How to manage everything: at work when you’re overwhelmed, and do household chores at home?

We live in an era of multitasking, deadlines, plans, stress and depression. Nobody has time to do anything, everyone is in a hurry. Work.ua figured out why it is now fashionable to be busy and how much free time we really have.

Permanent employment is the current trend. “I don’t have time,” “I don’t have time for this,” “I’m busy until next year.” Do we know how, do we practice? But do modern working people really have so little time?

Why is it fashionable to be busy?

Yes, because if you manage to do everything on time, you have enough time for your family and hobbies, you don’t suffer from insomnia and don’t spend the night at work, then something is wrong with you. Or you just don't work hard enough. Or you don’t even know what a “project on fire” means. Well, or you know how to control time, not otherwise. And this, excuse me, is some kind of fantasy. So, it’s better like everyone else - in constant rush and rush, but you can immediately see that the person is working!

Work.ua looked at the situation from a different angle, and here are the conclusions we came to.

Because of work there is not enough time to live

Causes of fatigue

I get tired at work and don’t have time to do anything at home.

Quite often, a problem arises with the correct distribution of home and work time and effort - with this option, it turns out to do either one or the other efficiently.

This situation is possible in the following cases:

You are used to organizing your time only at work. You take planning your work time seriously, hoping to keep all your household chores in mind. In fact, household tasks require organization and planning just as much.
You devote a lot of time to work to the detriment of personal interests. Leave professional problems and concerns outside your home, do not bring them into your home - there are working hours for this.
You must clearly distinguish between your professional and home responsibilities. Both should be limited and not interfere with each other.
You devote little time to rest. It is the lack of rest that leads to fatigue and decreased productivity. Therefore, you should properly plan the time during which you will restore your strength.

You don't know how to plan

Eat. We're telling you exactly. Remember the game Tetris? The figures on the screen fell from above in a chaotic order and in a chaotic position. To clear the space on the playing field, it was necessary to stack the pieces as tightly and neatly as possible so that there were no gaps between them.

Over time - the same thing. If you came to work and drank tea with your colleagues for 40 minutes, then checked your email for another 20 minutes, then surfed the Internet for half an hour, “Tetris” has already started falling, you are overwhelmed, game over!

Schedule your time for the next day in the evening. Yes, at first it seems boring, after all, you are not some kind of robot. But it works. Just sit down and plan out your day - sports in the morning, then work (also write down work in detail, what time you will do it), then communication with children or spouse/meeting with friends, before going to bed, leave 20 minutes for reading.

You will be surprised how effective this planning can be. Just try to live according to plan for at least a week!

I can't get anything done at work

Why?

It happens that professional duties not fulfilled on time cannot be explained even by being overwhelmed at work - this state of affairs becomes more permanent than temporary.

In this case, you should find out the reasons that lead to the irrational use of working time.

The most common are the following:

Lack of time planning .
The result is chaotic completion of tasks, jumping from one concern to another, performing several tasks at the same time, which ultimately leads to incompleteness of all of them. Also, the lack of a pre-planned day leads to distraction and missing important details, which then require significant time to catch up.
Wrong prioritization . You can plan your working day and not achieve the desired result due to incorrect prioritization, when first time is devoted to unimportant tasks, and only then to important global tasks for which there is no time left. As a result, it turns out that minor tasks are completed, and unfulfilled fundamentally important tasks slow down the entire further work process.
Distractibility. Even a carefully laid out plan with the right priorities can fall through if you are constantly distracted from it. This could be phone calls, surfing the Internet, visiting social networks, frequent smoking - in this case there is a lack of self-organization, the real goal of which is to complete tasks according to plan.
Clutter in the workplace. If documents are arranged chaotically and there is no basic order, time will be wasted searching for one document or another, which could have been used much more effectively.
The desire to complete several tasks at once. This can also be attributed to improper planning.
When, due to the desire to complete many tasks, attention is “sprayed”, leading to the fact that many things remain unfinished or not done well enough.

What to do?

In order to increase labor productivity, you need to resort to the following techniques:

Plan your time in advance. Develop the habit of identifying goals and tasks that need to be completed in advance. Write down in a notepad everything that needs to be done for the next working day, week, month. In fact, it is not so simple - at first, even planning one single working day may be difficult. However, in this way you will learn to evaluate your own capabilities and save time by knowing clearly what you want to do.
Set your priorities. Different tasks require an appropriate attitude - separate the wheat from the chaff.
Spend more time on strategically important tasks, balance the importance of a particular task and the time that can be spent on it.
Take a photo of your work day. To do this, write down the result of the work done in a notebook every hour. In this way, you can discover what will be discussed in the next paragraph - the so-called chronophages - useless activities that take up your time to the detriment of your work.
Get rid of chronophages . Minimize distractions from your work process—even if it means sacrificing an extra cup of coffee or a cigarette break with a colleague. Put your smartphone aside and stop scrolling aimlessly through your social media profiles.
Tidy up your workspace . Spend some time organizing your workspace and it will come back to you in multiples. Carefully lay out documents or tools, try to classify them so that you can quickly find them. Remove unnecessary shortcuts and folders from your PC desktop.
Take care of your own comfort in the workplace . Change an uncomfortable chair or a table lamp that is too dim. Remember, the more comfortable you are, the more productive you will be.
Avoid unnecessary obligations. Do not agree to fulfill someone's request for help unless you are sure that you will definitely have time for it.
Learn to politely refuse - a reference to employment actually doesn’t look very shocking.
Review your lunch break time. Perhaps you spend too much time getting to the cafeteria, and then end up late for work or procrastinating over a cup of coffee or chatting with colleagues. Train yourself to strictly fit into the time allotted for your lunch break.
Do not put off until later those tasks that are convenient to complete at the moment. It would seem that this contradicts strict adherence to the drawn up plan, but timely flexibility will save a lot of time.

What to do if your husband doesn't want to work? Advice from psychologists will help you!

If there is a blockage

Sometimes force majeure circumstances , in which it is necessary to complete not only the current work, but also unexpectedly arisen additional tasks.

How can you organize your workflow to deal with the backlog as much as possible?

Pareto principle 20/80. This law is universal for various types of activities. Its essence is that only 20% of your time is spent achieving 80% of the result. Accordingly, 80% of your time is spent on the remaining 20% of the result. Find out which of your actions are most effective. Sacrifice those tasks whose importance is unimportant and concentrate on strategically important matters.
Try to complete one task quickly. Don’t waste your attention on multitasking - in emergency mode there is a risk that you may not get anything done at all.
Try to quickly complete one intended goal, and only after completing it move on to the next one.
Use communication tools. Don’t run to your boss’s door if you can call him without getting up from your desk. Save every second of your time.
Limit communication with loved ones during working hours. No matter how dear your relationships with family and friends are, they should understand that your work also requires attention - at least in order not to finish unfinished matters at home to the detriment of those at home.

How to resist mobbing at work? Read about it here.

Hey! Yes, you just manage to do everything!

Yoga in the morning, business meeting at lunch, audiobook on the way home, English in the evening, rafting on Saturday? Wow! And you say that you don’t have time to do gymnastics? Give it up! Still, it is impossible to turn 24 hours into 30 hours even with our advice!

Exhale. Don't chase after everything. Sometimes you can rest. In the most literal sense of the word. Just sit in silence (even without a book) and think. You shouldn’t scold yourself for the fact that you can’t fit all of your plans into one day. Otherwise, you risk burning out, and then no plan will help!

What to do if you don’t want to do anything and nothing makes you happy

There is no universal mechanism to help solve the problem of idleness. There are many reasons for the blues and the desire to do nothing, so it is necessary to look for appropriate ways to get rid of the described condition.

So, if you are wondering what to do if you don’t want to do anything at all, then, first of all, it is recommended to load yourself with something. Idleness is addictive. Therefore, in order to overcome the state of doing nothing, you need to come up with an interesting activity. In this case, it is advisable to devote all available time to this activity. You need to start yourself up like an automatic machine and work without brakes: exercise, work, self-development, hobbies. You should diversify your daily existence to the fullest.

When melancholy overcomes, sadness reigns in the soul and indifference rules existence, when everyday life becomes more and more monotonous, then sport comes to the rescue. After all, a positive spirit lives in a beautiful bodily shell. Therefore, it is recommended to choose the type of activity or sports activity individually. The main condition is pleasure. You should not forcibly tear your own “carcass” out of bed for the sake of the hated morning jog. If your gut is calm and measured sports exercises, then forcing yourself with fitness is not the best option.

If the urge to do nothing is overwhelming, then helping those in need will help. You can visit a nursing home, boarding school, orphanage, communicate with ordinary people, support them, bring necessary things, give tenderness and share love. After all, warmth is something that residents of government institutions lack so much and something that everyone has in abundance. It’s just that for most individuals, the illusory value of material wealth has overshadowed the importance of spiritual warmth. When you give human subjects care and tenderness, you yourself become better. You are also charged with positivity for a long period.

Unblocking your own negative feelings, which individuals often try to hide far away, will also help overcome apathy. In order to bring hidden emotions to the surface, you can use the services of a psychotherapist or look deep into yourself. Unblocking negative emotions on your own is not difficult. You need to think alone about your true feelings for yourself, your parents, your partner, your children, and immerse yourself in the emotions you feel without being embarrassed by them. This way, a lot of negativity will spill out, the attitude towards relatives will improve and, at the same time, interest in life will return.

To remove melancholy from your own life, you should laugh. It is not without reason that there is a saying that laughter prolongs life. Therefore, it is recommended to read funny stories, jokes, and watch comedy films. You also need to smile at yourself and those around you: passers-by, colleagues, sellers, without thinking that someone will consider such behavior strange. Some will indeed consider the smile abnormal, but others will respond with a sincere smile, which will certainly lift the mood and awaken the desire to act.

Friends are another element that helps you stay afloat and prevents you from getting bogged down in the abyss of the blues. Therefore, it is recommended to remember “old” comrades, new acquaintances, best friends and create a “party”.

To be happy you need to find your own purpose. After all, successful individuals are successful because they do exactly what they really like. Having replayed your own life like stills from a movie, you need to remember the joyful moments of your existence, what caused them, what made your eyes sparkle, when everything stopped, why did this happen?! You should find this moment and rewrite the “frame” from life that changed it.

Sometimes, in order to get rid of laziness, a person just needs to rest. Many, in pursuit of ephemeral signs of happiness, forget about simple things - rest, proper sleep and nutrition, spiritual development, communication. If apathy is caused by banal mental fatigue and physical overstrain, then it is recommended to go to the forest, take a walk near the sea, and enjoy the gifts of nature. After all, nature coupled with rest are two irreplaceable components of a healthy personality.