After working for many years, we have seen many excellent people. They can balance family and work, arrange their affairs and time reasonably, deal with emergencies calmly and make decisions rationally, and arrange all things properly. At first, I thought this ability came from personality, emotional intelligence or even talent, because I had not read any books to teach people how to do this. Until I shifted my perspective from ordinary life to work, I found that a person who can arrange his life in good order is often an excellent manager at work.

Managing a project or company has a lot in common with managing life. Some people are naturally good at it, but ordinary people like me are not. Fortunately, we still can find some feasible methods and tools to do like them, in this article, I will try to apply various methods of project management company to personal life, I divide the different section (collect feedback, decision making, time and task management, emotion management) to illustrate these problems and solutions, at the end of each section, I’ll also include some tools I’ve used or recommended.

Collect feedback and accept yourself

At ThoughtWorks, I learned a useful technique that I can use in my life. We call this Feedback. In the company, the spirit of “Feedback” is everywhere. After completing a project or even an internal activity, colleagues will send out survey forms or emails to collect opinions and feedbacks. Feedback can give us direction for improvement.

In a team, it is true that your boss or colleagues will give you Feedback from different perspectives. Beyond that, try giving feedback yourself, or even asking for it. I keep a calendar to remind myself to sort through feedback every Monday night. In this small period of time, let “ME” not just be me, imagine oneself as another independent individual, can understand oneself more objectively and rationally.

In collecting feedback and examine itself, it is very important thing is that the objective of accepting yourself and from a psychological point of view, better to arrange and manage their lives should also start accepting yourself, accepting yourself to the persistence of the positive and the advantages or disadvantages of change, put a general card “nene effect, this is management philosophy. The process of accepting yourself is the same as the first day a project manager takes over a legacy project. There are many things that cannot be changed, such as deadline and funding, while there are many things that can be improved, such as team enthusiasm, development efficiency and delivery quality.

Indecisive and unfocused, but also passionate about many things; And people chat not enough to stand in each other’s consideration, but sometimes also humorous; Procrastinating, but diligent.

This is my assessment of myself, and through this scrutiny and acceptance, I should be able to answer some questions: What can’T I change? What can I change? What can I do better? Further, you can look at yourself in terms of your value, strengths and weaknesses, future plans and directions, risk management, and relationships.

I bought a whiteboard and taped it to my wall so I could write things that I needed to remind myself of. A very simple item, you can buy on Taobao, the seller will usually give eraser and whiteboard marker. You can record every idea you think of and your own plan, task list, and even write a motto as their slogan. Whiteboards are very common in companies and can be used as a visualization tool at home. By writing down the questions we need to think about, we can open a “God’s perspective” and help us think more objectively.

Make decisions like a company

I am always curious about how big companies and even the government make good decisions. Ordinary people often think about it in their minds and then slap their heads. However, decisions are made every day, from whether to take an umbrella when going out to whether to buy gifts when meeting their girlfriends to purchasing assets, investing and financing, to getting married and buying a house. “Head-slap decision” obviously doesn’t work for every situation.

I want to mention an interesting thing here — Yi Learning. One of the functions of Zhouyi is that it was used by ancient governments to make decisions about affairs. I once learned about a yi learning called Qimen Dun Jia, which draws a pattern map and uses heavenly trunk to represent interpersonal relationships and resources around you. Dun Jia means that only by putting oneself in an objective position can one clearly view the situation and make correct decisions.

Modern management also attaches great importance to “decision”, there are many books on this issue, and even special decision science. There is a simple thinking tool called SWOT, SWOT analysis (also known as TOWS analysis, Dawes matrix) is the situation analysis, in the early 1980s by the University of San Francisco management professor Werick, is often used in enterprise strategy formulation, competitor analysis and other occasions.

As an example of how to use this method, if we need to think about changing jobs (after all, changing jobs is an important thing for anyone), we can draw a table based on SWOT for comparison:

The last thing we need to pay attention to is not to ignore the influence of sunk cost in a decision. Sunk cost is a classic economic concept. Generally speaking, sunk cost is the resources already invested. For example, in a business negotiation, the more you pay in the early stage, the harder it is to give up in the later stage. Interestingly, the effect of sunk costs is also apparent in romantic relationships: the more you love someone, the more you invest in them, the harder it is to give them up.

In general, this kind of analysis makes the factors of choice very clear. If the problem is more complicated, we can increase the weight of each item to do more detailed thinking, which of course is more complicated and time-consuming. Because making a decision itself also needs to cost, of course, should not spend too much time on the decision, there is no perfect decision, simple things should be shot in the head.

Task and time management

Time is like a sponge, squeeze some. I prefer to believe that this is a lie, chicken soup and poison. If time can be squeezed out, one of two things happens: other commitments or entertainment time is ruthlessly encroached upon, or the quality of what you do is reduced. If you’re doing the dishes, you probably won’t do them very well.

Time needs to be managed and tasks need to be organized. There are plenty of time management books to prove this point. Last year’s popular dark Time was well written, which tells the author’s extensive experiences and methods of managing his time.

I’d prefer to put the time management and task management together, in the work of our project manager to do so, task management is a very important part of the project manager, but we are using for agile development/waterfall flow method of the project, more complex and need the team to participate in, for individuals need more simplified method, divided into several steps:

  1. Task splitting. Splitting tasks to make them easier and more feasible is a well-known method, and in Descartes’ Talk about the Method, splitting has been adopted as the core of Western philosophy and thinking about doing things.
  2. Assess value. “Evaluating whether the task is really worth doing” may be a waste of time, why do it at all? However, I’ve done a lot of useless things before, so I might as well play king of Glory.
  3. Sort priorities. If we want to save time for our higher priorities, we need to prioritize our tasks first.
  4. Time control. Each task needs to be estimated so that we can set aside a reasonable amount of time without being interrupted.

In order to manage these tasks, we have kanban in the company, and some Todo List tools are recommended for individuals. I prefer to use Chrome plugins, the simpler the better, and of course many note-taking tools come with TODO lists. Like Evernote, Youdao Note, or any editor that supports Markdown syntax. If you can’t find the right tool, just put a note on your desk.

If TODO list tool has the function of reminding, it will be more perfect. If not, you can use some reminding tools, such as iPhone mobile phone reminder, Calendar APP on Mac, QQ mailbox suitable for Chinese people to use habits, and even remind wechat and mobile phone SMS.

When doing things, concentration can improve efficiency, so a famous working method called the Pomodoro technique was proposed. Named after a tomato-shaped kitchen timer, there are plenty of apps to download. Using the pomodoro program allows you to focus for 25 minutes, followed by a 5-minute break that requires intense concentration. Read the Illustrated Pomodoro Technique for more information.

(Image courtesy: Illustration of the Pomodoro Technique)

Knowledge systems and reserves

I’m a programmer, and programmers have an anxiety that there’s always a lot of new technology and tools to learn. A few months ago I tried to figure out how to solve this problem. As IT professionals work longer hours, get older, and have families and other commitments, IT becomes less and less possible to devote all of their energy to technical learning (after all, learning how to prevent cervical spondylosis).

Through the observation of some technology strong, but also develop the hobby of flourishing IT expert, found a few very interesting things.

Different technologies create different values. We often talk about whether we need to be a specialist or a generalist, whether we need to be proficient in a particular technology or knowledgeable, and that’s still a bit one-sided. Whether by design or accident, there are techniques that can be learned with less investment and more money. Admittedly, given the general trend, the Web front end requires a lot of knowledge but is not as expensive as Java and other backend development.

Knowledge is like a tree, it needs a system. This lesson doesn’t just apply to the IT industry. When we’re learning something, we go online and look for checklists, book lists, and skill maps, which I’ve described in previous articles about the IT industry. For the human brain, memory and learning are linear or network, which is consistent with our perception that bits of knowledge are easy to forget. For the knowledge of building systems, I highly recommend drawing, whether it is Mind mapping (Xmind, MindMap), fishbone, organizational structure and Venn diagrams, or even building your own technical radar.

(Build your own technical radar)

Knowledge needs to be stored and learning needs to be documented. After completing a project or research, the company will produce certain documents. Every professional company has a database where we can find relevant information when we encounter problems. In my work, I have used Zen Dao, Jinshan Cloud, Confluence, etc. In contrast, Zen Dao is not only a document management tool, but also a project management tool. While Jinshan Cloud document search function is slightly worse, Confluence is a professional team document management tool, but it requires a fee.

For individuals, learning anything needs to be productive. Besides taking notes, writing is a good way. Blogs or columns are opened to better deposit the knowledge learned.

Domestic article

  • Little Light blog
  • Jane’s book
  • Blog garden
  • Zhihu column

GuoJiPian

  • WordPress
  • Gitbook
  • Wix
  • Blogger

As far as document management is concerned, if you don’t want your documents to be published, or if you don’t think something is a blog in the usual sense, you can use Wikidot to write your own Wiki to manage your documents. It’s not too difficult for programmers to use Github for document management or to build their own Wiki.

I personally prefer to manage my documents in Markdown format, so I created a code repository to hold all the documents, and Hexo published them to github’s static resource server for my own review. With these tools and output, we knew what we needed. What knowledge is not needed but can be quickly picked up when needed.

Emotion management

When I was working in my first company, my boss told me a story. Once, due to product problems, many lower-level dealers came to the door to make trouble and ask for refund. Most of them were very excited. Later, a young dealer came to the company, smiling, calm and extraordinary, and the boss to talk about the contract and compensation business, the man did not look angry, just asked for a lot of relevant information. According to the boss, this person should go through the legal way after collecting evidence and materials. Because we were in the wrong, the boss made a concession and promised him all the refund conditions.

I don’t know what it means for humans to have evolved emotions such as “complaint”, “anger” and “anger”. When we are in trouble at work, the first reaction is to complain; When people point out our mistakes, the first thing we do is to fight back. When confronted with conflict, we get irritated. But when we look back at the behaviors themselves, complaining doesn’t help our work, and fighting back against others’ opinions doesn’t help us either, even though the person who is irritated in a fight is often at risk.

I once read a book called The World without Complaining, which suggested a great way to reduce complaining: Wear a bracelet or wristband, and when you realize you’re complaining, switch the wristband to the other hand to correct your negative overreaction with small psychological cues.

Anger is human instinct, no one can completely control themselves, a good suggestion is when we feel angry, please do not do any action or decision, let yourself calm down for at least 30 minutes. Psychological management of bad emotions suggests not to fight against bad emotions, but to accept and vent is a more feasible way to avoid the formation of compulsive behavior, our purpose is not to eliminate negative emotions, but not to let emotions affect decision-making, and then use other ways to vent and ease.

Write in the last

Management is a strange word to use in many cases. For most people, management knowledge is like slaying a dragon. In fact, when the various methods of management are used in life, management is not power, control and oppression, but rational thinking, guidance and promotion. Management is not necessarily for subordinates, and can even manage superiors, love and family, with a variety of methods and skills can be learned to manage life. As the ancients said, “cultivate one’s morality, order one’s family, govern the country and bring peace to the world”, “cultivate one’s morality” is just managing oneself. Due to space limitations, we can learn more from the philosophy of operation and management of the company. I hope to share this with you later.

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