Anyone to modern man There is a catastrophic lack of time, and everyone complains about their own disorganization; either you forget about an important meeting, or you are late, or you don’t make a phone call on time. Because of this, relationships with colleagues and friends deteriorate, work plans collapse, and well-being worsens. The more organized a person is, the easier it is for him to manage work, household chores and life in general, the better his relationships with others. Being organized is not an innate ability, but a skill that can be learned. In his book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, David Allen shares simple techniques for increasing productivity and developing the right approach to organizing your life. The author claims that the most important thing is the ability to relax; our productivity depends on it. Consciousness should be clear and thoughts ordered. From the book you will learn how to separate important things from unimportant ones, how to set goals and determine priorities, how to plan, how to improve personal organization, and how to save time. The book is intended for a wide readership, but will primarily be of interest to those readers who suffer from excessive stress at work.

The work belongs to the genre of Philosophical Sciences. Sociology. On our website you can download the book “How to Deal with Things” for free in epub, fb2 format or read online. The book's rating is 3.87 out of 5. Here, before reading, you can also turn to reviews from readers who are already familiar with the book and find out their opinion. In our partner's online store you can buy and read the book in paper form.

The situation when a person has a huge list of tasks hanging over him and at the same time he manages to maintain a fresh head, a positive sense of calm control and work productively is quite real. This is a wonderful way to live and work, achieving high level efficiency. Recently, this has become a working style that is required of successful specialists high class. You already know what and how you need to do to reach this level. However, if you are part of the majority, you need to apply this knowledge in a shorter time frame and in a clear, systematic way so that you can reach the top instead of floundering somewhere at the bottom. Although the method and technology described in the book are based on common sense and are intended to practical application However, most people still have common work habits that should be changed before using the system. It's necessary to make small adjustments in the way you clarify and organize the tasks that occupy your attention.

All methods presented here are based on two key goals:

1. Collect all the things that need to be done now, later, someday, big, small or not so much into a logical system that you can trust, but not store it in your head.

2. Force yourself to make final decisions about everything. That is, you should always have a plan and know exactly what needs to be done next - and you can complete this task or revise it at any time.

This book contains a proven method for professional organization high-performance workflow. Reliable tools, tricks, techniques and tricks are described here. As you will later see, all the principles and methods apply to everything you do, both in everyday life and at work *. Like many of your predecessors, you can use what I describe as a continuous dynamic style in your work and in your world. Or, again like many, you can simply use our method as a guide to more advanced control if you feel you need it.

Problem: New demands create a lack of resources

Almost everyone I've worked with has felt like they have too many tasks and not enough time to get them all done. Just a week ago, I was consulting with an employee of a large investment firm who was convinced that the new corporate management position he had been awarded would come at the expense of his family responsibilities. Another mid-level manager was trying to cope with 150 or more query emails a day, cherishing the hope of almost doubling the staff of the regional office within a year - from 1,100 to 2,000 people - all so that he could spend the weekends not at work.

The paradox of the new millennium: people want to improve their quality of life and, at the same time, they increase their stress load when they take on more than they can handle. The eye sees, but the tooth numbs. And here is the result: most people become frustrated and confused while looking for ways to improve the situation.

Work no longer has clear boundaries

The main reason for the increasing stress is that the nature of work itself has revolutionized, while our skills and capabilities have remained the same. It was only in the second half of the twentieth century that what “work” meant was transformed from concepts of assembly lines and all kinds of motor actions into what Peter Drucker so succinctly expressed with the phrase “the work of the mind.” Previously, work was self-evident. The fields must be plowed, the cars repaired, the boxes packed, the cows milked. You knew exactly what work needed to be done - you saw it. And it was very obvious when the work was done and when it wasn't.

Today, most of us have no real boundaries for our projects. Most people I know have at least half a dozen tasks that they are trying to accomplish right now, but even if they spent the rest of their lives trying to complete them, they would not be able to achieve a brilliant result. Perhaps you too have encountered a similar problem. How potentially fruitful could the conference be? How effective will the training program be? What inspiring impact will the essay you are currently writing have? How to motivate a staff meeting? How functional will the reorganization be? One final question: Exactly how much meaningful information must be provided to execute projects in the best possible way? The process of finding an answer to such questions can be endless and potentially easily achievable, such as searching on the Internet.

On the other hand, the absence of boundaries gives rise to more work.

Many of today's organizational challenges require cross-communication, collaboration, and participation. The bastion of the individualistic office is crumbling, and with it goes the luxury of not having to read multi-respondent emails from the marketing department and God-knows-what other departments.

Our work continues to change

Blurring the boundaries of our projects and work in general can cause a lot of trouble in itself. But now we add to this the constant change in the very definition of our work. At seminars, I often ask: “How many of you at work do only what you were hired to do?” Raised hands in the audience are a rarity. The work may have fuzzy boundaries and may be constantly changing, but if you were able to stick to a clearly defined set of responsibilities for a long enough time, you could probably figure out exactly what you needed to do - how much and at what level - to don't go crazy.

However, such lucky ones are few. There are two reasons for this:

1. The companies we work for are constantly changing their goals, products, partners, clients, markets, technologies and shareholders. And all this naturally affects structures, styles, roles and responsibilities.

2. Today, the average worker has much more freedom than ever before. He can change his career as often as his parents changed jobs. And even workers in their forties and fifties try to maintain standards of constant growth. Their goals are much more in line with the mainstream "professional, managerial and performance development" - which simply means that they do not intend to stay in their position for any length of time.

So, all this is very vague - what is our job, and what emotional, mental and physical efforts must be made to perform it successfully? We receive a huge amount of information, make many contacts and generate approximately the same gigantic heap of ideas and all kinds of agreements with ourselves and others. But we are not so well prepared to deal with all these internal and external obligations.

Old methods and skills are not enough

Neither our classical education, nor traditional time management, nor the abundance of self-organization tools, such as the Microsoft Outlook organizer or the Palm digital personal assistant, meet the requirements of the times. If you've tried any of the above, then you've probably realized that it's completely unsuitable for the current speed, complexity, and constant shifting priorities of what you do. In our complex, but interesting time, the ability to be successful, calm and in control requires new ways of thinking and working - there are not enough new methods, technologies and work skills to help us stay afloat in the modern world.

You may have realized that a planner, while really important, actually helps you organize only a small part of your activities. Yes, and daily to-do lists indicating priorities were unable to cope with the full volume of heterogeneous tasks that every professional has to deal with. The working day of many people consists of tens and even hundreds of letters, and there is no way to ignore a single request, a single complaint or a single order. Very few people could (or even should) organize their tasks into three priorities "A", "B" and "C", or make a to-do list, without fearing that the first phone call or boss order would not discredit this whole plan.

Close-ups against everyday worries

On the other hand, many management books, techniques, seminars and gurus promote “long-term thinking” as a solution to problems in our complex world. When you clarify your goals and values, your consciousness itself will begin to issue orders, directing your work towards the right direction. However, in practice, value deliberation often does not produce the expected results. I have seen many attempts like this fail for the following reasons:

1. There are too many distractions in the daily routine that do not allow you to concentrate on more important positions.

2. Ineffective self-organization systems create a huge subconscious aversion to starting new, even larger-scale projects, which, most likely, will also be organized to hell and will lead to even more bigger distractions and stress.

3. When the highest priorities and values are determined, a whole series of additional positions appear out of nowhere in front of us, which, in accordance with our standards, also require changes. Already at this stage, we begin to get irritated by the exorbitant number of things that need to be done. What have we added to our already large list of tasks? Our values!

Concentration on core priorities and values is really necessary, I have no doubt. But this does not mean at all that there will be fewer cases. Quite the opposite - it increases the stakes in the game, which will have to be played day after day. For example, an HR manager's decision to maintain a high quality work environment in order to attract and retain talent, Not makes his life easier.

In our new culture There is a significant gap in intellectual work - there is no system with a logical chain of behavioral models and tools that works effectively precisely at the level where the work actually takes place. Such a system should combine both the results of a perspective view and the smallest details; it must take into account multiple levels of priorities; must control hundreds of streams of new information arriving every day; should save significantly more time and effort than is expended on its support; should, in the end, simplify the process of completing tasks.

Perspective: "State of Readiness" of a Martial Arts Master

Imagine for a second what could have happened if your self-organization system really allowed you to continuously keep everything under control at all levels. What if you could actually give 100% of your attention to whatever you are doing at the moment, without distractions?

And this Maybe. There is a way to take control of everything, while remaining calm and accomplishing meaningful things with minimal effort - all this really. You you can experience a state that martial arts masters call “a consciousness as crystal clear as water,” and champion athletes call the “zone” inside our complex world. In fact, you've probably already experienced this condition from time to time.

It is a state of functioning, fulfillment and existence when consciousness is clear and only constructive things happen. This state can be achieved by anyone who needs to work effectively in the challenging conditions of twenty-first century life. This state is becoming more and more a necessary condition for professionals who want to maintain balance and consistently achieve positive work results.

World class rower Craig Lambert described feeling of crystal clear consciousness:

Rowers have their own name for the state of the absence of any resistance: swing... Remember the childhood delight of swinging on a swing in the yard: the ease of movement, the impulse coming from the swing itself. The swing carries us: we don’t put any effort into it. We pump our legs to fly higher, but gravity does most of the work for us. We don't put in much effort; most of the work happens on its own. The boat carries you - as if it wants to move faster. Our task is to work together with the boat - to finally stop stopping it, trying to accelerate on our own. Trying too hard will slow the boat down. Trying becomes a struggle, and the struggle discredits itself. Some try to become aristocrats, but their very effort proves otherwise. Aristocrats don't try - they've already achieved it. Also, a swing is a state of achieved goal.

Comparison with crystal clear consciousness

In karate there is a pattern called “crystal clear consciousness”, which defines a position of complete readiness. Imagine throwing a pebble into a quiet pond. What happens to the water? The answer is: the reaction of the water depends entirely on the force of the throw and the size of the pebble, and then it becomes calm again. There won't be a fountain, but don't expect any circles in the water either.

In karate, the most important role is played by the speed of the blow, not its strength. That's why not at all strong people can learn to break boards and split bricks with their hands: this does not require brute force, but only the ability to correctly set the speed of the impact. But tense hands cannot make quick movements. So the last stage of martial arts training requires balance and relaxation like nothing else. Crystal clarity of thought and flexibility are the most important thing.

Anything that causes you to react inappropriately (too violently or too sluggishly) can control you, and often does so. The wrong reaction to email, to co-workers, to your projects, to magazines you haven't read, to thoughts about necessary things to do, to children or to your boss - leads to less effective results than you would like. Most people give things either more or less attention than they deserve, simply because they do not have crystal clarity of thought.

Can you get into your “productive state” when needed?

Think about the last time you were productive. Chances are, you felt like you were in control of the situation, you weren't being pressured, you were focused on what you were doing, time seemed to fly by (what?! It's already lunch time?!), and you felt like significantly closer to the desired result. Would you like to experience this again?

And if your state is far from the one described above - you feel that you have lost control of the situation, you are unsettled, your attention is scattered, you are bored - can you return to this state? This is when the GTD methodology will have a huge impact on your life, helping you return to a state of “crystal clear consciousness” and work using all your resources and abilities at the maximum level.

Principle: Effective interaction with internal commitments

Over twenty years of studying and conducting trainings, I have come to the most banal truth - main reason stress is that people mishandle the responsibilities they make or are forced to take on. Even those who do not experience constant stress will feel great relief, be able to concentrate better, and work with more energy once they learn to more effectively control the “open questions” in their lives.

Surely, you have made many more agreements with yourself than you realize, and each of them - small or large - has been traced by your subconscious. These are the very “open questions” and incompleteness, which I define as something that distracts your attention to things that are not related to the current matter. Open questions can be anything from big to-do list items like “End global hunger” to smaller items like “Hire a new assistant” and “Replace the electric sharpener.” It is quite possible that you, too, keep more internal obligations in the back of your mind than you yourself are aware of. Just think how many details you need to think through if you have even a small responsibility. For example, you have an obligation to deal with all new email and voicemails.

And of course, there are many projects that you believe must be created because they are in your area of responsibility, the same with unclear goals and directions, a career that requires attention, and life in general, in which it is necessary to maintain a balance of everything this.

You have established a certain level of internal responsibility for everything in your life and work, and this is precisely an open question of sorts.

To effectively take on the task, you must first identify and somehow collect all of your things that constantly ring your bell, and then plan a way to deal with them. Despite its apparent simplicity, in practice most people have no idea how this can be done in the best way.

Basic requirements for organizing obligations

Organizing commitments requires some basic actions and specific behaviors:

Firstly, if you keep obligations in your head, then your consciousness is no longer crystal clear. Everything that you currently consider unfinished should be collected and organized not in your head, but in a system that you can trust, and where you will periodically look.

Second, you must be clear about what your commitment is and what exactly you must do to make progress in fulfilling it.

Third, once you have listed all the things that need to be done, you need to create reminders about them, organized into a system that you will review regularly.

Important exercise: testing this model

I suggest you write down on paper your project or situation that first comes to mind. Which positions are you most concerned about? What distracts you, interests you, or otherwise takes up a significant portion of your attention? This could be a project or problem that requires you to resolve at the moment, or simply a situation that you need to resolve the sooner the better.

Perhaps you have a travel holiday coming up and you need to make some final decisions about it. Or you inherited $6 million and don't know what to do with the cash. Doesn't matter.

It's clear? Great! Now, in one sentence, describe the successful outcome you are striving for. In other words, how everything should look so that you can safely say “the job is finished.” You can write something simple, for example, “Go on vacation to Hawaii,” “Resolve the situation with customer XXX,” “Resolve the situation at Susan’s school,” “Clarify the new distributed management structure.” All clear? Great!

Now write down your specific physical next action that you are going to take to move forward with this activity. If you have nothing else to do in your life, then take a closer look: where would you go right now and what visible action would you take? Maybe you'll pick up the phone and call? Will you go to your computer and write an email? Will you sit down with a pen and paper and brainstorm about it? Would you personally talk to your spouse, your secretary, your lawyer, your boss? Will you go to the building materials store and buy nails? What?

Have you answered this question? Fine.

Did you benefit from these two minutes of reflection? If you, like most of the students in my seminars, complete this exercise, then this will help you at least relax and concentrate a little, and establish a little more control. You'll also be motivated to do something about an issue you've barely thought about before. Imagine a thousandfold increase in motivation as a way of living and working.

If you learned anything useful from this exercise, think about it: what has changed? What happened that improved your working conditions? The situation itself has not changed, at least in the physical world. And, of course, it's not over yet. What actually happened is that you simply received a clear definition of the desired outcome, and your next specific action required to achieve it.

But what did this give rise to? Answer: reflection. Not much, but enough to define your commitment and the resources needed to fulfill it.

The real work of intellectual labor

Welcome to the real world of intellectual work, where the basic principle applies: “You should think about your work more carefully than you think necessary, but not as carefully as you imagine with horror.”. Peter Drucker writes: “In intellectual work there are no tasks. They must be defined. “What are the expected results of the work?” - this is the main question by which the productivity of intellectual work is determined. And answering this question, you take a risk in any case. Usually, there is no correct answer doesn't exist, but there are plenty to choose from. And for productivity to be achieved, results must be clearly defined."

Most people struggle to figure out the real meaning of things in their lives so they can then decide what to do with them. We've never really been taught that we need to think about it before we start work: most of the day's activities are already determined for us by the mountain of unfinished things that glare at us when we arrive at work, or by our family needing food and washing, or children who need to be dressed and put on shoes. Very few people consider it necessary to spend time concentrating on the desired outcome. However, it is precisely thinking about the result that is the most effective method make dreams come true.

Why do things go around in my head?

Most often, the reason that something is on your mind is because you want to change it, however:

You have not yet clearly defined the desired result;

You have not yet decided what the next step you are going to take will be;

You haven't set up reminders of the outcome and required action stored in a system you can trust.

That's why it keeps running through your head. Until thoughts are organized and decisions are made and stored in the system that you absolutely If you are always in control, your brain will not stop involuntarily returning to the problem. You can deceive anyone, but not your consciousness. It certainly knows whether you came to the right decisions or not, whether you wrote down the desired results and set reminders in a system that you can trust so you don’t have to think about it anymore. Until you do this, your consciousness will not stop returning to it again and again. Even if you have decided on the next step, your consciousness will not let you go until you set a reminder, so much so that you are absolutely sure that it will work. The need to do this will put pressure on you, and especially when there is nothing you can do, and this will only increase stress.

Your consciousness has no consciousness of its own

At least part of your consciousness is completely stupid - but stupid in a unique way. If consciousness had an innate intelligence, it would remind you of things that need to be done only when you could do something.

Do you have a flashlight whose batteries are dead? When would you think your consciousness would remind you that it’s time to replace them? When you notice that these ones have already sat down! Not very smart. If your consciousness had an innate intelligence, it would remind you of dead batteries when you pass a display case with batteries in a store. And it would also remind you of the size of the batteries.

How many times have you thought about the same thing you need to do from the moment you woke up this morning until now? More than once? For what? After all, it’s just a waste of time and energy to think about what you still can’t make progress in right now. And it's just unnecessary worry about what you should be doing and you're not doing.

Most people seem to let their minds get too busy, especially when the “too much to do” syndrome sets in.

Perhaps you also paid special attention to such categories as “miscellaneous”, “open questions”, but this is not able to help you effectively deal with matters, and what can be done is your consciousness.

Transformation of "Miscellaneous"

My definition of "miscellaneous" is this. "Miscellaneous" is something that you constantly allow to interfere with your psychological or physical world, no matter where you are, and for which you have not yet determined the desired result and the next specific action to achieve it. The reason most organizational systems haven't worked for most people is because those people didn't transform all the "stuff" they were trying to organize. As long as cases are classified as “miscellaneous”, it is impossible to control them.

Most of the to-do lists I've seen over the years (if there were any at all) consisted mostly of "stuff" - and no productive real work to be done. These were reminders of the many unresolved problems that had not yet been presented in the form of desired results and actions - they were outlines of a plan for what the list writer should "do."

"Miscellaneous" isn't such a bad thing. What captures our attention is, by its nature, precisely that - “different”. But as soon as this “miscellaneous” enters our lives, we simply have to clarify and classify this “miscellaneous” for ourselves. This is our responsibility as knowledge workers; if the “miscellaneous” is already transformed and obvious, then our assessment will probably no longer be required, but only physical labor will be necessary.

At the end of one of my seminars, a senior manager at a large biotechnology company looked at the to-do list she had brought with her and exclaimed, “Oh my God! This is a misshapen, impossible mess!” This is perhaps the best description of the to-do lists of most personal organization systems that I've ever heard. A huge number of people have tried to organize their work by rearranging incomplete problems that even they themselves did not fully understand; they had no idea what and how much they needed to organize in order to achieve a worthwhile result. They should take everything that requires thought and reflect on it so that the effort spent on organization is worth it.

Action Management Process

You can train, almost like an athlete, to be faster, more responsible, more proactive, more mentally focused. You can think more effectively and control your results more easily. You can minimize the loss of time in all areas of your life - professional and personal - and manage to do much more with less effort. You can create a system for transforming all your “stuff” to function in the 21st century.

But before you achieve any of the above, you should develop the habit of maintaining a pure mind. And the way to achieve this, as we have already seen, is not at all time management, information or priorities. In the end:

You don’t organize 5 minutes, withdrawing on the sixth;

You don't organize redundant information - otherwise a trip to the library would end in your death, or the first access to the Internet or even just opening a telephone directory would make you simply explode;

You don't organize your priorities - you just have them There is.

Instead, the key to organizing "stuff" is organizing your actions.

Organizing action is the main task

What do you do with your time, what do you do with your information, and what do you do with your priorities according to which you must allocate your limited resources? This is the real problem - choosing the right action for any moment in time, this is the real question - how to manage actions.

It may sound cliché, but you might be surprised by the sheer number of projects and commitments that most people leave without a specific next action. And it’s really difficult to manage actions that haven’t even been identified and thought through yet. Most people have dozens of things to do to get ahead on many fronts, but they don't even know what those things are yet. Therefore, the typical complaint “I don’t have time for...” (fill in as appropriate) is quite understandable, because many projects seem overwhelming, and they really are overwhelming, because you can’t complete the whole project at once! You can only perform an action related to this project. In the right conditions, many actions take only a minute or two, but the project is moving!

Having taught and coached several thousand professionals, I realized that lack of time is not their main problem (although they may easily think so); the real problem is the lack of clarity and certainty about the project as a whole, and about the specific activities associated with it that are necessary to complete it. Clarifying things from the beginning, when they first arise, rather than when the problem has already grown, allows people to reap the benefits of action management.

The value of a bottom-up approach

Over the years of working to improve personal productivity, I have come to appreciate the benefits of a bottom-up approach, where we start at the most mundane levels of current activities and commitments. In my mind, the most correct way of working should be “from top to bottom”, i.e. first defining personal and corporate missions, clarifying goals, and then concentrating on the details of implementation. However, the problem is that most people are so mired in the routine of everyday obligations that it is quite difficult for them to concentrate on something larger and more promising. Therefore, a bottom-up approach is usually more effective.

Keeping your flow in check - your input and your consciousness - will help you stay on track and best expand your capabilities. A flow of creative energy will open, which will raise your level of concentration to new heights, and your confidence in your ability to implement creative ideas will increase. A feeling of freedom and inspiration comes to those people who roll up their sleeves and adhere to this rule.

You'll be better prepared to reach a higher level of focused thinking if your work organization tools become part of your style. There are much more important things to think about than your incoming information, however, if your self-organization is not yet effective enough even at this level, then engaging in prospects is like trying to swim in baggy clothes.

Many of the executives with whom I worked all day clearing their desks of all sorts of “stuff” were truly inspired throughout the evening that followed, generating a flood of ideas and visions for their future and the future of their companies. This happens automatically as a result of activating stuck projects.

"Vertical" and "horizontal" action management

It is necessary to control obligations, projects and actions in two ways - “horizontal” and “vertical”. "Horizontal" control keeps all the processes in which you are involved connected. Imagine that your consciousness is constantly scanning the world like police radar; during the day he may linger on one of a thousand different points that attract or require your attention: the pharmacy, the housekeeper, Aunt Martha, strategic planning, lunch, a wilting houseplant, a dissatisfied customer, unclean shoes. You need to buy stamps, book a hotel room, cancel a meeting, watch a movie in the evening. You might be surprised by the number of things you have to think about and do in one day. You need a good system that can help you keep track of as much of it as possible, giving you the information you need on any item when you need it, and allowing you to switch from one thing to another quickly and easily.

“Vertical” control, in contrast, controls top-to-bottom thinking about individual tasks and projects. For example, your internal “police radar” stops at your next vacation, which you and your spouse discussed over dinner: where and when you will go, what you will do there, how to prepare for the trip, and so on; or you and your boss are going to carry out some reorganization of the department; or you want to gather your thoughts before an upcoming phone call with a customer. This is “project planning” in a broad sense, it is concentration on one single goal, situation, person and the specification of everything that is connected with it in one way or another, be it ideas, priorities, details or sequence of events - in a word, everything that you need may be needed to solve the problem, at least for the moment.

The purpose of horizontal and vertical management is the same: to clear the mind and complete tasks. Good activity management allows you to stay comfortable in the whirlwind of work and life, while proper focus on individual projects helps you gain clarity and keep track of everything you need.

The main change: getting everything out of your head

It is impossible to achieve the feeling of calm and control over the situation that I promised if you keep everything in your head. Next, you will discover that the individual behaviors described in this book are what you already do. The difference between what I do and what others do is that I organize one hundred percent of the “stuff” using the organization tools that I have at hand, not in your head. And this rule applies to all matters - small or large, personal or professional, urgent or non-urgent. For all.

I am sure that sooner or later, in your project or in life, a situation will come when you have to sit down for making a list. If this is what happened, then here is the starting point that I am talking about. However, most people sit down to make a list only when there is an unbearable amount of things to do, and they are forced, in the end, to do at least something about it. They usually make a list that covers only the specific area that worries them most. But if you have nevertheless compiled a list that covers the whole picture of life (and not just the most urgent matters), then this level of management corresponds to a “black belt” in karate.

I try to make intuitive decisions based on available arguments, rather than thinking about the arguments themselves. I need to think about everything once and save the results in a safe place. I don't like to waste time thinking about things more than once. This is simply an ineffective use of creative energy, a source of fatigue and stress.

And you won’t be able to fake this thinking process either. Your mind will continue to work on things that are in limbo. But there are also limits to the number of unresolved problems that can spin in your head until it explodes.

The part of your mind called short-term memory - this is the part that manages to hold onto all the unfinished business: unmade decisions and unorganized "stuff" - works much like your computer's random access memory (RAM: Random Access Memory, random access memory). Your consciousness, like a computer monitor, is just a tool for concentration, not a storage facility for data. You can only think about two or three things at a time. But unfinished tasks will be stored in short-term memory space. Just like RAM, this space has a limited capacity, and if you store too much there, part of your brain will function at high speed. Many people keep "RAM" in an explosive state. They are completely distraught, their ability to concentrate impaired due to their own mental overload.

For example, in the last few minutes, has your brain been switching to something that has nothing to do with what you are reading about here? Maybe. For what exactly? Most likely to some open question, some unfinished business. And this very unfinished business came out of the depths of the RAM of your consciousness and yelled at you, reminding you of itself - that’s all. What can you do about it? Unless you record it in a reliable system that you absolutely review periodically, it will most likely be yours. bother. True, this is not the most effective line of behavior: no progress, tension has only increased.

The really serious problem is that your mind keeps reminding you of things to do when you can't do anything about them anyway. Consciousness makes no difference between the past or the future. Once you set a task and put it in RAM, some part of you will constantly think about it. Everything you ever decide to do will be considered a necessary action by your consciousness. right now. Frankly, as soon as you have 2 tasks in your mind that need to be done, it becomes your personal failure - you can't do both of them at the same time. This creates a factor of pervasive stress, the source of which cannot be eliminated.

Many people have been in this state for so long that it has become the norm for them and is not noticed. It is constant, like gravity - those who are subject to such stress do not even suspect it. The only way to find out how much pressure they were subjected to was to get rid of it and feel completely different. Can you get rid of such stress? We bet? The rest of the book will tell you how.

Introduction

Welcome to a gold mine of strategies for learning how to have more energy, learn how to relax, and get more things done with less effort. If you, like me, love to get things done and do them well, but you also want not to lose your taste for life, which seems completely implausible and even completely impossible with such volumes of work. There is no need to give an “either-or” ultimatum. It is truly possible to do a great job and live happily in your ordinary, everyday world.
I guess efficiency is a good thing. Perhaps what you do is important, interesting or useful, or perhaps it just needs to be done one way or another. In the first case, you want to get the maximum possible return on your time and effort. In the second, you want to move on to other things as soon as possible, without leaving annoying tails.
And no matter what you do, you would most likely be more comfortable in a relaxed state, confident that whatever you are doing at the moment is exactly what is worth doing. Whether you're having a beer with coworkers after work, getting up in the middle of the night to watch your sleeping baby, answering an email, or having a few words about life with a potential client after a business meeting, this is exactly what you should be doing.
The main purpose of writing this book is to teach you to be as efficient and relaxed as possible, whether you want it or need it.
I for a long time, like perhaps you, was looking for answers to the questions of what to do, when to do it and how to do it. And after more than twenty years of research and application of new and new methods of personal and organizational effectiveness, after years of research and experience on myself, I can say that there is not a single universal solution to the problem. There is no such thing as a software, a super personal planner or a personal task and goal setter that will organize your day, your week and your whole life. Moreover, once you raise your effectiveness to a higher level, a new horizon of creative goals will open up for you, for which it will no longer be possible to use a simple formula to achieve it.
If there are no clear recipes for improving personal organization and efficiency, then there are recipes to contribute to this improvement. Year after year, as I worked on myself, I found more and more significant things to focus on, things to fear, and things to do. I also discovered simple processes that each of us could learn to use that would greatly improve our ability to actively and constructively use the realities of today.
The result is a compilation of more than two decades of discoveries about personal productivity - a guide to maximizing work results and minimizing effort, all in a world where the volume of work is steadily increasing and the tasks are ever more nebulous. I spent many hours with people on their workplace, helping them organize their workflow. The methods I discovered have proven to be truly effective in all types of companies, at all levels of work, in all cultures, and have even been useful at home and school. After twenty years of training with some world-renowned professionals, I have learned for certain that the world really does not have enough of these methods.
Managers would like to instill in themselves and their subordinates the formula “deliver, no matter what” as a basic standard. They, like me, know that behind closed doors, after the end of the working day, there are unanswered calls, unassigned tasks, unprocessed briefs from business meetings and negotiations, unfulfilled personal responsibilities and a dozen letters that were not even taken on. Most of these businessmen are quite successful because the crises they have to overcome and the opportunities that open up for them are much larger than the problems they leave to chance or create themselves in their offices and in their portfolios. But: we have been given the rhythm of business and life today, how to balance them is still a question.
On the one hand, we need proven techniques to help people focus all their energy rather than let it get lost in minor distractions. On the other hand, it is necessary to create a working atmosphere in which the busiest workers will be reliably protected from stress. You need a positive work style, one that attracts and retains the best and brightest people in the company. Such information is worth its weight in gold in organizations. We also need it in school, where our children are still not taught to work with information, focus on results and what actions should be taken to achieve it. And for each of us individually - it is also very useful - we could learn to fully use the opportunities provided to us in order to improve ourselves and be useful.
The power, simplicity, and efficiency that I talk about in the book are best experienced in real time and real world. The book aims to structure the dynamic art of workflow management and personal productivity. I've organized the information in such a way as to provide you with an inspiring overview, but also to let you feel the results right away. The book is divided into three parts. The first part describes the entire game, contains short review system and an explanation of its uniqueness and presents the basic methodologies in the most general outline. The second part talks about how to use the system. This is your training: step by step, little by little, you will learn to apply the models. The third part takes it even higher - it describes the more significant and significant results that you can achieve if you make these methodologies and models an integral part of your work and your life.
I recommend that you act on the principle “right off the bat” - test the material on yourself, not just believe, but also check that these methods not only can, but should be used by you personally. And one more thing - I want you to understand that everything I suggest is really simple. This does not require any special skills, because you already know how to concentrate, write things down, make decisions about results and actions, review positions and make choices. You will see that much of what you have been doing instinctively and intuitively is correct, and I will give you the opportunity to take these skills to new levels of effectiveness. I want to encourage you to put all this together and accept it as a new behavior model that will become a beacon for you.
On the pages of the book I often refer to my training and seminars. Over the past twenty years I have worked as a management consultant, working both alone and in small teams. My job was to conduct private productivity training and workshops on the techniques presented here. My colleagues and I have trained more than a thousand people privately, hundreds of thousands of professionals and conducted several hundred seminars - this is the experience from which I will draw examples. The promise was correctly formulated by one of my clients. He wrote: “I started using the methods in this program and it saved my life, but when I made it a habit, it changed my life. This is a vaccine against the daily life-and-death struggle, when “the project should have been completed yesterday,” and an antidote to the imbalance that many people create for themselves.”

Part one. The art of completing tasks

Chapter 1. New methods for a new life

The situation when a person has a huge list of tasks hanging over him and at the same time he manages to maintain a fresh head, a positive sense of calm control and work productively is quite real. This is a wonderful way to live and work, achieving a high level of efficiency. Recently, this has become a working style that is required of successful high-class specialists. You already know what and how you need to do to achieve this level. However, if you are part of the majority, you need to apply this knowledge in a shorter time frame and in a clear, systematic way so that you can reach the top instead of floundering somewhere at the bottom. Although the method and technology described in the book are common sense and intended for practical application, most people are still subject to common work habits that should be changed before using the system. It's necessary to make small adjustments in the way you clarify and organize the tasks that occupy your attention.

Anxiety is caused by a lack of organization, preparation and action.

All methods presented here are based on two key goals:

1. Collect all the things that need to be done now, later, someday, big, small or related into a logical system, but not in your head.

This book contains a proven method for professional workflow organization. Proven tools, tricks, techniques and hacks are covered here. As you will later see, all principles and methods apply to everything you do, as in Everyday life, and at work. Like many of your predecessors, you too can use what I describe as an ongoing dynamic style in your work and in your world. Or, again like many, you can simply use it to return to tighter control mode when you feel you need it.

Problem: New demands create a lack of resources.

Almost everyone I've worked with has said that they have too many tasks and not enough time to get them all done. Just in the last week, I advised an employee of a large investment firm who was convinced that the new corporate management position he had been awarded would come at the expense of his family obligations. As a person with average capabilities, a manager trying to stay at the top and answering 150 emails every day is forced to increase the department's staff from 1,100 to 2,000 people - all in order to be able to spend weekends with his family and not at work.
The paradox of the new millennium: people want to improve their quality of life and, at the same time, they take on more than they can handle. The eye sees, but the tooth is numb. And here is the result: most people get lost and confused in looking for ways to correct the situation.

Work now has no clear boundaries.
The main reason for the increasing stress is that the nature of work itself has revolutionized, while our skills and capabilities have remained the same. It was only in the second half of the twentieth century that what “work” meant was transformed from concepts of assembly lines and all kinds of motor actions into what Peter Drucker so succinctly expressed with the phrase “the work of the mind.” The fields must be plowed, the cars repaired, the boxes packed, the cows milked. You knew exactly what work needed to be done - you could see the result. And it was quite obvious when the work was in the intermediate stage and when it had already been completed.

Time is a mechanism that prevents all events from happening simultaneously.
However, recently this mechanism seems to have broken down...

Today, most of us have no idea of the real boundaries of our projects. Most people I know have at least half a dozen tasks on hold at any one time, meaning they have up to half a dozen tasks to complete “right now.” But even if they tried to fulfill them for the rest of their lives, they would not be able to achieve a brilliant result. Perhaps you too have encountered a similar problem. How fruitful could the conference potentially be? How effective will the training program be? What inspiring impact will the essay you are writing now have? How to motivate a staff meeting? How functional will the reorganization be? One last question: exactly how much relevant information must be provided in order to complete the project in the best possible way? Answers: a large number of; easily accessible or at least potentially suitable; through the Internet.

Almost every project can be done better, and the availability of information greatly contributes to this.

On the other hand, the absence of boundaries gives rise to more work.
Many of today's organizational challenges require cross-communication, collaboration, and involvement. The ranks of office workhorses are thinning, and with them the luxury of not having to accept or read letters from the marketing department and God-knows-what other departments is going away.

Our work continues to change.
The increasing boundaries of projects and work in general challenge the worker. But now we must also take into account the expanded range of our responsibilities. At seminars, I often ask: “How many of you at work do only what you were hired to do?” Raised hands in the audience are a rarity. The boundaries of the task can be very vague, but if you were faced with a clearly defined task, you should write down: what exactly you need to do - how much and at what level - within reason, of course.
However, such lucky ones are few. There are two reasons for this:

1. It seems as if the companies we work for change their goals, products, partners, customers, markets for technology and shareholders every single day. And all this naturally affects structures, forms, roles and responsibilities.

2. Today, the average worker has much more freedom than ever before. He can change his career as often as his parents changed jobs. And even workers in their forties and fifties are trying to adhere to the latest trends. Now their goals are much more in line with reality - they are covered by positions such as all sorts of “management” or “executive expansion” - this simply means that they are not going to stay in this position for any long period of time.

We can never prepare for something new.
We have to adapt, and every adaptation is a test... we pass a test, we have to prove something to ourselves.
One must have controlled self-confidence to accept changes without hesitation.

So, it's all pretty vague - what exactly is our job, or what kind of emotional, mental and physical investment might be worth it? We miss a huge amount of information, make countless contacts and generate approximately the same gigantic heap of ideas and all kinds of agreements with ourselves and others. But we are not so well savvy as to bother with all these internal and external frictions.

If you are free to decide what step to take, then you also have the responsibility to ensure that this step is the right one.

Old methods and skills are not enough.
Neither our classical education, nor traditional time management, nor the abundance of self-organization tools, such as an organizer, Microsoft Outlook or Palm reminder, meet the requirements of the time. If you have tried to use any of the above, then you must have been convinced that all of this is completely unsuitable for the current speed, complexity and permanent changes in priorities in what you do. Today, when life is in full swing, and mostly over the head, the ability to be successful requires new ways of thinking - there are not enough new methods, technologies and work skills to help us take over the world.

Winds and waters always help skilled captains.
Edward Gibbon

The traditional approach to time management and self-organization was relevant in the old days. He really gave practical recommendations on the organization of work even when he was transforming from servicing assembly lines into a new type of work where it was necessary to make decisions about what to do and when. When time itself became a means of production, personal calendars became the main working tool. (Back in the late 80s, many experts considered a pocket diary to be the pinnacle of self-organization, but even today many people consider it the main tool of self-control). Together with sampling ( discretionary) time, the need arose to make the right decisions about what to do. ABC priority lists and to-do lists became key techniques that people used to help them figure things out and make meaningful, logical decisions.
You may have realized that a planner, while really important, actually helps you organize only a small part of your activities. And daily “to-do” lists and priority sheets turned out to be unable to cope with the full volume of heterogeneous tasks that every professional has to deal with. The working day of many people consists of tens and even hundreds of letters, and there is no way to ignore a single request, a single complaint or a single order. Very few people could (or should) organize their responsibilities into three priority columns. A, B and C, or make a “to-do” list, without fear that the very first phone call or boss’s order will not discredit this whole plan.

Napoleonic plans against everyday dullness.
On the other hand, many management books, techniques, seminars, and gurus promote “taking the long view” as a solution to problems in this crazy world. When you clarify your goals and values, your consciousness itself will begin to issue orders, directing your work in the right direction. In practice, the exercise of thinking about the goal does not bring the expected results. I have seen such failed attempts more than once. And this happened for one of the three reasons given below:

1. There are too many distractions in the daily routine that do not allow you to concentrate on more important positions.

3. When long-term priorities are already clear, a whole series of secondary positions appear out of nowhere, reminding us that much more things require change. Already at this stage, we begin to be irritated by the exorbitant number of things we need to take on. And the essence of the work, the essence, is described in the first positions of the list of priorities. Our priorities! Focusing on priorities will not help you. Yes, they provide significance and direction, but they also create additional difficulties.

Concentration on core priorities and values is really necessary, I have no doubt. But this does not mean at all that nothing more needs to be done. Quite the opposite - it increases the stakes in a game that will have to be played every day. For an HR manager, for example, the decision to work with quality-of-work-life issues in order to attract and retain a talented employee does not simplify the task.
There is a significant gap in our new knowledge work culture - a system with a logical chain of behavioral models and tools that work effectively only at the level where the work actually happens. But in fact, this system should combine the results of a look into perspective and details, everything, even the smallest; must take into account multiple levels of priorities; must control hundreds of streams of new information arriving every day - must, in the end, simplify the process of completing tasks.

Promise: “Ready state” of a martial artist.

Imagine for a second what would happen if your self-organization was truly under constant control. What if you could actually give 100% attention to whatever you are doing at the moment, without distractions?
And this Maybe. Being in control, staying calm and relaxed, and accomplishing meaningful things with minimal effort are all about really. Your ability to keep a situation under control is directly proportional to your ability to relax.
You you can to experience for yourself what martial artists call “a consciousness as crystal clear as water,” and champion athletes call “the zone,” within the complex world in which we are all involved. In fact, all of you have experienced this condition from time to time.

In life, you manage to pay very little attention to everything: be it washing windows or writing a masterpiece...
Nadia Boulanger

It is a process of working, doing and being when consciousness is clear and only constructive things happen. This state can be achieved by anyone, anyone who needs to work effectively in difficult conditions life in the twentieth century. This state will soon become a common requirement for professionals who want to maintain balance and achieve significant positive work results.
World class rower, Craig Lambert described feeling of crystal clear consciousness:

Rowers have their own name for the state in the absence of any resistance: natural stroke... Remember the childhood delight of swinging on a swing in the yard: the ease of movement, the impulse coming from the swing itself. The swing carries us: we don’t put any effort into it. We pump our legs to fly higher, but gravity does most of the work for us. We don't put in much effort; most of the work happens on its own. The boat carries you - as if it wants to move faster. Our task is to work together with the boat - to finally stop stopping it, trying to accelerate on our own. Trying too hard will slow the boat down. Trying becomes striving, and striving discredits itself. Careerists (Social Climbers) strive to become aristocrats. But aristocrats are no longer trying to do anything - they are already aristocrats. It’s also a natural progression – everything happens by itself.

Comparison with crystal clear consciousness.
There is a symbol in karate that denotes a position of complete readiness: “crystal clear consciousness.” Imagine throwing pebbles into still water. What happens to the water? The answer is: the movement of water depends entirely on the force of the throw and the size of the pebble, and then it becomes calm again. There won't be a fountain, but don't expect any circles in the water either.
In karate, the most important role is played by the speed of the blow, not its strength. This is why people cannot learn to break boards and split bricks with their hands: this does not require brute force, but only the ability to correctly set the speed. But tense hands cannot make quick movements. So, the last stage of martial arts training requires balance and relaxation like nothing else. Crystal clarity of thought and flexibility are the most important thing.
Anything that makes you react strongly or react weakly can have an effect on you. And it does. An inadequate response to a letter, a tense conversation with your boss, with your subordinates, magazines you haven’t read, thoughts about unfinished work constantly spinning in your head, children left unattended - all this will lead to worse results than you expected. Most people tend to pay more or less attention than they should to things that deserve it, just because they don't have crystal clarity of thought.

If your consciousness is empty, it is ready to accept anything at any moment, it is open to everything.
Sbanry Suzuki

Can you get into your “productive state” when needed?
Think about the last time you worked productively. Most likely, you felt like you were in control of the situation, you weren't under pressure, you were focused on what you were doing, time seemed to fly by instantly (maybe it was lunch time?), and you felt that it was essential closer to the desired result. Would you like to repeat this? And if you feel completely, well, completely wrong - you feel that you have lost control of the situation, you are unsettled, your attention is scattered, you are bored - can you return to this state? It is now that everything that makes you react violently or react sluggishly can take over you. And it does this often.

Welcome to a gold mine of strategies for learning how to conserve more energy, learn how to relax, and get more things done with less effort. If you're like me, you love getting things done and doing them well, but you also want to maintain your zest for life, which seems completely implausible and even impossible given the sheer volume of work. There is no need to give an “either-or” ultimatum. This really perhaps - do an excellent job and live happily in your ordinary, everyday world.

I guess efficiency is a good thing. Perhaps what you are doing is important, interesting or useful, or perhaps not, and it just needs to be done one way or another. In the first case, you want to get the maximum possible return on your time and effort. In the second, you want to move on to other things as quickly as possible, without leaving annoying tails.

And no matter what you do, you would most likely be more comfortable in a relaxed state, confident that whatever you are doing at the moment is exactly what is worth doing. Whether you're drinking beer with coworkers after work, or watching your baby sleep in his crib at midnight, answering an email, or spending a few minutes chatting informally with a potential client after a business meeting, this is exactly what you should be doing.

The main purpose of writing this book is to teach you to be as effective and relaxed as possible, regardless of whether you are forced to be so or it is just your desire.

For a long time, like you perhaps, I have been looking for answers to the questions of what to do, when to do it and how to do it. And after more than twenty years of research and application of new methods for personal and organizational productivity, after years of research and experience on myself, I can say that there is no one universal solution to the problem. There is no such thing as a software, a super personal planner or a personal task and goal setter that will organize your day, your week and your whole life. Moreover, once you take your productivity to a higher level, you will open up a new horizon of creative goals that can no longer be achieved using a simple formula.

While there is no one way to improve personal organization and productivity, there are recipes that can help. Year after year, as I worked on myself, I found more and more significant things that were either worth focusing on, or worth fearing, or worth doing. I have also discovered simple processes that each of us could learn to use that greatly enhance the ability to proactively and constructively use the realities of today.

The result is a compilation of more than two decades of discoveries in the field of personal productivity - a guide to maximizing the results of work and minimizing the effort spent on it, all in a world where the volume of work is constantly growing and the tasks are ever more ambiguous. I have spent many thousands of hours training people in their workplace, helping them organize their workflow. The methods I discovered have proven to be truly effective in all types of companies, at all levels of work, in all cultures, and have even been useful at home and school. After twenty years of studying and training some world-renowned professionals in their field, I have learned for certain that the world really does not have enough of these methods.

Top managers want to instill in themselves and their subordinates the formula “deliver at all costs” as the main standard. But they, like me, know that behind closed doors, after the end of the working day, there are unanswered calls, unassigned tasks, unprocessed briefings from business meetings and negotiations, unfulfilled personal responsibilities and a dozen letters that were not even taken on. Most of these businessmen are quite successful because the crises they have to overcome and the opportunities that are presented to them are much larger than the problems they allow and create in their offices and portfolios. How to balance the rhythm of business and life given to us today is another question.

On the one hand, we need proven techniques that will help people focus all their energy, rather than allowing it to be wasted on minor distractions. On the other hand, it is necessary to create a working atmosphere in which the busiest workers will be reliably protected from stress. You need a positive work style, one that attracts and retains the best and brightest people in the company.

Such information is worth its weight in gold in organizations. We also need it in school, where our children are still not taught to work with information, focus on results and what actions should be taken to achieve it. And for each of us individually - it is also very useful - we could learn to fully use the opportunities provided to us in order to improve ourselves and be useful.

The power, simplicity, and efficiency I talk about in the book are best experienced in real time and in the real world. The book aims to structure the dynamic art of workflow management and personal productivity. I've organized the information in such a way as to provide you with an inspiring overview, but also to let you feel the results right away.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part describes the entire game, contains a brief overview of the system and an explanation of its uniqueness, and presents the main methodologies in very general terms. The second part talks about how to use the system. This is your training: step by step, little by little, you will learn to apply the models. The third part takes it even higher - it describes the more significant and significant results that you can achieve if you make these methodologies and models an integral part of your work and life.

I recommend that you act on the principle “right off the bat” - test the material on yourself, not just believe, but also check that these methods not only can, but should be used by you personally. And one more thing - I want you to understand that everything I suggest is really simple. This does not require any special skills, because you already know how to concentrate, write things down, make decisions about results and actions, review positions and make choices. You will see that much of what you have been doing instinctively and intuitively is correct, and I will give you the opportunity to take these skills to new levels of effectiveness. I want to convince you to put all this together and accept it as a new behavior model that will become a beacon for you.

On the pages of the book I often refer to my training and seminars. Over the past twenty years I have worked as a management consultant, working both alone and in small teams. My job was to provide private productivity training and workshops on the techniques presented here. My colleagues and I have trained more than a thousand people privately, hundreds of thousands of professionals and conducted several hundred seminars - this is the experience from which I will draw. The perspective was correctly formulated by one of my clients. He wrote: “I started using the methods from this program and it saved my life, but when I made them a habit, it changed my life. This is a vaccine against the daily life-or-death struggle, when “the project should have been completed yesterday "and an antidote to the imbalance that many people create for themselves".