make, but how you act after the judgment.
Take advantage of free time There is a lot of time at work that we inadvertently pass by, such as chatting with colleagues, browsing irrelevant web pages, staring at the phone screen in a daze. Not in favor of keeping the brain working all the time, but often more time wasted than we think. Might as well, you can summarize what free time you have in a week, and then think about what you can accomplish in these time periods to help you achieve your long-term/short-term goals. For example, an article that helps you improve your productivity is both relaxing and rewarding.
Start with the hard things In "time management", we can't shy away from the important: from the beginning of dealing with simple things, although there is accumulation in "quantity", we cannot guarantee that we will have enough energy to deal with difficult things later. Therefore, doing the hardest things when you have the most energy is not only easier to handle, but also gives you a greater sense of accomplishment.

Improve memory (expand wisdom; balance food and drink intake; maintain physical activity; increase antioxidant intake; learn memory skills; create related phrases or rhymes; get enough sleep; concentrate; convert important facts into a form that will help you remember; don't take memory skills too seriously)