Blog Maxim Dorofeeva is one of the most popular management blogs. The head of the development department of the IT department at Kaspersky Lab in his lectures proves that it is not difficult to overcome procrastination. So, here are some valuable practical tips on how to stop procrastinating your life.
Few are capable of performing a simple exercise. For example, say, "I will answer you on Wednesday," and answer on Wednesday. 90% of all our tasks are "almost done" and remain in this state forever. "It is very important to be able to feel the difference between doing and doing", - says Maxim.

Signs of a restless brain

Maxim often says that people need to use the nail-pulling technique. But we will talk about it a little later. And now - about what a "restless brain" is.
Let's imagine the situation. You are sitting at work, and you have a long thought process in your head: you are thinking about completing a task. But suddenly you receive an SMS. There is a desire to immediately react and respond. As a result, we get a bunch of unfinished tasks by the end of the working day. Like, I'm tired, distracted, etc. The tasks were completed only by half or 90 percent. Or, for example, you are again busy with a task. And the thought arises in my head: "Should I buy some milk for home?" The brain immediately begins to look for options, and think about which milk to buy, in which store. The result is disappointing: the working spirit is completely killed. Let's take a more serious and sad example. You are walking with your family and thinking about the appointment tonight. Come to work and think about it again. But it makes no sense to undertake serious tasks, it seems to you that you will not be able to do anything anyway. You put off all the work until later. As a result, at the meeting you think about going out with your family because you understand that you were naughty to your wife, did not play with your child, etc. You came to that most important meeting, but you cannot concentrate on the conversation: you are distracted by thoughts of a walk with your family. You go to bed, and suddenly an important thought occurs to you. It seems that you need to solve some problem right now. But you understand that it is time to sleep and that tomorrow it will be difficult to get up for work. Thought does not leave you until dawn. As a result, you do not get enough sleep at all and feel overwhelmed.

“Such situations are not uncommon for me. It happens that you sit at work, there are few tasks. Or there are tasks, but very small and insignificant. “Then I'll do it,” you think. Just sat down to perform an uninteresting, trivial task - the phone rings. The wife asks what to cook for dinner tonight. You leave the office and get distracted. Then you sit down at the computer again, but the thoughts of the upcoming fried meat and how soon you want to go home are in your head. You look at the clock - it's already 18:00, the working day is over. The task remains unfulfilled. You think I'll come back tomorrow morning and do everything right away. On the way home, you remember that you forgot to carry out a small assignment from your boss. You feel a strange lump in your soul. The mood is below the plinth, and you are arguing with your wife for some reason. You come to the office the next day, and you are given new tasks that require urgent fulfillment. And those little ones that you put aside yesterday remain unfinished. Such unpleasant situations happen to me very often, so the "restless brain" is familiar to me like no one else. This is an unpleasant feeling, I advise everyone to do small and not difficult tasks as soon as possible. ", - says the programmer Roman Alekseev.

Think about whether it is worth postponing the solution of small tasks until later? Seemingly insignificant tasks accumulate and form a huge tangle of problems. If you continue to live in this rhythm, you will simply lose your health, quarrel with your family and you will constantly feel like an inferior person.

On the peculiarities of the exploitation of the brain

“The brain thinks for a maximum of 2-3 hours during the working day. And it can maintain attention for a maximum of 30 minutes - a quantum of attention ", - is talking Maxim Dorofeev... But sometimes the brain is in a state of "flow", when the quantum of attention can be about 6 hours. If at this moment you do not think about anything outsider, except for work, the brain may begin to throw us unnecessary thoughts. You start to want to drink tea or surf the social network to relax and unwind. But reading the news and chatting with friends strains your brain even more, so if you want to relax, just drink water and try not to think about anything for at least a couple of minutes.

“I don’t know how to properly rest at work. When I have a free minute, I immediately go to all social networks, pour myself some coffee and try to do a bunch of things at the same time. At first, the brain seems to shut down and seem to be resting. Recently I looked at pictures of friends who have returned from vacation. They were in Portugal surfing. Then I suddenly realized that I also want to visit this country. And then my brain tells me: "Let's see the tours to Portugal!" I looked, was upset, began to look for other options for recreation, although I do not even plan a vacation yet. As a result, I was engaged in this unnecessary business for about two hours and completely forgot about work. I wanted to distract myself, but in the end it turned out that I loaded even more. I didn’t manage to have a rest, nor to choose a place to rest. Two hours of my life were completely wasted. I read Dorofeev and realized that you need to rest from work in a completely different way. Now I will just look out the window and walk around the office during a short break. ", - the programmer shares his experience Igor Ilyukhin.

Maxim Dorofeev assures: "Our most precious resource is energy"... You can be able to perfectly manage your time and have time to do everything on time, but at the same time feel tired and depressed.
You are probably familiar with the situation when you do everything at work, your boss praises you, but inside you feel overwhelmed and worthless. Usually, this unpleasant state occurs when you work too much and the only thing you live for is work and the desire to go up the career ladder. There is nothing wrong with this, but when a person lives only by work and denies himself the small joys of life, he begins to destroy himself from the inside. You think that now is the moment when you need to prove yourself to the maximum and show your boss how good you are. At first everything will really be fine, but then you will simply lose confidence in yourself and your own strengths. Relaxation should never be forgotten. No job, even the highest paid, is worth thinking about day and night. Sometimes you need to arrange "fasting" days, that is, completely free from work and any serious thoughts. Give yourself some rest at least once a week. Prepare something delicious with your family, stay in nature, lie in the bathroom, get some sleep, finally. Learn to restore your strength and energy.

I went to a lecture and training by Maxim Dorofeev about organizing affairs. Maxim talked about irrationality in work, about the correct formulation of the problem, work with e-mail.

I read a lot about Maxim and his Jedi empty inbox technique, and so I went to a seminar. The seminar was about everything at once, but it turned out to be interesting. This is largely due to the exemplary organization of the lecture: slides, style, jokes, practice - it was all perfect. I go to lectures and conferences a lot, but this is the first time I've enjoyed organizing so much. It was worth going to the training just for the sake of this feeling.

Conducted a synopsis of the seminar, I publish it. I warn you that this is just a summary for yourself, and not a detailed retelling.

  1. The rules do not guarantee us a result, but can only influence its likelihood.
  2. Most of us know very well how we should behave. The problem is not lack of knowledge, but fulfillment.
  3. We have in our heads the ideal of Aristotelian man: every human action has a cause, is aimed at a result. But in fact, most of the time, most of us are irrational, impulsive, acting automatically (overestimating our level of awareness). But we do not consider this behavior to be the norm.
  4. Thinking hurts.
  5. We are all working on urgent matters. Well, why work on non-urgent matters until they become urgent?
  6. For a responsible person, the pendel comes from within, for an irresponsible person, it comes from the management.
  7. When evaluating a problem, we often throw in a buffer "just in case." It must be done in two days, we estimate the period in a week. But we consider this task not urgent. The task completion date turns into a date before which nothing happens.
  8. When a person is given task after task, he solves them easily in the allotted time. You give them all at once - she begins to come up with planning and some of them do not have time.
  9. The phrase "prioritize" sounds like "make a list of my only asses." When people prioritize, they choose between the important and the urgent. But in fact, they choose the understandable.
  10. Memory works crookedly: short-term memory interferes with thinking, long-term memory does not work well.
  11. Human memory has no guarantee of authenticity. There is a psychological experiment when people were shown their photoshopped children's photos. Already in the third interview, people recall in detail the events in which they did not participate.
  12. To do more, you need to conserve thought fuel. To do this, you need to minimize "repeated thoughts" - to correctly formulate tasks. It is necessary to unload the working memory - to transfer all the data to the computer. You also need to reduce external switching.
  13. Who cares to come to Ikea for batteries and buy batteries?
  14. There's even a smartphone app for meditation. People for three thousand years somehow managed without it.
  15. If you want to save money on working with mail, process letters in a batch.
  16. To process a letter means to separate the semantic parts from it, to split it. After reading, you should have tasks, appointments, new information.
  17. There are no right and wrong people. There are people whose picture of the world is different from yours.
  18. The correct formulation of the problem is as if you are telling a sequence of actions to a not very smart servant. Only this servant is yourself.
  19. A good problem answers the question "What needs to be done?" It is important not to show off, but to write simply. Not "Deal with the annual report", but "Add a table to the last slide."
  20. “Build a house” is not a task, but a project. There are a lot of tasks in the "Build a house" project: "Call the bank", "Call the construction company".
  21. A good problem contains a verb in initial form, predicate.
  22. A good task sounds like you can grab it and do it at any time.
  23. Formulating a good task is the same as the first step you need to take to get it done.
  24. Helpful task: "Cast 15 minutes on a topic." It's about just thinking about the task, not immediately grabbing at its implementation.
  25. Projects should have deadlines, tasks have no deadlines.
  26. If you don’t feel like doing a task, it’s useful to think about what will happen if you don’t do it. Sometimes it will become clear what you can not do. Sometimes you want to take it and do it.
  27. If people come to you and distract you, and this happens on a regular basis, arrange for regular meetings. Let the person accumulate ideas and bring them in a list.
  28. Don't confuse multitasking and multi-projecting. Reading five books at the same time is hard, it's multitasking. But you can read a book, charge your phone and build a house.
  29. Little magic fairy method. Take a task, look at it and think: what would I do if a fairy flew in and gave me only 20 minutes to complete this task?
  30. Generating ideas and evaluating them are two different processes.
  31. In companies, there is calendar harassment: people book their own time for meetings in other people's calendar. It is useful to hammer yourself in time for work.
  32. A comprehensive assessment of the project is described by the questions: What? What else? For what? To whom and why? How else?
  33. Often, choosing between “Do it well” and “Do it badly”, we really can only influence the moment when the work is done through the ass. A huge layer of projects cannot be done well right away.
  34. Instead of "You are in the ass" you should say "You have the potential for growth."
  35. Stop fiddling with adjenda!

Until recently, Maxim Dorofeev was a tough engineer, headed the development department in the IT department at Kaspersky Lab, and would have laughed in the face of anyone who said that he would soon become a personal efficiency consultant.

Today Maxim advises the chief executives of large companies. His thoughtfuel management system is increasingly recommended to each other by pumped experts, for example, he also recommended it to us. Or Tina Kandelaki, by the way. In general, fame crept up to Maxim imperceptibly.

Three characters live in our head

The Man Responsible for Rational Decision Making, with him everything is clear by name, he is always trying to be logical and rational, he thinks that he will do everything according to plan.

Monkey of momentary pleasure only thinks about having fun right now. The most important thing for her is not to do anything difficult. Eat when you want to eat, sleep when you want to sleep, sit in the FB, when you want to sit in the FB. That is, always.

AND panic monster- this is the fear of the deadline, the fear of losing face because of an unfulfilled task, only he can drive the monkey off the wheel and return control to a rational little man.


A rational little man tries to control the process, but he does it badly, because the monkey pulls the steering wheel all the time. And only a panicky monster can scare this monkey. This is the kind of zoo that goes on in our heads when we sit, for example, on Facebook, instead of preparing an important report.

“In general, why did I go in the direction of the monkey in my Jedi technique? From one simple statement, which is a presupposition in general of everything on which I am based. It lies in the fact that most of the time most people are impulsive, illogical, irrational, and at the same time consider such behavior abnormal. They think to themselves: “I have acted illogically again, but all the rest are normal, logical, they are lucky, and I’m some kind of fool in general.” But this is not the case.

For example, I can sit and choose a tariff for a mobile phone in order to save myself 50 or 100 rubles a month and at the same time sell a hundred thousandth project. And who can say that nothing like this happens to him?

This is how we are. And we can’t do anything about it, we can only adapt to it. We will not become 100% rational people. We do not have a rational person at the helm for a long time. For the most part, this monkey runs us. "

Key thoughts

    • Why David Allen is no longer working and you need to make one to-do list, not several.
    • How To Completely Clear Your Head With 31 Triggers.
    • What questions you need to ask yourself to break the deadlock and find a breakthrough idea for your project or business.
  • That for 20 questions you need to ask yourself every day and every week, so that there is complete order in business.

Take away the webinar by Maxim Dorofeev, which will help you master the empty inbox technique in 2 hours

And we have prepared for you a free webinar by Maxim Dorofeev, which will help you master the empty inbox technique. Collect, download and implement within 72 hours.

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Names and titles mentioned in the podcast

  • Tim Urban, Waitbutwhy Blog. Why am I always late

Books

The book “18 minutes. How to increase concentration, stop distractions and do the really important things »Peter Bregman - Buy 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distractoin, and Get the Right Things Gone on OZON.ru with fast delivery | 978-5-91657-893-5

What is a podcast and why do you need one? A podcast is an audio recording. It can be listened to from the "WebSarafan" page, you can download and listen to it in the car / at home / in the subway from an iPhone or tablet. In every episode of the podcast, I talk to people about two topics: how cool entrepreneurs are promoting their business, and how they live and work (to have the energy, time, and desire to do their own thing).

How do I use a podcast?

1) You can listen right here in your browser by clicking on the play button.

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    Thank you so much for the very useful information in the article. Everything is stated very clearly. Feels like a lot of work has been done on analyzing the eBay store

    • Thank you and other regular readers of my blog. Without you, I would not have been motivated enough to devote a lot of time to running this site. My brains are arranged like this: I like to dig deep, organize scattered data, try what no one has done before, or did not look from this angle. It is a pity that only our compatriots, because of the crisis in Russia, are by no means up to shopping on eBay. They buy on Aliexpress from China, as goods there are several times cheaper (often at the expense of quality). But online auctions eBay, Amazon, ETSY will easily give the Chinese a head start on the range of branded items, vintage items, handicrafts and various ethnic goods.

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        In your articles, it is your personal attitude and analysis of the topic that is valuable. Don't leave this blog, I often look here. There should be many of us. Email me I recently received an offer to teach me how to trade on Amazon and eBay. And I remembered your detailed articles about these bargaining. area I reread it all over again and concluded that the courses are a scam. I haven't bought anything on eBay myself. I am not from Russia, but from Kazakhstan (Almaty). But we, too, do not need extra spending yet. I wish you the best of luck and take care of yourself in the Asian region.

  • It's also nice that eBay's attempts to russify the interface for users from Russia and the CIS countries have begun to bear fruit. After all, the overwhelming majority of citizens of the countries of the former USSR are not strong in knowledge of foreign languages. No more than 5% of the population know English. There are more among young people. Therefore, at least the interface in Russian is a great help for online shopping on this marketplace. Ebey did not follow the path of his Chinese counterpart Aliexpress, where a machine (very clumsy and incomprehensible, sometimes causing laughter) translation of the description of goods is performed. I hope that at a more advanced stage in the development of artificial intelligence, high-quality machine translation from any language to any in a matter of seconds will become a reality. So far we have this (a profile of one of the sellers on ebay with a Russian interface, but an English-language description):
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7a52c9a89108b922159a4fad35de0ab0bee0c8804b9731f56d8a1dc659655d60.png