What to do if you don't have time to do anything. I can’t get anything done: we are looking for reasons and effective solutions

Date: July 1, 2015

10 minutes of resuscitation from a time management specialist

She knows firsthand about the problems of lack of time for young mothers. “To learn how to do everything, I had to write a book about it,” says Maria Heinz. The book “Time management for young mothers, or How to manage everything with a child” was published in 2011 by the St. Petersburg publishing house “Rech”.

Minute 1. Start thinking productively!

Every mother has to understand at some point that no one but herself can help her. The first thing I would advise is to take full responsibility for what happens at home. I do not encourage you to sprinkle ashes on your head and disturb your conscience once again. I encourage you to start thinking differently. We need to move from the habit of thinking “I don’t have time to do anything because they don’t help me...”, “because my children are too restless” to a more constructive way of thinking: “What needs to be done to keep up?”, “What needs to be done to make me and my family happy? and, most importantly, “What exactly do you need to do in order to do everything?”

Minute 2. Bring requirements in line with reality

Think about whether you've set the bar too high. If after the birth of a child you want the apartment to sparkle just as before, your husband’s shirts to be ironed, and a three-course meal awaiting him for dinner, then your demands are too high. I'm not even talking about those who work and have several small children. Child care is a separate profession. To combine it with everything that you did before this miracle appeared in your home, you need to either lower the bar of requirements, or introduce new techniques, or better yet, do both.

Minute 3. Find the main thing

Minute 4. Learning to delegate

Everything that we don’t have to do ourselves is left to the equipment and people to do. This is delegation. Dishwasher saves 1-2 hours of your time per day. Drying cabinet – 2 hours per week. Good hairdryer, which styles hair in 2 minutes is also not a luxury, but a necessity. There are also electric toothbrushes (for children too), Food processors etc. All these things can be acquired gradually, for example, by unobtrusively announcing before your next birthday that you are saving for this particular thing. Delegating to people is more difficult because they are not machines. Everyone has their own plans, their own interests, and you can’t trust a child to everyone, not to mention the child’s desire to be only with his mother. Make a list of people who can help you and a list of things you can't handle on your own. Ask each of them if they could help you. Connect with other moms. Thank you every time for your help.

Minute 5. Organize the right daily routine

There are days when everything goes like clockwork: the child played enough in the morning, was tired, ate well, slept for a long time after lunch, the mother also had time to rest, went for a walk in the evening, got tired again, so the child ate well again and quickly fell asleep. For some it sounds like a dream, but for others it sounds like an ordinary day with a regular, rhythmic routine. According to my own observations, the first half of the day is very important for a child. How he spends it will be the day. Therefore, arrange intensive activities for your child before lunch, games fresh air, meeting other children. Of course, it is important not to overdo it. The child should be tired by lunchtime, and not overexcited. For a while baby sleep plan your vacation (sleep or favorite personal activities). Organize your own routine correctly. If it’s difficult for you to swing early or you simply don’t have time in the morning (suitable for working people), start the engine in the evening: serve breakfast, prepare clothes for yourself and the children, put the laundry in the car, insert a disc with rhythmic music into the tape recorder. This will make it easier to wake up. Your daily routine should definitely include physical exercise, which will help your body not get tired longer during the day. Find something you enjoy doing. There are exercises for doing with your baby (including on the floor after work). They will delight both you and the child.

Minute 6. Improving planning skills

Planning allows you to avoid rash, spontaneous, unnecessary actions, as well as things that you spend time on separately, but which can be done simultaneously with others. For example, instead of shopping every day, you can buy from a pre-compiled list once. Moreover, if you do this with your husband and two carts, the process speeds up almost twice. Almost all young mothers, after the birth of a child, come to the conclusion that there is no way to do things without planning. Buy yourself a notepad, write with washable markers on the refrigerator, wherever you like, but plan things out for the week and day. Moreover, keep in mind that the younger your child, the more time you should have. With children under three years old, it is advisable to plan no more than 50% of the total time and not to plan more than one non-standard event per day, that is, one that is outside the usual routine (a trip to the clinic, a play group, a trip to the supermarket). To make it easier to implement what you have planned with your child, learn to settle things while he is awake.

Minute 7. Learning new skills - settling things together with the child

One of the biggest problems of a new mother is that the child requires all her attention. As soon as she takes up the dishes, he already shouts: “I want to be held in my arms.” And mom can't refuse. Things pile up and are finally done when the child falls asleep. And the mother should spend this time on rest or on tasks that cannot be done with the child. Include the child in homework is a special skill. It is best for him to learn from other mothers or grandmothers who have already raised several children. They have amazingly It turns out to keep the children occupied: while the grandmother is cooking, one grandson puts the peeled potatoes in a pan, the other sits on the floor and rattles ladles. It is very easy to calm children under one year old with the help of a sling or kangaroo. For older children, let's watch, taste, smell, stir, salt, mix, put vegetables in a pan, rattle plates, etc. Talk, even if you think he doesn't understand yet. Learn to clean the room together before your child goes to sleep. It is very important to have a list of small tasks (for five minutes) to settle them when the child suddenly gets carried away by some game or subject. Have a small corner with toys in every room you are in with your child. In the kitchen, these could be baby-accessible cabinets with unbreakable, non-hazardous kitchen utensils.

Minute 8. Catch the “time thieves”

Some researchers estimate that “time thieves” are robbing us of 50% of our most precious resource. And above all, due to distraction, which leads to loss of concentration. A striking example: you put the child to bed, someone called. The baby woke up. Waste of time, at least half an hour, and even more nerves. All you need to do is turn off your phone while your child sleeps. The most common time thieves today are: telephone, TV, computer and Internet. Many parents in Germany give up television completely after the birth of their child. There are many advantages: firstly, there is no temptation to turn it on, secondly, there is no constant background that is harmful to the child, thirdly, you do not set a negative example for your baby. Endless telephone conversations with relatives about the same thing can be replaced by electronic mailing of photographs with comments (if they own a computer). In other cases, introduce a time limit for talking. The computer and the Internet also need to be used wisely. It is better to read separate articles on this topic.

Minute 9. Get rid of “old horses”

“Old horses” in time management are things, affairs, passions that you needed in the past, but are no longer relevant to you. You do them out of habit. When I heard about them, I immediately found several things in my routine that I didn’t realize I didn’t need. For example, I read mailings and advertisements about real estate, although the question of purchasing it was no longer relevant for us. I threw out some of the things I didn't wear from my wardrobe. more than a year. After you have a baby, you will have a lot of “old horses.” Changing interests, lifestyle, and social circles lead to the need to change both habits and friends. Get rid of the “old horses” and you will immediately feel that you can breathe easier.

Minute 10. Don’t get tired of studying

Young mothers have to teach and learn themselves all the time. There is no way without this. As soon as the child has been taught to eat, he already wants to button his pants himself. Later, completely different problems appear, and the mother immerses herself in books on child psychology. You need to read, but the right books, and even more, watch other parents. Before I figured out who is who in the children's publishing world, I myself re-read a lot of unnecessary things; I post my reviews of useful books here.

These are, of course, the most general recommendations, which can be given for this a short time. Not every problem that has been developing for years can be solved in 10 minutes. I hope my recommendations will help you find the problem itself - understand why I don’t have time to do anything - and concentrate on solving it. After all, we get what we focus on. Good luck and patience with your children!

Article from the magazine “Succeed with Children!” No. 8.
Author Maria Heinz, mother of two children, author of a blog about happiness, and recently an international lawyer.

Do you want to become a reader of the magazine “Succeed with Children!”?

The crazy rhythm of life creates an eternal lack of time, exhausting with its monotony. Job, kindergarten, shopping, cooking, washing and cleaning... The day flies by like an arrow, and the next morning it’s work, home again... We don’t have time to indulge in our favorite hobby, chat with our child, go to the theater. We forget to call our parents, meet with friends, and help our loved ones.

So life goes by in haste and bustle. Looking back at the passing years, we would give a lot for the opportunity to live them differently: enjoying every day, the smile of a child, the flight of a butterfly and the murmur of a stream. But what can you do to stop the inexorable ticking of minutes? Take a moment, stop in the endless whirlwind of worries and slowly think: “Why am I constantly unable to accomplish anything?”

A tale of wasted time

Having realized the scale of the problem, humanity has developed a scientific strategy to solve it. A whole area has emerged that studies ways to detect and eliminate lost watches - time management. Special techniques teach you to understand why you don’t have time to do anything and to save an irreplaceable resource - time. Initially, they were used only for work, but gradually the term expanded to other areas: housework, leisure time, and self-education.

Time Eaters

In American companies, constant delays of an employee after work are the reason for dismissal. Employers consider it unacceptable that staff do not have time to cope with their duties within the allotted hours.

If you're chronically short on time, it's likely due to a lack of self-discipline and an inability to deal with distractions. In time management, factors that steal precious minutes from us are called chronophages. Let's name active time sinks that prevent us from being able to manage and succeed in life.

• Internet

Problem No. 1 of the computer era is dependence on all kinds of gadgets. Often, an Internet user, in addition to email, has several accounts in in social networks, Instagram, forums, uses messengers and other applications. Such a person constantly looks through news feeds, letters and messages, puts endless likes and shares his favorite pictures and statuses with friends.

The insidiousness of the Internet chronophage is that it causes severe addiction. Just look at the people on the subway. 90% of them are completely consumed by smartphones. Meanwhile, if you analyze the value of the information you are viewing, you can safely assign it a garbage rating.

If you regularly update pages and, not seeing new messages, feel anxious, it’s no wonder that you don’t have time to do anything. The time has come to take restrictive measures.

What can you do to get rid of a habit that steals valuable time?

• Filter email: unsubscribe from unnecessary mailings, send particularly annoying recipients to spam.
• Turn off sound notifications, check your accounts no more than 1-2 times a day.
• Leave only those pages that are really important to you, delete the rest without regret.
• Control the duration of online communication, allocate a limited time period for it, gradually reducing it to a reasonable minimum.

In the free moments, do what gives you true pleasure. Chat in real life with old friends, go on a tour of your hometown, take up a creative hobby. Such activities allow you to appreciate the moments of life, to live here and now, and not to exist in virtual reality.

• Clutter in the workplace

If your desk is cluttered with unnecessary papers, to find required document it will take a lot of time. The same applies to folders on your computer. Swipe general cleaning in your files. Organize them by certain signs: work, study, hobbies, correspondence, etc. Place documents that are no longer relevant in the trash. Clean your desktop of unnecessary shortcuts. It may take several hours, but the time savings will be many times greater.

In order to properly organize workplace, special programs have been developed, for example, Japanese system 5C. Its key points:

• sorting,
• maintaining order,
• keeping it clean,
• standardization,
• improvement.

By following these five rules, you will organize working space and learn how to use your time more efficiently. Smart Japanese long ago found the answer to the question: “Why don’t people accomplish anything at work?” The proof is perfection Japanese technology And highest level life in a country on the threshold of the 22nd century.

• The habit of doing everything at once

When it accumulates a large number of tasks, many begin to do them at the same time. By acting this way, it is impossible to get anything done on time. If things are resolved in an emergency mode, the quality of work suffers. Miscalculations and errors occur, which require even more time and effort to eliminate.

The way out of this situation is quite simple. Make a list of tasks every day, ranking them in order of importance. Follow this schedule even if you want to start from the last point. The most important principle of time management is not to leave big things for later. The traditional excuse is “I’ll do it when I have enough time.” In this way, you will not only not get anything done, but also accumulate a lot of unresolved issues. Exercise global problem a little every day, and the result will definitely appear.

If you're not completing your task list in a timely manner, having eliminated all other obstacles, you may be overestimating. real opportunities. Another reason for chronic underachievement is the employer’s desire to dump an overwhelming amount of work onto one person, thus saving on staff salaries.

If the situation does not change, consider changing organizations. Otherwise, lack of time will develop into a problem of lack of health.

• Communication with colleagues and acquaintances

This problem affects women more. In most women's groups, it is considered almost the norm to have long discussions on various topics: from cooking to politics. If you constantly discuss the affairs of your colleagues, it is natural that you do not have time to do your own.

Do not be distracted by personal problems during working hours - this will have to be compensated free time. Communication within reasonable limits is permissible, the main thing is that it does not interfere with the performance of work duties.

• Laziness

The most insidious time sink is able to disguise itself as others. It is laziness that makes you spend hours chatting on the phone, watching endless TV series instead of doing useful thing. Psychologists have found another hidden reason why a person does not have time to do anything - procrastination. This intricate term refers to the habit of constantly postponing urgent matters under various pretexts.

It differs from banal laziness in that a lazy person does not worry about doing nothing. Being in a state of procrastination, a person realizes the harm of idleness. Despite the lack of physical or mental effort, he does not rest, but spends internal energy.

How to find out why I don't get anything done

To find your personal time sinks, start keeping track of your day. Make friends with an organizer and timer. With their help it is easy to do such a useful exercise.

Every hour, write down the specific fruits of your activities. Let us emphasize: not what you did, but specific results. If you were on Odnoklassniki, write: “As a result, nothing.” Have you prepared food? Write down: “Soup, cutlets, compote for three days.”

After a few days, analyze your personal efficiency. How many hours a day are spent doing useful things and how many hours are spent doing nothing? The conclusion is obvious. If you want to keep up with everything, reduce classes with zero efficiency. Replace useless minutes and hours with constructive ones.

Depending on the goals you are pursuing, spend them on acquiring useful skills, developing a business, or raising children. Build a ladder for the long term and take small but confident steps along it. Thanks to the ability to manage time, you will have a chance to overcome the daily routine and say goodbye to the unenviable role of “the squirrel in the wheel.”

Test “Why am I not getting anything done?”

Check your life for temporary leaks. Note the problems that you encounter at least a couple of times a week.

• Meetings at work.
• Conversations with colleagues.
• Putting things off.
• Telephone conversations.
• TV.
• Surfing the Internet.
• Reworking mistakes made in work.
• Conflicts with loved ones and children.
• Waiting in line, traffic jams, etc.
• Communication with virtual acquaintances.
• Lack of inspiration.
• Smoke breaks.
• Taking a long time to fall asleep or waking up slowly.
• Frequent tea parties.
• Unexpected guests.

The results depend on the number of items checked:

• 0-4 - You are capable of becoming a time management guru.
• 5-7 - “Thieves of time” have already begun to steal minutes of your life.
• More than 7 - Be careful! Chronophages follow you step by step. 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there, the sad result is 2-3 irretrievably lost hours.

Effective stop list

Having recognized the personal temporary thieves, proceed to eliminate them. Your main allies are determination and the right motivation. Think about how amazing it will be to spend 3-5 extra hours a week (almost a whole day a month!).

A sample plan might look like this:

• Do not visit certain sites and pages (or reduce your visiting time to a minimum).
• Limit telephone conversations to 5-7 minutes.
• Watch TV shows only on pre-selection in a programme.
• Partially entrust household chores to your loved ones (determine which ones).
• Solve problems in order of their importance (do not take on several things at once).

It is important to indicate specific cases in the stop list and outline clear steps. Avoid vague wording, evasive phrases and unrealistic promises. To have time to live and work, distribute your priorities correctly. Otherwise, nothing can be done.

Compare yourself yesterday with the updated image of the future. Don't forget to take at least a small step forward every day. As soon as life turns into chaos, look for chronophages and reorganize time. Gradually, the saved minutes will add up to the years of a new life, where there will be no place for the question: “Why don’t I have time to do anything?”

Let's start with why we never have enough time to get everything done. Why things often take more attention than we expected.

Remember your student years, namely the sleepless nights. Even a very responsible student will spend one or two nights cramming during a session because he did not have time to learn something during the day.

Researchers Roger Buehler, Dale Griffin and Michael Ross uncovered what is known as the “Planning Fallacy.” Their study (published in the journal social psychology and personality psychology) showed that during planning, subjects tended to focus on the optimistic scenario, which caused problems when unforeseen circumstances arose. A more profitable strategy when planning time is to focus on a pessimistic (or “realistic”) scenario. Of course, you don’t have to immediately assume the worst case scenario, although you shouldn’t forget about it.

The Less Wrong blog offers a different perspective on time. Instead of evaluating your project and deciding how long it will take you, find out how long it took others to complete a similar task. This is a more accurate indicator of how much time you will ultimately have to spend.

But not every task can be compared with a similar one. Cognitive science professor Douglas Hofstadter jokingly coined "Hofstadter's Law." His column in The Guardian explains it best: “Every task will take longer than you expect. Even if we take Hofstadter’s law into account.”

It's an inevitable property of our minds that no matter how we plan, according to Hofstadter's Law, tasks will always take longer, even if we take this delay into account. So don't be surprised if the time spent on a project goes beyond all imaginable limits.

How to increase or decrease urgency

A study conducted at a university in Belgium showed that we are more clear about immediate events than events in the distant future (we also remember events in the recent past better).

Therefore, if we focus on the details of the future project, it will seem closer and more relevant to us. If you don't hesitate early stage, then lay the foundation for your project in minutes. This process will naturally put you in a working mood, and you will avoid a mountain of procrastination.

In other words, the main thing is to start. This is why self-development experts (such as Tony Robbins) advise making goals extremely specific and understandable. This emphasizes the relevance of the goal and makes it less distant.

Move fast and make mistakes

“Ask for forgiveness, not permission” is traditional entrepreneurial advice.

Most people can easily stop you when you decide to start, but will hesitate to interfere if you are already moving.

And experiments confirm this. A study conducted at the University of Chicago shows that people are much more upset when anticipating something bad than when that bad thing has already happened.

This comes from the realization that we can change the future, but we cannot change the past. And also because of the ability to evaluate the mistakes of the past. The prospect of failure reflects poorly on us emotional state, while we become bolder when failure is over.

If you're planning to make a change, such as taking initiative at work, and want the least amount of hassle and the most support, take the first step and ask for "forgiveness" if something goes wrong. In any case, taking a step, even if it’s the wrong one, is better than doing nothing. Again, the main thing is to start.

How to change the value of time

Another study from the University of Chicago found that people place more importance on the immediate future than the immediate past. Scientists have observed that the emotional impact of a future event increases as it approaches, but once the event has occurred, its emotional impact decreases significantly.

The study points to one of the main rules of successful negotiations: pay later if you are a buyer, and sell early if you are a seller.

In theory, this means that you are unlikely to receive more if you send an invoice after the service has been provided. Of course, if you're a service provider, you'll want to get paid up front and maximize your profits. Don't settle for a postpaid payment system.

Unfortunately, we don't have a magical DeLorean that we can jump into and go back in time and correct our mistakes. But simply being aware of these patterns will play a huge role in making decisions, planning, and understanding why we behave and react the way we do.

Today I would like to look at this common situation: I'm in a rush at work, I work a lot, but I don't get anything done. According to my observations, such a picture occurs very often, and among the most different people, engaged in the most various jobs: starting from office workers, ending with housewives. Why this happens and how to fix it - you will learn about this by reading this article.

So, in Lately The still little-known term “faffing” is beginning to come into use, denoting the process of any activity that does not bring results (from English to faff - to do something unorganized, to fuss, to play the fool).

So, I constantly notice people who try to portray very hectic activity (I’m always busy, I work a lot), but in essence this is nothing more than that same faffing. In Russian it can be called this: business doing nothing. Because the real results of their work are never visible, or they are very insignificant, completely incomparable with the time spent working.

“I work a lot, but I don’t get anything done!” - such people think. Because there is a lot to do, a lot of work. “I work in emergency mode 10/12/15/your version hours a day, but I still don’t get anything done!” “But I’m great, I’m a hard worker!” “To achieve something, you have to work hard!” Etc.

I hasten to disappoint you...

To achieve something, you need to work not hard, but productively! That is, for the result! And if one person achieves the same result in an hour, and another in an emergency working day, then who did the better job? Who takes longer or who is more efficient? I think the answer is obvious...

But if the situation “there is a rush at work, I work a lot, but I don’t have time to do anything, there is no result” has already become your faithful companion, then there is nothing to be happy about. You need to look for the cause and eliminate it in order. What could be the reason? I see several main ones, which I will consider further.

Reason 1. You don't plan your day. If you work a lot, but don’t get anything done, most likely the reason lies in the lack of... You do everything chaotically, haphazardly, grab onto everything in a row, of course, this way you will never be able to show a good result. You will be constantly busy with something, you will work in emergency mode, you will be nervous, irritated, complaining to everyone and yourself about being too busy, but you will not achieve anything significant until you begin to competently plan your day and act according to the plan.

Reason 2. You don't know how to prioritize. The next common reason for emergency and fruitless work is incorrect work. Let's say you planned your day, but at the same time you incorrectly identified the main priorities, main goals and objectives. For example, we planned first of all everything that was simpler and easier to do, instead of starting with the most important, global tasks. Naturally, then there is not enough time for these important tasks, and performing small, secondary ones does not give any significant results.

Reason 3. You are distracted too much. Let’s say you’re doing well with planning and priorities, but you’re still always “working hard, I can’t get anything done!” In this case, you are most likely doing very poorly with self-organization; you are too distracted by all sorts of things. While working, you constantly correspond on social networks, chat on the phone, discuss something with colleagues, drink coffee, smoke, etc. Time passes, and it seems to you that you are working a lot, that you are overloaded with work, but in fact, you are just doing business - doing nothing.

Reason 4. Pareto's law. And finally the last one important point, which I strongly recommend paying attention to is the so-called. This principle says that only 20% of the labor and time spent bring 80% of the result, and vice versa, 80% of the labor and time spent bring only 20% of the result. Pareto's law works successfully in the most different areas human activity and even in nature, which has already been proven by numerous studies. Your task is to identify the most effective 20% of your work and concentrate on them. That's when you'll see good results your work. And if you focus on the ineffective 80%, the result will be appropriate.

This is roughly how I see the situation: “emergency at work, I work a lot, but I don’t have time to do anything.” If you have any other vision of this problem, I will be glad to hear it in the comments.

In the meantime, I say goodbye to you until the next publications on. Improve your financial literacy and be productive!

Once a passerby, watching a woodcutter, noticed
that he was chopping down a tree with a completely dull axe.
Wanting to help, he offered to sharpen his axe,
after all, a sharp ax cuts better.
To which I received a simple answer:
« I don't have time to sharpen my axe,
I need to chop».

If you are familiar with this condition, then let's figure out why it occurs and how it can be overcome.

Why are we flickering?

According to System-Vector Psychology by Yuri Burlan, 24% of people - representatives of the so-called skin vector - are prone to such a lifestyle. They naturally have increased mobility, excellent reactions and a need for change. Their species role is to obtain food and everything else, preserve what they have obtained and optimize what has already been created, saving time, energy and resources. Also a feature of leather workers is discipline, self-restraint and logic of thinking.

Why does it happen that these disciplined people behave so disorganized? Why do they fluctuate and everything falls out of their hands? Because their innate properties were not realized due to, for example, loss of a job, divorce from their husband, or a crisis in the country. Any situations associated with material losses cause them super-stress.

Is there a way out?

System-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan helps in this with great efficiency, as evidenced by many reviews from trainees on this technique. You can read these reviews on the portal of system-vector psychology by Yuri Burlan.

The article was written using materials