Tip 1. Write a list of tasks for the day that need to be completed. This can be either work or household chores. The bottom line is the same - you should make a list of the most pressing tasks that need to be completed first. This list will serve as both a simple reminder and motivation. You can simply forget about some things, or you can be lazy and avoid doing them. By making such a list, you make a commitment to yourself to prioritize this list over other things.
Don't write too big a list knowing in advance that it won't be feasible. At the same time, do not write too few things - this reduces organization.
Tip 2. Make a list of small tasks. Gleb Arkhangelsky in his book “Time Management” calls such small matters “frogs.” Such a list of small tasks can be shared by the whole family. These are small household chores that tend to accumulate due to their insignificance and non-priority, but they bring inconvenience if they are put off for a long time. This could be ironing clothes, sending a letter or buying a stamp, ordering a copy of a key, or cleaning a shelf with things. Having such a list, you can easily give instructions to your family and fill waiting pauses. It is most convenient for yourself to plan to do, for example, two frogs a week, or one frog a day - depending on how busy you are. For non-compliance, come up with a punishment, for example - next week commit to completing not 2 but 4 frogs. This way you will get rid of the red tape of small tasks, the failure of which interferes with everyday life.
Tip 3. Do everything in parallel. This tip helps save a lot of time. If you travel around the city during the work week, plan your visits to target points so that they are nearby or along the way. Or, for example, when going to the supermarket for groceries on the weekend, go to the hairdresser, which is located along the road. If your path today takes you past the post office, don’t forget about sending a parcel to your grandmother, who has been lying there for a week and won’t wait until you allocate your time for her. You shouldn’t devote half of your day off, for example, to a trip to a distant store to get some small items. Ask your friends if they were going there in the near future, or postpone the purchase, waiting until a couple more necessary things are sold in this store.
Many examples can be given - the essence is the same - parallel execution of tasks saves a lot of time. The main thing is to plan correctly.
Tip 4: Get proper rest. Clearly separate work time and rest time. The right mode of work and relaxation activities will help you work more productively and relax more efficiently. Perform all work tasks only during working hours. If you decide to be lazy, be completely lazy, saying to yourself: “I don’t want to do this now, and I won’t force myself.” By giving yourself such a setting, you will be lazy for a maximum of 5 minutes - just time to relax a little. If you decide to take a break, don’t do it at your workplace. Try to make your vacation as different from your work style as possible. If you have a sedentary job, rest while standing; if you have a static job, do a light warm-up. If it is possible to have lunch outside the work area, have lunch outside. Changing activities will relax and relieve tension, allowing you to return to work fresher and stronger.
Tip 5: Keep your schedule tight. What is meant here is not that you should run like a squirrel in a wheel from meeting to meeting, from task to task. It is recommended to plan events in such a way (especially during the working day) that the time between adjacent ones is minimal. For example, allocate enough time to get from one meeting to another, with a margin of not 40 minutes, but 10. Or, for example, having an inevitable window in the middle of the day, be sure to plan lunch for it, under no circumstances sitting for an extra hour waiting.
Tip 6. Always have a book with you. Firstly, a change of activity is a rest. Secondly, the book is a source of information. Carnegie said that it is better for a book to be cut into pieces in order to fit into a bag - but read - than not read at all. A book can always fill a pause in waiting in the reception area, a long journey in transport, or the remaining time on a lunch break. In this way, you will quench your reading thirst and save time allocated for reading in the evening.
Following these tips will make the distribution of your time optimal and, accordingly, will generate a certain amount of free time that can be used for things that you were not able to do before.
89% of people say they are unable to cope with their daily responsibilities; Only 11% of professionals worldwide accomplish everything they set out to do in an average workday, according to a LinkedIn survey. So we asked the experts, how to make a to-do list that you can accomplish.
Achieving goals written down on paper is more likely. But many of us find ourselves struggling with a never-ending to-do list: stopping at the dry cleaner, finishing up a presentation, calling the dentist, booking a plane ticket, ordering a wedding gift...
Tracy McCubbin, professional organizer and owner of Los Angeles-based dClutterfly, says one of the reasons we're frustrated with to-do lists is because we have high expectations: We want to get everything done. Lists, she says, are something living and breathing that prevent you from saying, “I've crossed everything off and I'm done!” In addition to coming to terms with their endless nature, here are other strategies for taming task lists.
Be realistic about your priorities
Putting too many items on our to-do list can make us feel overwhelmed. That's why Jason Womack, an active trainer and author of The Sky's the limit, suggests sticking to "money-making verbs and happy-making actions." “A lot of people fall into the trap of thinking they're really busy but can't handle a lot of things,” says Womack. He asks his clients what 2-5 actions will help them move forward this year.Womack himself makes money through speaking engagements and publications. Therefore, he concentrates on activities such as writing texts, making phone calls, and conducting email correspondence. All this protects his prospects and ensures a regular flow of income, thanks to which Womack and his wife Jodi take a month of vacation every year, which is already in the realm of happiness.
To help his clients determine exactly what tasks to focus on, he asks, “Why are you doing this?” and “If you do this task for the next 36 months, do you think you will be happier or be able to earn more money?”
Paula Rizzo, author of The List Mindset: Using Lists to Increase Productivity, Success, and Reduce Stress, recommends taking just one sticky note a day to avoid the temptation to jump on new tasks: “I believe in very short, focused lists that can be just a few points!” Instead of adding extra tasks to your list, consider delegating grocery shopping or cleaning to someone else. And cut yourself some slack if you don't have time to make pasta from scratch.
“You should not be offended if such cases continue to arise. Such items should probably be filed on a list entitled "Someday," Rizzo notes.
Understand what's best for you
Because list management techniques are constantly evolving, there is no one-size-fits-all option. Some people like the feeling of writing a list by hand.Others are attracted by the ability to sync with a digital list from different devices and access tasks from anywhere. Rizzo prefers to break down her lists into different categories (work, home, travel, etc.) so she doesn't have to juggle a marathon list.
And McCubbin keeps his general list in a notebook that he carries in his purse. “It’s more convenient for me if everything is in one place; I don’t like to separate my life,” she explains.
Get rid of old lists or duplicate them
Once you complete a task, mentally pat yourself on the back and remove it from the list. “I know the trick of adding things to a list that I know are unnecessary, allowing me to cross them off and feel a sense of release,” says Rizzo.If you want to get a list of completed tasks, iDoneThis app will help you with that. But don't let old to-do lists clutter your desk and collect dust. McCubbin says many of her clients duplicate their lists on different pieces of paper or lined pads around the house. “People argue with me, but I find lists from five years ago,” she laughs.
Of course, the tasks you've accomplished are, in Womack's opinion, much more significant than the list itself. “It's not about making a list, it's about creating a motivating force that forces you to do important tasks. By lining up tasks, you maintain focus, which allows you to get to the desired milestone.” Use an approach that gets you to your next milestones, whether it's a post-it note, an Evernote file, or a lined notebook.
Think about your biggest failures in life. Quarrels, misunderstandings that changed your whole life in a negative way. Failed exams, job interviews, etc. The reasons for such failures are similar, as a rule, they are the result of poor preparation and rash actions. Below we will look at how to manage everything and plan the day/week.
What happens if an athlete stops training a month before the Olympics - his skills and muscle strength will weaken significantly and he will take one of the last places. As in sports, in any business you need good preparation, without which the chances of success are greatly reduced.
The key factor in preparation is planning. There is "6 P rule": Proper planning prevents productivity loss.
Below I will give 7 ways to manage everything with the help of proper planning of the day and week.
Method 1: Make a list of tasks for the day
What is a task list for?
First, let's look at how our brain works. It was found that we can keep no more than 7+-2 things or important thoughts under control in our heads. To make sure of this, count how many circles are shown in the pictures:
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| Rice. 1 | Rice. 2 | Rice. 3 |
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| Rice. 4 | Rice. 5 |
Most likely, one glance is enough to determine the number of objects in Figures 1, 3 and 4.
And for drawings 2 and 5, one glance was not enough; it was necessary to count separately. The fewer objects, the easier it is to manage them. The brain reaches its limit when the number becomes more than 7+-2.
The same is true with thoughts; at the same time we can store no more than 7+-2 tasks in our head, the rest is forgotten.
Let's imagine a real life situation
You get up in the morning and go to work, on the way you remember that:You need to buy a gift for a loved one's birthday;
- Pay for the Internet before it’s turned off.
When you arrived at work:
Find out that you need to prepare a report today;
- I came in and a colleague asked me to send him a contract template;
- After the morning planning meeting, the boss asked me to do 3 things.
Your head is already full, but time does not stop; a client, a loved one, a colleague may call you, an unforeseen situation may happen, etc. What happens in this case? We forget something. If we forget to buy groceries in the store, then nothing bad will happen, of course, but we can forget something more important: not coming to an important meeting, taking medications, etc.
In addition, the more things we have in our heads, the worse our analytical abilities become, since energy is spent on memorizing information.
Benefits of a notebook
Notebook - eliminates all the problems described above and has the following advantages compared to working from memory:
1) Writing down is always faster than remembering. For example, writing down a cell phone number is 10-100 times faster than memorizing it. Same with business.
2) Energy Saving. In order not to forget important things, we often remember, which wastes energy. A notebook solves this problem.
3) Reliability. What is written with a pen cannot be cut out with an axe. Any task can be forgotten due to fatigue, emotions or other matters. But if you write down tasks, it is much more difficult to forget.
You can keep a list of tasks on a regular sheet of paper, a notepad, but it is better if it is a notebook, because it has a calendar. The list of tasks for the day can be on a computer or paper. The most important thing is that you have it because it is the basis for planning, like the foundation of a house. If the house does not have a foundation, then the maximum that can be built is a small one-story structure without heating made of plastic or plywood. Also in planning, of course, you can do without a list of tasks for the day or a notebook, but you will be very limited in your capabilities.
The most important thing in a task list or notebook is a list of things that need to be done during the day. The second most important part is the calendar, in it you can see the tasks that need to be completed on a given day. Therefore, a notebook is preferable to a regular list because it has a calendar.
Method 2: Work with your task list every day
The most important thing when working with a time organizer or notebook is to work in accordance with the previously drawn up plan. To do this, regularly review your notebook to find out if you have done everything you planned for today. You can view the list after you complete the current task. It is very important to list important things that need to be done today in your organizer.
Method 3: First write it down, then do it
If a new task arrives and it is not urgent, then write it down in your notebook first and start only when it comes to it. Any new tasks seem very important and we begin to take on everything: checking mail, making phone calls, etc. But as soon as you first begin to write down all incoming tasks in a notebook, you will find that next to this entry there are more important tasks.
All movements of the right side of the body are controlled by the left hemisphere of the brain, which is responsible for logic. When we write down a new task with our right hand, we activate the left hemisphere of our brain, which is responsible for logic. Activating logic when writing with our right hand will help us make better decisions.
By writing everything down in a notebook before you start work, you'll be able to get the most important things done during the day and be able to combat the unimportant tasks that constantly distract you.
4 way. First important, then urgent tasks
All planned tasks should be completed in order of their importance, and then in order of execution time. Starting with the most important ones and gradually moving on to the less important ones. Write things down in your plan for today in order of their importance, then sort them by urgency and start working on the highest priorities.
For example, an acquaintance called you to chat. A phone call, an urgent matter, because the phone is ringing right now, but it may not be important. If you have more significant tasks, say, preparing a work report, then it is better to first complete all the more important tasks, in particular the report, and then, if you have time, call back and talk with a friend. But not vice versa, otherwise, due to an insignificant call, you may not have time to do a more important thing.
Importance takes precedence over urgency. You should take on urgent matters only if you are in control of the situation and are confident that you will manage all the more important ones.
Method 5: Electronic organizer
There are a huge number of electronic notebooks. An electronic diary has undeniable advantages over paper ones:
A. Time saving. With an electronic diary, you do not need to re-write tasks from the last day to the current one, and you can also work with it both on a computer and on a phone or tablet, synchronizing data on all devices.
B. Volumes and speed: You can very quickly copy a large amount of information into an electronic diary for further work. For example: You want to bake a banana cake in the evening and you need to write down the necessary ingredients before you go to the store. If you have an electronic organizer, then you can quickly copy the entire recipe from the Internet into your diary, literally in a matter of seconds. At the same time, it will take you more time to write down only the ingredients on a piece of paper by hand than to write the entire recipe electronically. And in the store it will be enough to turn on the diary on your phone to quickly understand what to buy.
B. Convenience. An ordinary notebook is inconvenient to use in transport, a store, or on vacation; in these places it is difficult to write down and look at notes because the paper diary is large and you need 2 hands to open it. But the electronic notebook on your phone will always be with you, no matter where you are: Transport, store, street. You can quickly take notes on your computer and then sync so those notes appear on your phone in seconds.
Method 6: Plan your next day in the evening
Make an action plan for the next day in advance, the best time is at the end of the working day, before you go home. This simple action will help you get a better night's sleep, because often the cause of insomnia is that in the evening we go through all the important things that we need to do tomorrow so as not to forget them in the morning. And it is these thoughts that prevent us from relaxing and falling asleep peacefully, but if you write down all your plans, you will ensure not only a restful sleep, but also an evening.
In addition, when you make a plan in advance, your subconscious mind will constantly work all night on how best to do what you planned. The solution to complex problems may come to you at breakfast, on the way to work, or even in the middle of the night. It is in the morning that new ideas most often come and you will use this time with maximum benefit, you just need to write a to-do list for the next day in advance.
By the way, if you have questions that you want answered, then before you fall asleep and close your eyes, ask them to yourself, preferably out loud, and immediately fall asleep. And in the morning, get ready to immediately write down all the thoughts that may appear the moment you wake up or later.
Method 7: Plan complex tasks at the peak of your activity
Make a plan for the day so that work that requires a lot of energy comes at the peak of your activity, when you have a lot of energy and are most productive. As a rule, the peak of activity begins in the morning, because after sleep you have a lot of strength and a fresh mind, but it happens that the peak of activity can occur in the afternoon and even evening hours.
The most energy-consuming activities are those for which there is no talent.. As a rule, these are the ones activities you most don't want to do. These tasks are called frogs in time management because these tasks are unpleasant to start doing. There is a rule in time management - start the day with a frog., i.e. from an unpleasant matter. This rule will allow you to work more efficiently, because usually it is in the morning that you have the most strength, and these forces are extremely important to do the most unpleasant work.
I’ll give an example from life, I have a technical mindset, so exact sciences such as: Physics and mathematics are easy for me, but humanitarian subjects are more difficult, so when I was at school, I often prepared for an English test in the morning. I got up 1-2 hours before school and studied English. It was in the morning that I had the most energy, so at this time it was easier for me to complete a complex task for which I had the least talent. The results of the preparation exceeded all my expectations, I received excellent or good results in a subject that I did not like.
Plan the most unpleasant tasks for peak activity, for example, in the morning, and you will see how you will get more done and your personal efficiency will increase.
P.S. If you have difficulties or questions about the article you read, as well as about the topics: Psychology (bad habits, experiences, etc.), sales, business, time management, etc. ask them to me, I will try to help. Consultation via Skype is also possible.
P.P.S. You can also take the online training “How to get 1 hour of extra time.” Write comments and your additions;)
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Books on time management often contradict each other: some recommend immediately completing any small task, some believe that you need to start with the most difficult one, and some, on the contrary, that you need to deliberately put things off until later. Journalist Brian Christian and cognitive scientist Tom Griffiths are confident that in order to do everything, people need to use the algorithms that computers use - with their help, it has long been possible to find the optimal option, taking into account all the given conditions. Alpina Publisher published their book Algorithms for Life: Simple Ways to Make the Right Decisions, in which the authors explain how to apply complex mathematical formulas to solve everyday problems. T&P publishes a fragment.
The Science of Pastime
Although the problem of time management is as old as time itself, the science of planning was born in the machine shops of the Industrial Revolution. In 1874, Frederick Taylor, the son of a wealthy lawyer, abandoned his studies at Harvard to become an assistant engineer at a hydraulic equipment plant in Philadelphia. Four years later he completed his apprenticeship and began working at Midval Steelworks - first as a lathe operator, then as a machine shop foreman and eventually became chief engineer. During this time, he came to the conclusion that the operating time of equipment (and people) was not used very effectively. This conclusion formed the basis of the discipline he developed, which he called “scientific management.”
Taylor created a production dispatch department, the key element of which was an information stand on which the work schedule in the workshop was posted. The schedule indicated what task each machine was currently performing and what tasks were next in line. This practice would also form the basis of the work of Taylor's colleague Henry Gantt. In the second decade of the 20th century, he would create his famous diagram, which would go on to help realize some of the century's most ambitious civil engineering projects, from the Hoover Dam to the U.S. Interstate Highway System. A century later, Gantt charts still adorn the office walls and laptop screens of project managers at companies like Amazon, IKEA and SpaceX.
Taylor and Gantt made planning the object of their research and gave it a visual and conceptual form. However, they did not resolve the fundamental question: which planning system is better? The first hint that this question could in principle be answered did not appear until several decades later, in 1954, in a scientific paper published by research mathematician Selmer Johnson of the RAND Corporation.
Johnson explored a bookbinding scenario: a book would first be printed on one press and then bound using another. But the most common example of the paired operation of two devices in our lives is the laundry room. When you wash items, they first go through the washing machine and then go into the dryer. The amount of time each process will take depends directly on what you are downloading. If the clothes are heavily soiled, it will take longer to wash, but the drying time will not differ from usual. Larger loads will take longer to dry, but washing will take the same amount of time as a smaller load. And here Johnson asked the question: “If you need to wash and dry several conventional sets of clothes in one go, what is the best way to organize this?”
His answer was that you need to determine which process will take you the least time, that is, choose the set that will take the least amount of time to wash or dry. If the set is washed quickly, start exactly from him. If a minimum amount of time is required for drying, go for this kit. last of all. Repeat the same steps for the remaining sets of things, moving from the beginning and end of the schedule to the middle.
Intuitively, Johnson’s algorithm works because, regardless of the chosen sequence of loading laundry, at the very beginning only the washing machine will work, while the dryer will be idle (and at the very end, when all that remains is to dry the washed items, vice versa). If you wash things on short programs at the very beginning, and dry the smallest number of things at the end, then we will increase the period when both the washing machine and the dryer work simultaneously. This way we can minimize the time spent in the laundry room. Johnson's analysis was the basis for the first optimal scheduling algorithm: start with a short wash and end with a half-empty dryer. […]
The planning problem that is significant to us really concerns only one device - ourselves.
Coping with deadlines
Planning work one device, you immediately run into a problem. Johnson's bookbinding research was based on minimizing the time it took two machines to complete a job. In the case of managing one device, if we perform all assigned tasks, any schedule will require the same amount of time and determining the order of tasks will be meaningless.
This is a fundamental and paradoxical fact, and it is worth repeating it again and fixing it in our consciousness. If you only have one device and plan to complete all the tasks assigned, then any order of tasks will take you the same amount of time.
Thus we have the first lesson in planning the operation of one device even before we begin the discussion, namely: clearly define your goals. We can't declare a winner among planning methods until we understand how to keep score. This question also applies to computer science: before you have a plan, you must define a set of criteria. It turns out that the choice of criteria directly determines which planning approach will be the best.
The first scientific work on task scheduling for a single device followed immediately after Johnson's research and proposed a number of compelling criteria. A simple optimal strategy was developed for each criterion.
We are accustomed to the fact that, for example, for each task there is a deadline and an acceptable amount of delay. Thus, we can introduce the term “maximum delay in completing a set of tasks” - the largest failure among these tasks to meet the deadline (this is what your employer will take into account when assessing your performance). For retail or service customers, for example, the maximum latency to complete a task corresponds to the longest wait time for the customer.
If you would like to minimize this maximum delay time, you should start with the task that is due first, and move towards the task that can be completed as soon as possible. The strategy known as "soon due date", is actually largely intuitive. (For example, in a service industry, where each customer's deadline begins the moment they walk through the door, this strategy involves serving customers in the order in which they arrive.) But some of the findings are surprising. For example, it doesn’t matter at all how long it will take to complete each specific task: it doesn’t affect the plan in any way, so, in fact, you don’t need to know. All that matters is knowing when the task is due.
You may already be using an upcoming due date strategy to cope with your workload, then you don't need to listen to programmers' advice when choosing a strategy. But most likely you don't know what it is optimal strategy. It would be more accurate to say that only one specific indicator is important to you - reducing the time of your maximum tardiness. If you do not pursue such a goal, then another strategy may be more suitable for you.
For example, let's take a refrigerator. […] Each product has a different shelf life, so consuming them according to the expiration date principle seems like the smartest idea. However, this is not the end of the story. The algorithm for the upcoming execution date, or in our case the date of spoilage of the product, is optimal for reducing the time of maximum delay, which means minimizing the degree of spoilage one of the most corrupt the product you are about to eat. This is probably not the most appetizing criterion.
Perhaps we would like instead minimize the amount products that will spoil. And then we better resort to the help of Moore's algorithm. In accordance with it, we begin the process of selecting products based on the principle of the earliest expiration date, planning to consume the most perishable product first, one product at a time. But as soon as we realize that we won’t be able to eat the next item on time, we take a break, go back to all the items we’ve already planned, and throw away the largest item (the one that will take us the most days to eat).
For example, we may have to give up the melon, which can only be eaten in a few sittings. Thus, we follow this scheme every time, laying out products according to their shelf life and sending the largest product out of the planned ones, which we do not have time to eat, to the trash can. The moment we can consume all the remaining food without any of it spoiling, we have achieved our goal.
Moore's algorithm minimizes the amount of food you would have to throw away. Of course, you can compost the food or just give it to a neighbor. But if we are talking about production or paperwork, when you cannot simply abandon a project, and it is the number of projects not completed on time (and not the degree of delay in their execution) that is of great importance to you, then Moore’s algorithm will not tell you how deal with overdue tasks. Anything you left out of the main part of the plan can be done at the very end in any order, since these questions already were not resolved on time.
How to deal with things
Sometimes meeting deadlines is not our biggest concern. We just want to redo everything: the more things we have to do, the faster we want to deal with them. It turns out that translating this seemingly elementary desire into the plane of planning criteria is very difficult.
The first approach is to think abstractly. We previously noted that when scheduling a single device, we cannot influence the total execution time of all tasks, but if, for example, each individual task is a waiting client, there is a way to reduce the time as much as possible collective expectations of all clients.
Imagine that as of Monday morning you have to devote four working days to one project and one day to another. If you finished a large project on Thursday afternoon (four days passed) and then completed a small project on Friday afternoon (five days passed), then the total customer wait time was nine days. If you do the tasks in reverse order, you'll finish a small project on Monday and a large project on Friday, with only a six-day wait time. You'll be busy full-time anyway, but you'll be able to save your clients three days of their time together. Scheduling theorists call this criterion the sum of execution times.
Minimizing the sum of execution times as much as possible leads us to a very simple optimal algorithm - the algorithm shortest service time: Do what you can do fastest first.
Even if your job doesn't involve impatient customers waiting for their issue to be resolved, the fastest service time algorithm will help you cope with with your affairs. (You may not be surprised by this parallel to the advice in Getting Things Done: to immediately begin any task that will take you no more than two minutes to complete.) It is impossible to change the time it will take you to complete the entire amount of work, but The algorithm for the shortest service time will make your life easier by reducing the number of outstanding tasks in the shortest possible time. Another way to explain the sum of completion times criterion is to imagine that you are only focused on reducing your to-do list. If every unfinished task irritates you, then quickly resolving simple issues can ease your suffering a little.
Of course, not all unfinished business is the same in nature. Of course, you should put out the fire in the kitchen first, postponing putting out the “fire” at work: sending an urgent letter to the client in this case will wait, even if eliminating the fire in the kitchen will take you more time. In planning, the different importance of tasks is expressed by the variable weight. When you complete things on your list, this weight can be figurative and expressed only in the weight of the mountain that will fall from your shoulders with the completion of this or that task.
The time to complete a task shows how long you bear this burden and the maximum reduction in the amount of time weight completion (this is the time it takes to complete any task multiplied by its weight) will minimize the weight on your shoulders while you deal with other things on the list.
For this purpose, the optimal strategy would be a slightly improved version of the shortest service time algorithm. Let's divide the weight of each task by the time required to complete it, start solving the issue with the highest indicator of the ratio of importance per unit of time (to develop our metaphor, we can call this indicator specific gravity) and then move from issue to issue as the value of the indicator decreases . Because it can be difficult to determine the importance of each of your daily tasks, this strategy suggests using a rough rule of thumb: prioritize the task that will not only take you twice as long as the others, but will also be twice as important as the others.
In the business world, weight can be assessed in monetary terms: how much money completing a particular task will bring you. By dividing the reward by the completion time, we get the hourly rate for each task. (If you're a freelancer, this can be especially effective for you: simply divide the cost of each project you have by its size, and work on projects in order of decreasing hourly rate.) Interestingly, the weight strategy also appears in research on animal foraging: where dollars and cents turn into nuts and berries. Animals, trying to get maximum energy from food, search for food based on the ratio of calorie content and time spent searching and eating. […]
Selecting tasks
Let's return to where we started our discussion about planning the operation of one device. As the saying goes, “a man with only a watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never sure what time it is.” Computer science can offer us optimal algorithms for any criteria that exist for the operation of one device, but only we can choose the criterion. In many cases, we ourselves decide what problem we want to solve now.
This allows us to radically rethink the problem of procrastination - a classic pathology of time management. We are used to thinking that this is an erroneous algorithm. What if it's completely the other way around? What if this is the optimal solution? wrong task?
In one episode of The X-Files, the main character Mulder, bedridden (literally), was about to fall victim to a neurotic vampire. To save himself, he knocked over a bag of seeds on the floor. The vampire, powerless in the face of his mental illness, began to bend down to pick them up, seed by seed. Meanwhile, dawn came - before Mulder became the monster's prey. Programmers would call this a ping attack or a network denial-of-service attack: if you force a system to perform an infinite number of trivial tasks, the most important things will be lost in the chaos.
We usually associate procrastination with laziness and so-called avoidance behavior, but symptoms of procrastination can just as easily appear in people (or computers, or even vampires) who sincerely and enthusiastically strive to get things done as quickly as possible.
In a 2014 study by David Rosenbaum of the University of Pennsylvania, participants were asked to carry one or two heavy buckets to the opposite end of a hallway. One of the buckets was located next to the study participant, the second was further down the corridor. To the surprise of the experimenters, people immediately grabbed the bucket standing next to them and dragged it along the corridor, while passing by a second bucket that could only be dragged part of the distance. As the researchers noted, “These seemingly irrational choices reflect a predisposition to procrastination. We introduce this term to define the phenomenon when we rush to complete some intermediate task, even at the cost of additional physical effort.” Putting off solving a big problem in favor of solving a lot of simple questions can similarly be seen as advancing the completion of an intermediate goal, which, in other words, means that procrastinators act (optimally!) to reduce the number of unsolved problems in their thoughts as quickly as possible. This does not mean that their strategy is not effective in getting things done. They have a great strategy, but for the wrong criteria.
Working with a computer poses a certain danger when we need to consciously and clearly choose planning criteria: the user interface can subtly (or intrusively) force us to use its criteria. The modern smartphone user, in particular, is accustomed to seeing icons on application icons that signal the number of tasks that we must complete in each of them. If the mailbox notifies us of a certain number of unread messages, then it turns out that all messages by default have the same importance. In this case, can we be blamed for choosing a non-weighted model of the least service time algorithm in solving this problem (deal with the simplest emails first and delay dealing with the most complex ones until the last) in order to quickly reduce the number of unread emails?
Live by the criterion, die by the criterion. If all tasks are truly of equal importance, this is what we would have to do. But if we don't want to get caught up in the small stuff, we need to take action to get to the bottom of our to-do list. And here it all starts with the realization that the problem about one device that we are solving is the same one that we we want It's up to you to decide at the moment. (In the case of app icons, if we can't get them to reflect our real priorities, or can't resist the urge to optimally reduce that backlog of tasks that challenge us, then perhaps it's best to simply turn them off.)
Focus on not just solving problems, but solving weight questions while doing the most important work at any given time looks like a panacea for procrastination. But, as practice shows, even this is not enough. And a team of experts in the field of computer planning will be convinced of this under extremely dramatic circumstances: on the surface of Mars, in front of the whole world.
Changing priorities and managing queues
It was the summer of 1997, and humanity had many reasons to rejoice. For example, for the first time, an all-terrain vehicle explored the surface of Mars. The $150 million Mars Pathfinder reached speeds of 16,000 mph, crossed 309 million miles of empty space, and landed on air cushions on the red rocky surface of Mars.
And then he stalled.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers were worried and perplexed. The Mars Explorer surprisingly began to ignore its key task with the highest priority (data exchange via the information bus) and began to solve issues of medium importance. What happened? Did the robot really not understand what it was doing?
Suddenly, the Mars Pathfinder detected that the data bus had been idle for an unacceptably long time and, unable to call for help, initiated a complete reboot on its own, costing the mission almost an entire working day. A day or more later it happened again.
Working feverishly, the lab team was eventually able to reproduce and then diagnose the behavior. The root of the evil turned out to be the classic danger of planning called "change of priorities". What happens is that a low-priority task grabs a system resource (say, access to a database) to run, but then a timer interrupts the task in the middle, pausing it, and activates the system manager. The dispatcher is ready to run a high priority task, but cannot because the database is busy. Thus, the dispatcher moves lower down the task queue, running various unblocked tasks of medium importance, instead of running the highest priority task (which is blocked) or the low priority task that is blocking work (and which ended up at the very end of the queue after medium priority tasks). In such a nightmare scenario, the system may ignore the highest priority task for a very long time*.
* Remarkably, the head of Mars Pathfinder's software management team believed that the problem was due to "deadline pressure" and that during software development, fixing this particular problem was considered a low priority. Thus, the root cause essentially became a reflection of the problem itself.
Once the lab engineers figured out that the problem was a shift in priorities, they wrote code to solve the problem and sent it millions of miles to the Mars Pathfinder. The solution was inheritance priorities. This means that if a low-priority task blocks a resource of a high-priority task, then the low-priority task must immediately “inherit” the high priority of the task it is blocking.
Comedian Mitch Hedberg tells this story: “I was in a casino, relaxing, and suddenly a guy came up to me and said: “You should change seats. You've blocked the fire exit." You would think that I would not have planned to run if the fire had started.” Casino employee's argument: this is a change of priorities. Hedberg's counter-argument: inheritance of priorities. Hedberg, slumped on a chair in front of the fleeing crowd, lingers, putting his low-priority task ahead of the high-priority task of people intent on saving their lives. But everything will change if he inherits their priority (in front of a panicked crowd, her priority is inherited quite quickly). As Hedberg says, "If you're made of flammable materials and you have legs, you'll never block a fire exit."
The moral of the story is that even a love of problem solving is sometimes not enough to avoid fatal planning mistakes. And even love for solving important problems - too. The willingness to extremely scrupulously solve the most important issue with our usual myopia can lead to what the whole world calls procrastination. As in the case of a stuck car: the more you want to get out, the more you skid. According to Goethe, “that which means more must never be at the mercy of that which means less.” And although there is some wisdom in this, sometimes this statement is not entirely fair. Often the things that mean the most to us cannot be done until the smallest task is completed. Therefore, the only way out is to treat unimportant things with the same importance as those whose implementation they slow down.
When one task cannot be started without first completing another, scheduling theorists call this queuing control. For an operational study, expert Laura Albert McLay relied on this principle to significantly change several aspects of her family's household management.
If you understand how these things work, it can be very helpful. Of course, life with three kids means planning every day... We don't leave the house until the kids have had breakfast, and the kids can't start breakfast if I forget to give them spoons. Sometimes we can forget basic things, which then slow everything down. From the point of view of planning algorithms, awareness of this fact and an attempt to keep it in memory is already a great help. This is how I get things done day after day.
In 1978, researcher Jan Karel Lenstra was able to use the same principle when helping his friend Gene move to a new home in Berkeley. “Gene was constantly putting off some task, without finishing which we could not proceed to urgent matters.” As Lenstra recalls, they were supposed to return the truck, but they needed it to return some equipment, and they needed the equipment to fix something in the apartment. This repair could wait (that's why everything was postponed), but the truck needed to be returned urgently. According to Lenstra, he explained to a friend that the task preceding the most urgent one was even more urgent. Since Lenstra is known as a key figure in planning theory and was more than entitled to give such advice, he could not resist a subtle irony. This situation became a case demonstrating a change in priorities due to queue management. And perhaps the most outstanding expert in the field of queue management is considered to be the narrator’s friend - the same Gene, or Eugene Lawler.
Speed limiter
Lawler studied mathematics at the University of Florida, then began his graduate work at Harvard in 1954, although he left before completing his degree. After law school, military service, and factory work, he returned to Harvard in 1958, completed his degree, and took a job at the University of Michigan. Arriving at Berkeley in 1969 while on sabbatical, he was arrested while protesting the Vietnam War. Lawler became a faculty member at UC Berkeley the following year and gained a reputation as a "social conscience" in the computer science department. After his death in 1994, the Association for Computing Machinery created the Lawler Award for those who demonstrate humanistic potential in computer science through their work.Lawler spent many years of his life thinking about how to efficiently execute a sequence of tasks, but his career path took a curious twist.
In his first study of turn control, Lawler suggested that this phenomenon could be easily controlled. For example, consider the earliest due date algorithm that minimizes the maximum delay in executing a set of tasks. If your tasks have a precedence relationship, then things get more complicated: you can't just plow through your to-do list based on deadlines alone if some things can't be started before others are completed. However, in 1968, Lawler proved that it's not such a big deal if you can build your to-do list backwards: just pick out those tasks that don't depend on other tasks, and place the one with the most "remote" deadline at the very end list. Then simply repeat this process, each time considering only those tasks that are not a prerequisite for completing other (not yet scheduled) tasks.
But Lawler's keen eye revealed something interesting. The shortest service time algorithm, as we have seen, is the optimal solution if our goal is to cross as many tasks off our to-do list as quickly as possible. But if some of your tasks are interconnected by precedence relationships, there is no easy or obvious way to adapt the shortest service time algorithm to that situation. Despite the fact that the problem seems elementary, neither Lawler nor other researchers were able to find an effective solution for it.
Moreover, Lawler himself soon discovered that this situation belonged to the category of problems that, in the opinion of most programmers, have no effective solution. Experts call them difficult to solve.
[…] Not every clearly defined problem has a solution. In planning, it is obvious that each set of objectives and constraints implies the presence of any the best order of execution, therefore planning problems, in essence, have a solution, but there may be cases for which there is simply no unambiguous algorithm that can select the optimal schedule for completing work in a reasonable time.
This fact led researchers like Lawler and Lenstra to an inevitable question. So what is the share of planning problems that are difficult to solve? Twenty years after Selmer Johnson launched planning theory with his work on bookbinding, the search for individual solutions has become the grandest and most ambitious task yet - a quest to map the entire terrain of planning theory.
The researchers came to the conclusion that even the most subtle change in the conditions of a planning problem can often move it into the category of difficult to solve. For example, Moore's algorithm minimizes the number of unfinished tasks (or spoiled products) in the case when all tasks are of equal importance, but if one of the tasks is more important, the problem becomes difficult to solve and no algorithm can offer an optimal schedule. Likewise, if you have to wait until a certain point to start doing things, then almost all planning tasks that we could easily and effectively solve without such a condition become difficult to solve. Banning the trash can from being taken outside until the garbage truck arrives might be a reasonable measure of order in the city, but it would completely lose control of your schedule.
The definition of the boundaries of planning theory continues to this day. A recent study showed that about 7% of all problems are still unknown. This is the unknown side of planning. Of the 93% of problems known to us, only 9% have an effective solution, and the remaining 84% are considered difficult to solve. In other words, for most planning problems, standard solutions are not suitable.
If organizing your schedule effectively seems overwhelming, maybe it is. However, the algorithms we have discussed can be a starting point for solving such difficult problems: even if the solution is not perfect, at least it will be competent.
Tell me, why did you stop keeping to-do lists for the day, week, month? Why don’t you want to plan your work day anymore and let everything take its course?
Just think and answer these questions...
While you are thinking, I will answer them.
The answer is actually very simple - you don’t want to plan your working day, because you know that you won’t complete the things written down on the list anyway. There will be a thousand and one reasons not to do them - your mother will call you on the phone, and you will spend all your time talking to her; an acquaintance will come to visit, and you and him will drink coffee and eat cake; your favorite series will start showing on TV and you will have a strong desire to watch a new episode.
You are guaranteed to find a reason not to complete your planned activities. And if you don’t find it, then don’t give it 100% - you will only complete 80%-90% of all planned tasks, and forget about the rest.
This is where questions arise...
Why do some people complete all their planned tasks for the day, while others do not? What needs to be done to get things on the list done? How to change this situation for the better?
This problem can be solved in various ways, but today I will share with you only one technique, which I affectionately call “Financial Gestapo!” Those who trained with me are familiar with it. True, it is called differently, but this does not change the essence. The name “Financial Gestapo” sounds good, and it answers 100% of its essence.
The essence of this technique is as follows...
You find in your environment a “Financial Gestapo” who will monitor the execution of your tasks according to the list every evening. This person could be an acquaintance of yours, a business colleague, or just a good friend. The main thing is that he can contact you every evening at a certain time, find out the results of the current day and get acquainted with the plans for the next day.
For every task planned and not completed, you will pay your controller money. The amount can be different, but such that you won’t feel sorry to give, for example, $2, $5 or $10. You didn’t complete one task - you give your controller $2, two - $4, five - $10. I hope the technique is clear. If you have completed all your tasks for the day, there is no need to give anything away.
But there is one big “BUT” - you can lie to your controller and say that you completed the planned task, although in fact you did not. You will need to provide him with proof of the task completed - take a photograph of something you did or did. For example, this could be a photograph of a written article from the monitor screen, a cooked lunch, a cleaned apartment, etc. The main thing is that you can provide documentary evidence that you were engaged in the planned activity and completed it. Since everyone has a mobile phone these days, taking a photo will only take a couple of seconds. It's not as difficult as it seems.
What will the use of the “Financial Gestapo” lead to?
There are a few positives...
1. You will learn how to properly plan your work day.
It would seem that there is nothing complicated about this - just write a to-do list and complete it, but as practice shows, there are features and there are many of them. You will understand how much time it will actually take to achieve a particular goal; you will appreciate the value of your time as you will pay money for every action not completed.
2. You will learn to value your money.
At first, a few dollars per action not completed may not seem to make much difference. In the short term (a few days) this is true, but in the long term you will shell out a couple of hundred dollars and deprive yourself of buying some kind of toy for yourself or something useful for your family.
3. You will build a habit of getting things done into your routine.
Working closely with the “Financial Gestapo”, you can instill in yourself the habit of not only planning things, but also carrying them out. This will not happen immediately, but gradually. Step by step, the habit of doing things and bringing them to completion will be built into your consciousness.
But that’s not all... You can control your controller’s affairs - become his “Financial Gestapo”! You will control each other. You will compete with each other. You will achieve great results together, as you will work in pairs.