20 Ways to Get Things Done Before the New Year

The hottest time has come – you need to have time to do hundreds of things before the clock strikes twelve. We have chosen effective techniques that will help you fulfill everything planned and celebrate the New Year with peace of mind.

Write down all tasks

Back in 1927, our compatriot Bluma Zeigarnik published a paper in which she showed that unfinished tasks are better remembered. A year later, another Russian woman, Maria Ovsyankina, demonstrated in her work that unfinished tasks create a desire to complete them. Based on these works, it can be assumed that until the work is completed, it will live somewhere in the depths of our consciousness, cause anxiety and consume thought fuel .

That is why it is very important to immediately write down all ideas and possible tasks. They can be recorded in a separate notebook or in an application on your smartphone.

Review your to-do list every day

Correct formulation is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for minimizing repeated thoughts, in addition to this practice, we must also learn to trust the “repository” where we write down correctly formulated tasks.

And for this you need to regularly make sure that the list of tasks:

a) has not lost its relevance

b) contains everything that needs to be done

Therefore, review it, mark completed tasks and constantly add new ones. So you don’t miss anything. Include tasks for the monkey and the rational person.

Learn to use small time frames

It must be admitted that the pace of life has changed over the past few years, and each of us has many tasks that we do “simultaneously”. Being engaged in large and global projects, one must understand that such a project will remain unfinished for a very long time and all this time we will have to live somehow. We will have to work productively, reflect, and thoughtfully approach the various moments that arise, while the projects of our whole life will still be far from complete.

If a short period of time is completely meaningful, it will be a significant contribution to getting closer to your goals.

Stop multitasking

The myth that the human brain is able to equally well control several tasks at once has long been dispelled. Do not multi-task or jump from one activity to another. Immerse yourself in doing your favorite (or not very favorite, but very important) thing and completely concentrate on it.

Analyze your biorhythms

Analyze what time you are most productive. To do this, you need to get up early for a week or two, try to work at night, early in the morning, during the day and analyze what is happening, keep a diary. It is advisable to give up sweets, caffeine, and other stimulants for this period.

Usually, for most people , the decline in activity occurs in the afternoon after lunch. This is a great time for a short nap. Productivity peaks most often occur in the morning and evening.

Don’t check your email at your most productive time. Leave it for key tasks that require concentration, energy, awareness. Leave the least productive time for simple things – these may not be the most important tasks that you constantly put off, the routine components of large and important tasks and projects, sports training, studying easy ̆ , but useful ̆ business literature, rest.

Don’t schedule back-to-back meetings

Be sure to leave a significant margin between meetings, never plan them back to back – even if they take place in the same room or nearby. Life always makes adjustments, time is spent on various household trifles, the road (if meetings and affairs are spaced apart in space), fees, and so on.

Unfortunately, we tend to miss these nuances when planning, we are always overly optimistic when timing. Wrong approach, any delay leads to a shift in the entire schedule. And if after each meeting there is a margin of time, flexibility appears. If everything went on time, calmly prepare for the next task or perform flexible tasks. If you are late, you will not have to worry and be late for the next meeting.

Create conditions

Someone does not like to write letters, someone does not like to fill out documents for tax and other authorities, it is difficult for someone to sit down for a report. What’s the matter? If you delve into yourself, it turns out that there are no suitable conditions to take and do the job. To fill out documents for the tax office, you need to find the TIN number, find the application itself and a sample of filling, and then, as luck would have it, all the pens disappeared somewhere. What kind of productivity are we talking about?

Analyze your tasks at home and at work, which are difficult for you to approach, and make these tasks more enjoyable.

Find creative space

If you urgently need to come up with some stunning idea, and the muse is stuck somewhere along the way, you can fix the situation. Instead of thinking in a familiar setting, find another suitable place. It can be crowded or, conversely, quiet. Let it be a park, the nearest pancake shop or a secluded place on a bench near the office. A change of scenery will give you a break and come up with a wow idea or solution to a problem. And yes: do not take your phone with you.

Reach your goals one at a time

There are always many tasks before us at the same time. We write emails to colleagues and friends while browsing information portals, participating in online chats and talking on the phone. Doing many things at the same time is sometimes helpful—like packing laundry and watching TV—but doing anything that requires focus, especially when time is limited, requires us to give our full attention to a particular task.

Classify calls of acquaintances according to their importance

Not everyone who calls you has something significant to say. Especially when you are working on a complex project. Cultivate the habit of arranging important calls.

Avoid empty talk

When you spend less time in conversations on small and more serious topics, your life satisfaction will increase and your relationships with others will improve. Forget empty talk and try to talk on serious topics. Surely there are people in your environment who love serious conversations and who like to share their thoughts and opinions with you on a variety of issues. Pick a time during the week to talk to them.

Get your intentions right

Research by Harvard School of Medicine professor Alvaro Paz ­Calleon shows that when we set out to do ­something, our brain already starts to work. Two groups of subjects took part in the experiment. The first ̆ was given the task of learning a ­simple melody for the piano and practicing its performance for two hours every day for five days ̆; the second was asked to think about doing these exercises. The survey data ­led to the conclusion that the members of both groups had almost the same phenomena in those parts of the frontal lobe of the brain that ­are responsible for motor skills. Pascal ­Leon’s discovery proves that the very thought of an ­action can have the same effect on our brain as the action itself .

Don’t get hung up on deadlines

Putting down a deadline for each task is, of course, good. But putting down dates for every piece of work is fraught with nervous exhaustion. Just imagine if your plan was full of deadlines every two to three days. “Ahh, I can’t do anything! I’m late! Guard!” – these are the thoughts that can “settle” in your naked.

This, on the one hand, disciplines, on the other hand, it can create additional stress. How often you need to remind yourself that the work is on fire and the next deadline is ending, everyone must determine for himself.

Watch your sleep

Sleep significantly affects mood, stress resistance and a general sense of life satisfaction, maintaining hormonal balance in the body. When we don’t get enough sleep, levels of serotonin (the hormone of happiness) and melatonin (the hormone that regulates the wake-sleep cycle) decrease, while cortisol (the stress hormone) rises, which can lead to disorders such as irritability, depression, mood swings, etc. . P.

If a person is chronically sleep deprived, they develop long-term symptoms of ill health. This can lead to high blood pressure, heart attack, heart failure, stroke, psychiatric problems including depression, attention deficit disorder (ADD), and decreased brain activity.

In a word, healthy sleep does wonders for your health and helps us to quickly cope with all tasks.

Deal with small things right away

When you get a new task, quickly evaluate: if it takes no more than 2 minutes, do it right away. If more, you need to act differently. You have already decided that now is not the time for this. Just go a little further and ask yourself, “If not now, then when?” And when you set the time, write this task down on your to-do list for the future and don’t worry about forgetting it.

Use a timer

Before you take on the next task, start a timer. Once the time is up, analyze the results and decide if the current task is worth the extra time or if it’s time to move on to the next task.

Learn to say “no”

The inability to say “no” can put you in the position of a perpetually overloaded and overworked person. Therefore, it is very important to learn how to politely refuse people their requests.

In order to politely refuse, you need to say something like this: “I would gladly fulfill your request if I had time, but, unfortunately, the situation is such that I cannot do the job efficiently and quickly enough.” And that’s it. Your interlocutor realized that you are not ready to spend your time on his worries and will decide for himself what to do in this situation. You have freed yourself from the burden of doing work that you shouldn’t and don’t feel like doing.

Remember, if you keep saying “yes” all the time, you will very soon overwork and burn out, stop benefiting the company, family and yourself.

be patient

For impatient people , waiting and wasting time are unbearable. To ease their pain, they try to save time and speed up, but the rush leads to an increase in the number of errors, because the brain is able to work either faster or more accurately, and then you have to go back, correct what you have done and spend twice as much time because of this and forces. And you don’t want that, do you?

The critical element of success is to do everything on time. Schedule action too late and you will miss the chance. Schedule it too early and you’ll fire before the target has even been set. You need to choose the right time, and then wait. Therefore, do not rush things and get ready to gradually approach your goal.

Avoid Perfectionism

Perfectionism is the desire and inner expectation of the highest level of performance. Then why is it bad to strive for the ideal? Why does perfectionism get in the way of achieving goals?

Firstly, the “ideal” and ” highest ̆ level” are very difficult to formulate and measure, so the goal of a perfectionist is elusive and abstract. For him, everything is unacceptable, except for the ideal. If something does not meet the criteria, it must be rejected, replaced or redone. However, in this case, the work will not end. You can always correct, change and improve something – and still this will not be enough, because the ideal is unknown.

Believe in yourself

Self-doubt dictates what can and cannot be done. It determines how ambitious goals you consider, how high you set the bar, and to what extent you dare to reach . It builds a fence around ambition and feeds the brain with warnings that you know very little and know how, are not ready for success, are depressed, you are uncomfortable, and dreams are difficult to realize.

What to do with your confidence? Body language can have unexpected effects . Studies have shown that, for example, a change in facial expression affects mood because it is perceived by the brain as a sign of external or internal stimulation.

Therefore, try to confidently speak, stand and walk – and you will feel a surge of strength and admiration of others. The situation in which you are afraid to be will not change because you are timid or courageous. So why not choose courage?

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