Effective planning and organization of the working day: methods, rules and why it is important

 Hello! In this article, we will talk about planning a working day.

Today you will learn:

1. Why plan your workday;
2. Who needs it;
3. How to plan a working day.

Planning a working day

In the 21st century, the rhythm of life markedly accelerated and continues to gain momentum. If earlier, in order to be successful, it was required to perform one amount of work, but now it takes much more to achieve success. And people are starting to run into a lack of time. If you chase after all the daily tasks that every day throws us life, there is no time left.

Planning a working day is a tool that helps not only to make efficient use of working time but also to reduce it. This is not a trivial list of cases that must be performed in the strict order: planning - the ability to choose what to do, why, and when.

That's why competent planning not only structures everything you do in a day but also frees up your time. First of all, you need to do the most important things - this is the main rule of time management. For every person who has free time at work and does not have a clear timetable, it is useful to distribute his time correctly.

What does planning involve?

Planning of working hours includes:

• Prioritization.
• Selection of important tasks.
• Finding the best ways to solve them.
• Looking for employment in your spare time.

Prioritization-helps you to understand what needs attention, what can be solved by itself, and what question should be simply ignored. Time and information have become much more valuable than before, and to get angry at what does not produce results is a pointless thing.

The choice of important tasks- is almost the same as prioritization, only within one working day. You choose what will bring an important result, what you need to do urgently, and what can be postponed.

Finding the best ways to solve problems- is a very important point. When planning, you should consider not only what you will do but also how it is best done. It is important not just to save time, but to do everything as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

Work with free time-should also be part of the work plan. Have you been free for 2 hours a day, which you can spend on something? You can say about this boss, and he will load you with work, you can do self-education, and you can make efforts to develop your own project.

Why it is important to plan a working day

Everyone who has ever faced freelancing, business, or "work at will" (like a taxi) perfectly understands the importance of arranging the affairs during the day. But, for example, most office workers do not consider it necessary to plan their working day.

In fact, the main reason for planning a working day is to increase one's own efficiency. If you listen to your own body, you can understand that some things are given to you better at one time, and some - to another. For example, it is more convenient for you to make calls to other companies after dinner, since you have already woken up but have not had time to get tired, and monotonous work is faster in the evening, so it is better to put information into the database for 5-6 hours.

Planning for the working day takes into account not only the basic elements of solving problems but also the personal preferences of each person. Time management was not done to impose on everyone the same pattern of highly effective work. You must adjust your tasks to the characteristics of your body.

Organizing and planning your workday allows you to do more in less time, leaving time for what you like.

Who should plan their working day

Everyone should be able to plan their working day. So you can save time and work more efficiently. But there are three categories of people who are simply obliged to engage in personal planning.

Freelancers- The most undisciplined employee is a freelancer. He does not have a clear timetable, but it's time to sit down to do something, just a deadline. That's why freelancers who work with several clients, it is very important to plan your working day. It often turns out that new orders appear with a difference of one to two days, and if you pull to the last, you can not have time to work on two projects.

Businessmen- Here, everything is almost the same as in freelancing. Especially if it's business online, on the one hand - you can safely rest at home when your employees are working, but on the other - this approach will inevitably prove to be a failure. In the West, among businessmen, the cult of workaholism is flourishing. They believe that if you do not work 60 hours a week, then you are lazy and you have nothing to do in business.

Leaders- The manager will not always be a businessman. The owner of the company may not take an active part in the affairs of his company, but its director assumes responsibility for the operation of the whole mechanism. That is why the leaders of medium and large companies should make good use of their time because the future of the company depends on their decisions in the long term. Scheduling a manager's working day is the way to most effectively allocate your time between strategically important tasks.

Methods of working day planning

There can be a lot of methods for the correct planning of the working day. But one of the most effective is the Eisenhower Matrix. Its essence is as follows.

There are four squares:

1. Square A - Urgent and important matters.
2. Square B - non-urgent and important cases.
3. Square C - urgent and unimportant matters.
4. Square D - non-urgent and unimportant cases.

Square A should almost always remain empty. With proper planning, all important cases must settle in square B and be satisfied as they approach A.

Square B is an important thing that will help you reach your goal. This includes all the things that need to be done within one working day.

Square C means urgent and unimportant matters that need to be transferred to other people. A vivid example of urgent but unimportant matters is to call a potential client. This can make an employee better focus on other things.

Square D means that there are non-urgent and unimportant matters that do not bring you closer to the goal, do not give positive emotions, and in principle are not needed; in this square is worth writing down all the useless ideas.

This division of cases in terms of their importance and urgency allows you to understand what needs to be paid attention to during the working day and what can be safely forgotten. The matrix helps not only in work processes but also in everyday life. If you want to learn English, it's interesting and will help you in your career - it's square B. But if you want to learn Spanish just to know if - it's D, and you can safely forget about it.

Rules for planning the time of the working day

There are several rules for how to effectively manage your workday. For convenience, let's break the day into three parts:

• The beginning of the workday.
• The main workflow.
• Completion.

The morning is the most important stage. Depending on how you slept, how they got up, and what they did, your mood, psychological mood, and working capacity will depend.

The principles of the "right" morning include the following:

• Positive attitude. If you wake up every day with the thought that you hate your job, productivity will decline. Try to start the morning with pleasant thoughts.
• Try not to "swing." Did you notice behind yourself that after you get up in the morning, you need 30 to 40 minutes more to come to your senses? This time, which is not worth losing. Immediately after awakening, take a shower, brew coffee, and instead of half an hour "to nowhere," you can safely have breakfast.
• Slow breakfast and the way to work. Starting a day without haste is very important. When you are in a hurry, the body spends extra strength and nerves, which could go to more productive work. If you can not afford a hearty breakfast and a leisurely trip - lie down later and get up early.
• Key tasks. Most successful businessmen tend to argue that the most important tasks must be solved in the morning. As the saying goes, "If you want to do everything, eat the frog for breakfast." In the role of a frog, there is a case for which you do not want to undertake at all. Do it in the morning, and a positive attitude from the fact that the "frog is eaten" will last for the whole day.

The main workflow consists of the following tasks:

• Solve urgent problems. It is important to understand that if an urgent matter has fallen on you during a working day, you do not need to switch all attention solely to it. First, you need to understand whether it's important or not. If important, then you must immediately proceed to it. If not, hand over responsibility for doing it to another person.
• Follow the deadlines. Every day you must set yourself an approximate time frame, for which you must cope with the whole scope of tasks. It is important that it is not "Make it all up to 18 hours", but "At 14:00 - start making a plan, at 15:00 - analyze the indicators, at 16:00 - draw up a report," etc.
• Order in the workplace. This is an implicit but very important point. If there is a mess on your table, your view will be constantly lost among it. And if in the workplace there is some kind of extraneous document, you can start to study it and just lose 20 - 30 minutes.
• Do not follow the impulses. It's the most important. There are some triggers that make you switch your attention from work to something less important. Call a friend when you analyze a sales plan? Better not to do it, then you will lose concentration and can easily lose your working spirit.
• Group the routine. It is very important. If you need to make 60 phone calls during the day, then it is better to break them into several small groups, 10 to 15 pieces at a time. After you have called, you can perform another task. Constantly switching from a routine to an active activity, you can do much more.

Completion of the working day is based on the following principles:

• Complete the necessary. There is a group of cases that enter the square "important, but not urgent." They are best done during the working day, and the square "important and urgent" is always kept empty.
• Check the results with the plan. All that you have done in a day, you need to compare with your plans. If you just started planning your workday, then small deviations from the plan will be in the order of things. Try to keep them as small as possible.
• Make a plan for the next day. It is best to do this after the end of the previous working day. So you keep working mood and, but it is important to make a real program of affairs.

If you are a manager, you must work closely with your secretary during the working day.

Remember that all these are common tips. They do not take into account your individual characteristics. If it is more convenient for you to do urgent work in the daytime and not in the morning, this is your right. If you prefer to do the big and complicated thing last, and this does not affect your mood for one day, make it the last one.

Planning of the working day should be individual.

Basic mistakes in planning the working day

Despite the fact that the practice of time management is firmly settled in our lives, most people make typical mistakes when planning their working day. Here are a few of them.

Error 1. Invalid prioritization.

The Eisenhower Matrix tells us that we must do important things. But many people can easily confuse what is important to them. Square A, which should remain empty and responsible for urgent and important cases, they are often confused with C, where unimportant cases that require immediate intervention have accumulated.

It is important to remember that you must expend your strength exclusively on what is important to you at this point in time. Work on the future should be when things can be postponed and correctly planned.

Mistake 2. Too much time is spent on small things.

In order to explain why in the first place, it is necessary to make a "base," and only then trivialities, we will use the Pareto Law. It says that 20% of efforts give 80% of the result. That is, when you are working on something important, you spend 20% of the effort and reach 80% of the result. When you work on trivialities, you get a result of 4 times less and spend four times more energy.

Let's consider a small example. You need to start an advertising campaign. If you create ten creatives, pick up the keywords and phrases to them, and run on the prepared sites, it will be 20% of the work, which will give 80% of the result. But if you take time to edit fonts and images, select and polish phrases, search for additional platforms for advertising, then spend much more effort. All this will have to be done, but after the start of the advertising campaign, when you reach the first result.

Mistake 3. Lack of time for personal affairs.

Every person should have a personal life and freedom of choice. If you have a lot to do and you do not find one-two hours to do your hobby, then this is bad planning for your own day. Planning work time is important not only because it allows you to do more. It gives you the opportunity to practice without haste the business that you like.

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