Top five rules of time-management

1. Set your priorities and take full responsibility for your life.

How often do we hear from someone “sorry, I cannot go with you/participate in this event/go for a walk, because I don’t have time”? Or how often do we turn down some offers by this reason? Are we really that busy that we must refuse to so many things?

I personally don’t think so, and there was one experiment which can prove it. In this experiment was involved one business lady who has several children, a husband, friends, and her own business, of course. This is the person who defiantly really busy, right? She was asked to record every hour of her life - what she did during that time. And at the beginning of the week, she was asked if she had 2 hours for two salsa lessons on this week, make a guess what did she replied? – she had no time. A week later, when she showed the diary where wrote down how she spent all of her time, it turned out she had a leaky faucet. A calling to a plumber, the work itself and cleaning home after a small flood – took 7 hours of her week in total!

What does it mean? It means we should set priorities take responsibility for our life. When we are saying there is no time, it means someone is controlling our time and we can do nothing to it. But what is exact meaning of “I don’t have time”? it means “It is not one of my priorities, and I don’t want to spend time on it”. Can you feel the difference? Be brave while refusing to some offer and say that you are sorry, nut now you have another thing which should be done first. You will start to feel that YOU are controlling your life, and just YOU are deciding how to spend your time.

2. Don’t categorize information while working

When you are doing something and suddenly some idea or task which you forgot to do, as replaying to someone`s email, DO NOT write in your dairy, calendar or whatever. Just write this information on some sheet of paper, and when you finish your job you can think how you can batch whole information which came to your mind. Because when you stop to do your work because of that and then you start to think to which categories of information you can add your new ideas, it takes some time and also your brain energy, which you need for work right now. Moreover, the most important thing is you will lose your concertation, and it takes AT LEAST 15 mins to fully concentrate again. Then you can count how much time you can save with the help of sheet of paper.

3. Do not afraid of hiring someone to do part of your job

Count how much money do you earn per hour, and then you will know the approximate cost of your time. Every time when you get some tasks, which are not connected to your job and your priorities, kind of waste of time for you, you can always hire someone to do it. It doesn’t mean that you need to be rich, there are always someone who can do this job instead of you for reasonable price. For an example, your salary is quite okay, but you are tired after work and would like to spend time with your family or do something for yourself. BUT at home house cleaning is waiting for you. You have to options: do it by yourself, spend 2-3 hours on it, be even more tired after all, have no time for getting some awards, go to be bed in not that good mood and on the second day be even not that productive because you didn’t have a good rest before OR you can hire someone to clean your house, enjoy your time and return to work in a good mood and full of energy. YOU always make a choice what is the most important for you. Plus, if you still think it is just a waste of money, and just rich people can do it, then I will tell you one thing: until you will constantly waste time on tasks which are meaningless for you or don’t bring you ANY benefits, you will never find the time to spend it to increase your income, get closer to fulfilling your dreams and improve yourself as you want.

4. Start your day i n a right way

What do you usually do as first thing after waking up? Surf the Web or check Instagram account? This morning time is one of the most productive time during the day!! But the Internet just steals these precious time… how much of useless information are we getting while these 15-30 minutes in the morning? It also takes your emotional and thinking energy because out brain is reacting to all news we see. Use this incredible morning time for exercising, yourself or imagine your perfect day, because everything that we can imagine in your head, we are all able to materialize in life. It helps to be more productive, organized and concentrated during the day, they are exactly the most important states which we are trying to get with the help of time-management. You will have time to surf the Web, but you just have only one morning time.

5. Atomize your work

Find out if you often do same work, try to how you can do it faster from time to time. For example, if you often send similar emails, you can use canned responses in Gmail. Or if you often buy some food products or other stuff, but you cannot remember its name or brand, make a special page in your dairy to write in here. It can anything, just think what kind of work you often do and how you can do it faster, what kinds of preparation you should do to make the work easier.

The ideas and inspiration of these rules were taken from talented blogger and scientist Anastacia Kay and own life experience.

About the blogger:

Masha is a Chinese Government scholarship student at Fudan University. She started her way of learning Chinese language from 2015 year, since she had enrolled in Moscow City University as a bachelor student in Oriental studies. After two years she got a Chinese Government scholarship and went to Zhejiang University for one-year language course. During that year she successfully passed HSK 5 and has been accepted by Fudan University. Now she started new page in her life in Shanghai, but she did not drop out at Moscow City University. So now she is a bachelor student at two universities.