10 books that will teach you how to manage your time correctly

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Learn how to prioritize, overcome procrastination, and add order to your creative process.

There is no one-size-fits-all recipe for productivity. We all have different priorities in work and classes, our own peculiarities of circadian rhythms and a unique mentality. Therefore, what works for one may not work for another.

We've collected popular time management books that show you different planning approaches. Some of them contain practical advice on self-discipline, others offer to start by relaxing and understanding why you do not have time to do everything that you set out to do.

1. “How to put things in order. The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, David Allen

One of the world's most famous books on time management and personal efficiency, translated into 30 languages. It was written by David Allen, a productivity consultant who owes much of his popularity to his Getting Things Done methodology. It is described in this book.

The essence of GTD is to free up the resources that we spend on memorizing the current affairs. To do this, you need to plan everything in advance and how you should plan it in advance, and transfer the tasks themselves to an external medium. The book was published in 2001, so folders and binders are mentioned along with software. Today, we would say that electronic media are confidently replacing paper planners (although for some people, for example, a handwritten bullet journal is suitable).

In workflow management, Allen identifies five main stages: collecting, processing, organizing, reviewing, and acting. You can decompose anything according to this scheme: current affairs, projects, responsibilities, plans for the coming years, personal prospects and a whole life. The key is to start with a list of tasks and end up with a simple system for performing the necessary actions.

2. “Don't Put It Off Tomorrow,” Timothy Peachil

Suffering about why we do not tackle urgent tasks takes so much energy that it would be more than enough to complete them. Moreover, the appetite comes with eating, and work delays. Whereas thinking about how you don't want to do it only waste resources and bring unpleasant emotions. The main thing is that then you still have to get down to business - only already exhausted and in conditions of lack of time.

Timothy Peachil, professor of psychology at Carleton University, has been studying procrastination since 1995. In his opinion, postponing until tomorrow is one of the bad habits, which are based on subconscious motives. So, it can be thrown. Pichil's book tells you exactly how to do this. But first we have to admit that no one, except ourselves, prevents us from following our own plans and completing all things on time.

3. "Time Management" by Brian Tracy

Brian Tracy is a Canadian-American motivational speaker and author of numerous self-help books. In Time Management, he offers 21 specific time management techniques, as well as how to cope with distractions, overcome procrastination, and learn to delegate tasks.

It describes the principles on which you can build workflow management. For example, according to the Pareto rule, the implementation of 20% of the volume of tasks will ensure 80% of the work is done. Therefore, every morning, starting to do business, you need to evaluate which of them will allow you to get the greatest return and achieve the most important goals.

And in order to maximize productivity and mobilize resources, Tracy advises to come up with motivation. For example, imagine that you were offered to go on paid vacation if in one day you can do all the most important things planned for a whole week.

4. “Do less. How to get rid of the desire to have everything in time ", Fergus O'Connell

Fergus O'Connell proposes to lose the battle to win the war, and to admit: you can't change everything. The acceptance of this fact, in a paradoxical way, liberates and gives new opportunities.

By taking some time for yourself, such as staying up late at work, you will ultimately gain more energy and creativity. This will require you to cross things off your to-do list. But the problem is that usually people in the first place remove from it what they really want and like to do. So the balance between work and personal life is lost. To restore it, the author recommends learning to do less.

The scheduling rules contained in the book will help you rank tasks in order of importance and understand in what order to proceed with them.

5. “Fast turtle. Not doing as a way to achieve the goal ", Diana Renner, Stephen D'Souza

Another book with a paradoxical title, the authors of which propose to abandon fussy actions and learn how to enter a state of flow. In addition to practical advice on the allocation of time, there is a desire to philosophically comprehend the very concept of activity. So "Fast Turtle" is suitable for those for whom it is vitally important not only to know how to do something, but also to understand why and why. The authors are sure that one does not exist without the other.

This is not to say that this work is about time management as such. Rather, it is about goal setting and effective ways to achieve results. However, having mastered the author's method of not doing and learning to be here and now, you can cope with routine tasks much more successfully. True, you need to be prepared that on this path you will have to deal with cognitive distortions and emotions that prevent you from thinking clearly. "Leave your mind alone and it will work for you and with you," the authors advise.

6. "The Book of Lost Time" by Laura Vanderkam

Constant thinking about saving time is not the path to effective time management, but neurosis, says Laura Vanderkam. By spending energy on this, we prevent ourselves from concentrating on the really important things. Instead of worrying, you need to give energy to activities that bring positive emotions. To determine priorities, the author recommends formulating your key competencies - the areas of their application and will be the things that you do best and which are worth paying attention to first.

One of the cross-cutting themes of The Book of Lost Time is combining work and family, so it will be especially useful for working mothers. Laura herself has a son, so the topic is close to her. However, she does not try to appear as the guru of a happy life and does not reduce everything to her own experience. Vanderkam is primarily a journalist, so the book is largely based on interviews with various successful people - those who managed to arrange life in accordance with their own desires, without having fame and wealth.

7. “Complete order. A weekly plan to deal with chaos at work, at home and in your head”, Regina Leeds

Regina Leeds offers a comprehensive method that can be applied to anything. Its essence is as follows: if you once eliminated chaos in your belongings and documents, are used to performing certain actions in a certain order, and have learned to quickly and clearly convey your thoughts to others, everything will take much less time. And the book has an annual action plan that will help you achieve these and many other goals.

Diet, exercise, writing a work diary, creating a dreamboard (visualization boards with goals), time management skills, and the formation of good habits and regime are the tools that will teach the reader to be organized and help to defeat the surrounding chaos. So that all this does not seem too dull and does not resemble self-training, there is a place in the system for ways to please yourself, which will be a reward for your efforts.

8. “The Myth of Multitasking: What It Leads to Doing Everything,” Dave Crenshaw

The ability to take on several things at the same time has been considered a virtue of a successful person since the days of Guy Julius Caesar. Dave Crenshaw, with the help of specific cases, exposes this myth and proves that by chasing all the hares at once, you will simply break the deadline. Instead of trying to do everything at the same time, the author advises you to learn how to switch between tasks. The easiest way to do this is by training your attention.

The book will be useful for those who want to change their work habits or just check if multitasking is really as good as it is said to be.

9. “Don't do it. Time management for creative people ", Donald Ros

Creative work is usually associated with inspiration. And it is customary to wait for inspiration, like the weather by the sea. However, it can be triggered if you learn to focus and enter the state of flow.

Another popular problem for creative workers is the abundance of ideas and projects that only exist in the imagination. Such people are able to set themselves the most interesting tasks, but there is often not enough time and energy to complete them.

In his book, Donald Roth talks about how to achieve concentration and learn to intelligently separate things of primary importance from those of less importance. He suggests not to make a to-do list, but to go from the opposite - to start giving up some ambitions in order to concentrate on the most important thing. This helps to calmly move from one task to another, without hovering over them and not panicking because of the breadth of possibilities. According to the author, his method allows you to successfully combine creativity and self-discipline.

10. “Muse and monster. How to organize creative work ", Jana Frank

Another book on creative management from artist and blogger Yana Frank. Muse and the Monster tells how creativity (the muse) comes to terms with order (a monster that, according to the general opinion, frightens all creative people). The book is recommended to everyone whose work involves a flight of imagination: designers, artists, journalists, leaders in creative fields.

According to Yana Frank, chaos and freedom are completely different things. If freedom is a necessary condition for creative self-expression, then chaos stifles this self-expression, leaving no space and resources for it. So it's time to get down to business and streamline your workflows. By the way, in addition to the theoretical part, the book contains 150 pages of the diary, marked up according to the author's method.

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