The third book in 2018

____________________________

"Life Efficiency Manual"

Recommendation

Very good What should I do if I am confused and have no direction?

Why did a huge gap widen between me just a few years after graduation?

Why is it that others are always irreplaceable, but I am always overwhelmed?

Everyone has a fair 24 hours a day, but some people manage it carefully, and some people mess around.

The difference in the quantity of efficiency every day, over time, becomes the difference in the quality of life.

Zhang Meng, the author of this issue, will draw us a scientific, real, and replicable one-day action guide from four aspects: goal management, time management, efficient learning, and cultivating hard skills, helping us quickly get out of confusion. Live each day effectively and improve the efficiency of your life.

About the author

Zhang Meng, time efficiency management expert, best-selling author, founder of Lide Leadership, founder of youth accelerator - Jibei Coffee, workplace knowledge and skills sharing platform ——The founder of Off-duty Gas Station.

Graduated from Beijing Normal University with a double major in English Language and Literature and Economics. He was later recommended to stay at the school to study for a doctorate in functional linguistics and cognitive psychology. He was awarded the titles of "Young Global Leader" and "Top Ten Education Newsmakers in the Capital" by the Boao Forum for Asia and has traveled to nearly 40 countries. He has attended the APEC summit four times and the World Economic Forum in Davos three times. On May 4, 2017, Zhang Meng appeared on the big screen in Times Square, New York.

Essential Interpretation

The following content is the essence of the book "Life Efficiency Manual" for reference by book friends. You are welcome to share it. No commercial use is allowed without permission.

Table of Contents

1. Goal Management

2. Time Management

3. Improving Efficiency

4. Cultivate hard skills

5. Input and output

1. Goal management

Do you think goals are important? Can you please tell me your goals for 2018 in 10 seconds?

Few people claim that goals are unimportant. On the contrary, due to people's attention, famous sayings such as "Living without a goal is like sailing without a compass." "The right goal is half the battle." We have even heard it so well that we resist it.

However, in fact, there are still a large number of people who either lack goals, stay in bed late every day, waste no time, and learn to just watch things happen; or they are full of misunderstandings about goal management.

Goal misunderstandings

In goal management, there are two common misunderstandings:

1. There are goals everywhere, but in the end there are no goals anywhere.

The goal is the bullseye and the focus of the outline. If you set too many goals and spread them out in all aspects, you will lose the focus and turn the goals into false propositions.

2. Treat other people’s goals as your own goals.

Targets have personality attributes. Everyone's goal is a deep desire that grows from the depths of his or her soul, and is the result of tailoring it to his or her own environment and abilities. If you directly copy other people's goals regardless of the actual situation, it will be difficult to truly understand the meaning of the goals. It is difficult for us to imagine that a person will do his best for someone else's goal.

Seven Character Methods

The goal guides us, shielding us from all kinds of interference, and focusing on practicing and searching. But nothing can guide us to the goal itself. Therefore, the goal of life is so important, but it is very difficult to find it. Many people never find it throughout their lives, and can only do nothing and waste their lives in confusion.

How can you find your true goal and build a goal worth fighting for your whole life?

The seven character methods proposed by the author provide us with a guide to get out of confusion. As long as you take a pen and paper and follow the steps, you can gain inner clarity and quickly find your life goals in less than 50 minutes.

The 7-character method is divided into five steps.

1. Come up with a name for the person you dream of becoming. Note, be careful to distinguish the difference between your idol and the person you dream to be. For example, for some idol stars, you just like them but don't want to be like them. The name you write may be a professional giant, a giant in the business world, a star in politics, a pillar in the entertainment industry, or someone who can live peacefully. Ordinary people. But no matter what kind of person he is, he should be someone who makes you feel that if you were him, your life satisfaction index would be perfect. This person occupies the highest point of your ideal, and his life trajectory or characteristics determine the top-level design of your life.

2. Next, think of 1 to 3 people who you think you have been working hard to catch up with and may surpass in five to ten years. He may be a CEO of a company that you have come into contact with in real life, a CEO of a company with a specific image, a leader in the industry to which he belongs, etc. These characters serve as your middle-level benchmarks and determine the general direction of your efforts.

Continue to think of 1 to 3 more people that you have been working hard on and may catch up with in a year or two. It is best for this person to be someone you value and appreciate, and who has direct communication with you. You can see his time schedule and work plan, and you can study his specific behavior trajectory. He can be your direct boss, an outstanding colleague you admire most, or a friend with whom you have developed well. Their role is, on the one hand, to provide you with a visual reference to reality, and on the other hand, it can be used as motivation to motivate you. When you are slacking off, think about what they are doing to motivate yourself to work hard.

3. Summary. Analyze what unique special abilities and skill points each of the 7 people you selected have, and list the hard skills they each have. For example, Jack Ma, who has demonstrated superb speaking skills and forward-looking business thinking. Write down all the hard skills of these people on paper, and write down the 3 most important skill points for each person. List 7 characters and 21 hard skills. Of course, you may have discovered that these seven people have many overlapping skill points. Next, you need to classify the different skill points and rank the top three that appear most frequently. These three are the life you want to build. Goals and directions of endeavor.

4. Self-matching and decomposition of goals. Analyze your current situation, find out the most important, most needed, and most likely to develop skills, and focus on practicing them.

Break down your goals into yearly, monthly, weekly and daily terms. Break down the annual goal into 5 specific supports and determine what 5 things you need to do to achieve this goal. Then allocate these 5 things to the month according to the timeline, and then set monthly, weekly, and daily goals.

5. Reflection and summary. After the seven characters are listed, review and summarize them every six months, cross out the characters that have been surpassed, and set new characters. On the last day of each month, you need to reflect on the entire month, list your gains and regrets, and adjust your goals for the next month accordingly.

The setting of goals must match your actual situation. If the goal is set to be empty and ambitious, it is extremely easy to cause frustration. We must not only faithfully implement the programmatic goals, but also adjust the daily plan in a timely manner based on daily conditions.

With clear and scientific goals, coupled with superb time management to implement them, and firm belief in the power of persistence, we will always reach it in the end.

2. Time Management

Where you spend your time determines what kind of person you are. Ultimately, the achievement of goals and the degree of realization of one's own value essentially reflect a person's level of time management. Efficient time management usually involves making good use of tools.

Three major misunderstandings about time management

People also have the following three major misunderstandings about time management.

1. Think that time management is the preserve of high-end people and ordinary people do not need time management.

Some people like to joke, "I lack everything except time." They believe that time management is a high-level patent, and their time is rich and cheap, so it is not worth managing.

However, in the time dimension, everyone is equal and only has a limited and consistent life battery. Therefore, no one’s time is particularly rich, and no one’s time should be inherently cheap. Moreover, only when time is not valuable, if you manage your time well and make room for self-development, will your time become valuable.

Of course, the vast majority of novices’ time is mainly dominated by big names, so they lack sensitivity to time management. In our daily lives, we work from nine to six, and work overtime from time to time. Our time is framed and managed by our bosses, and we rarely have our own time. But as mentioned above, the less time you have control over, the more careful management you need to free up more time for self-development. Remember, all great people started out as ordinary people.

2. Equality time management with records and lists.

Recording is certainly an indispensable part of time management, but in a beautiful notebook, record the things to be done, carefully mark them with different colors, and then do them one by one. But it’s the starting point of time management. True time management is a holistic cycle that includes planning, implementation, review, evaluation, and planning again.

3. Blindly copy other people’s time management habits.

In addition to novices, some senior managers also have misunderstandings in time management. On the one hand, they may sign up for a lot of time management training out of concern, imitate teachers too much, and gradually lose their own style. On the other hand, when they develop their own time management methods, they are too eager to promote it to all employees.

In fact, people’s time management abilities and needs are different, and everyone cannot be required to be consistent in time management. Everyone should set a basic time management evaluation standard for themselves.

The Efficiency Manual

The Efficiency Manual is the most recommended time management tool by the author. An efficiency manual is a book, but it is not the same as a notebook. Everyone can make his or her own efficiency manual. The author believes that the efficiency manual needs to include the entire process from starting to plan, to implementing the plan, summarizing and reviewing, to evaluating and planning again.

1. Take out a piece of white paper, draw a vertical line in the middle, mark the time axis from morning to night from top to bottom, list the time plan on the left half of the paper, and list the time plan on the right half of the paper. Don’t fill it in for now and wait for the summary of the next day. It is best to set 3 major target events every day and mark the corresponding time period on the timeline.

2. Carry out your day's actions in an orderly manner according to the plan. Then, the next day, fill in the right half carefully. According to the actual situation of the previous day, faithfully record the events of the previous day on the right side of the timeline.

3. Compare the records on the right and the plan on the left, and mark the parts that are not consistent with the plan. For example, there are unfinished parts, over-completed parts, and parts that are inconsistent with the estimated time.

4. Analyze each marked change one by one. What caused the plan to be unfinished? Was it because I woke up too late, was in a bad mood, or was too inefficient? How did the extra part of the plan appear? Was it a sudden task assigned by the boss, or was it other work that you took the initiative to do? What causes the difference between the estimated time and the actual operation? Is it an overestimation of its own speed or an adjustment to the overall plan? This step of review and reflection is the most important part of time management, and it is also the part that people are most likely to miss. Whether time management ability can be improved directly depends on the quality of this link.

5. Plan again, learn from the experience of the previous plan, adjust details, improve the accuracy of the plan, and minimize the probability of recurrence of failure.

The goal rule of time management

The most important rule in time management is the goal rule. This is also the rule that must be followed when making an efficiency manual. When enumerating plans, target tasks must comply with the SMART principle, that is, tasks must be specific, measurable, achievable, reasonable, and time-limited.

For example, in order to dream of being a diplomat, the author once created a 1,000-day grove plan for learning English. Based on the 10,000-hour rule, she determined that it would take her three years to achieve the goal of becoming fluent in English. After deducting the 5,000 to 6,000 hours of courses already in school, she found that she needed an additional 5,000 hours of training. So, she estimated based on 3 years and 1,000 days, and determined that she would practice an average of 3 to 5 hours a day.

Analysing the composition of her day, she found that the only time she could control was before class in the morning, after class in the evening, and on weekends. Because there are electives, minors, and student activities in the evenings and weekends, the practice time was ultimately scheduled in the morning before class. The university usually starts classes at 8 o'clock, so you have to get up at 5 o'clock every day to ensure enough study time.

In the next three years, the author followed this time management plan every day and got up at 5 o'clock to study. Even in the coldest winter, he gritted his teeth and persevered. As a result, the test scores in the first semester provided very timely feedback. After that, she won various scholarships in the school, won the championship in the APEC National English Speech Contest, and attended the APEC CEO Summit with the leaders.

In fact, any of us can try to get up early, use the goal rule, list three plans every day, and use the time to get up early to implement them to practice our key skills.

3. Improve efficiency

When reviewing and summarizing plans, we usually find that low efficiency is the culprit that causes plan failure. Therefore, improving efficiency is a basic action for setting goals and time management. The author provides a variety of efficiency-improving rules, among which the Pomodoro Technique and the Willpower Stretching Technique are the simplest and most effective.

Pomodoro Technique

Interference is the enemy of efficiency. When we work hard, we are resistant to roommates and family members who wake up early, and new message pop-ups at work are always tempting us to give up. We need the ability to block them to fight against them. The Pomodoro Technique not only blocks immediate distractions, but also cultivates our inner anti-interference ability, allowing us to gradually develop the habit of rapid immersion.

The so-called Pomodoro Technique refers to a micro-time management method created by Francisco Cirillo. Its operation method is very simple.

1. Set a specific work task list.

2. Set the Pomodoro timer to 25 minutes.

3. Start completing the first task from the timer.

4. When the Pomodoro bell rings, stop working and rest for 3 to 5 minutes. You can move, drink water, etc.

5. Start the next Pomodoro cycle until you complete the planned tasks and cross them off the list.

After every four Pomodoros, take a 25-minute break. A Pomodoro time is indivisible and must be a complete 25 minutes. You must not do anything unrelated to the task during a Pomodoro time, otherwise that Pomodoro time will be invalid.

A smaller time span can effectively reduce time pressure, improve attention and concentration, and effectively reduce the difficulty of action. Precise timing also makes review and summary more intuitive, accurate and convenient.

Willpower Stretching Method

Any efficient study and work must follow the law of accumulation. That is to say, new knowledge of the same system must be built on the basis of old knowledge. Each time the base is raised a little higher, it will be a qualitative leap in the long run. The willpower stretching method is a method to improve efficiency that conforms to the principle of accumulation.

The so-called willpower stretching method is to ask yourself to do just a little more than the last time each time. Progress can be very small, as long as you continue and persevere.

The author once experienced the effectiveness of the willpower stretching method when he was young. At that time, she trained herself to run for health reasons, but her physical fitness was so weak that she was out of breath and reached her limit after running 300 meters. She once wanted to give up, but she felt deeply ashamed when she saw the elderly long-distance running group in their 60s and 70s on the playground, shirtless and running 10,000 meters every day in winter. So, she told herself, take your time and run only 10 meters more than the previous day every day, just 10 meters. A year later, she became the runner-up in the school district.

Most people with procrastination can try to make a small request to themselves. Each time, start taking action one minute earlier than the last time. The best way to turn passivity into initiative is to ask yourself to finish a little bit before the deadline every time. Your boss requires you to complete it in two hours, so try to see if you can complete it in 1 hour and 50 minutes.

When you have this habit, no matter how difficult the task is, you will have to make way for your patience and tenacity.

In addition, the author also includes clear goals, setting the pace for goals, building a precise learning system, building a general learning system, pre-study questions, real-time recording, review practice, getting up early, shielding negative information, self-motivation and sharing, etc. The top 10 tips for efficient learning have been launched in the "Knowledge Supermarket" section of the Fan Deng Reading Club APP.

4. Develop hard skills

In the world, passers-by are in danger because of their low skills, while the protagonist is proud of the world because of his hard skills. The workplace is like a river and lake. People with hard skills are in demand and remain standing. People without hard skills are like screws and may be replaced at any time.

Hard skills characteristics

The so-called hard skills are those skills that make you an irreplaceable person. They can be acquired through learning and are your core competitiveness in the workplace. For example, your communication skills, writing skills, planning skills, leadership skills, etc. The process of practicing hard skills is also like practicing magical skills. The moves need to be mastered solidly, and the internal skills must be practiced step by step.

After completing the 7 character screenings mentioned above, you have determined the hard skills you need to practice. Once you have goals and motivation, the next step is the execution process.

Integration

In learning, each move is a process, and opening up the two channels of Ren and Du to defeat the enemy is the goal. Therefore, after learning scattered knowledge points, you must integrate skills so that they can be flexibly applied to different scenarios. Integration is opposite to decomposition. In practice, people with lower ranks are usually responsible for decomposition, while people with higher ranks like to summarize and integrate. But the truth is, no one should stop at decomposition.

In daily study and work, we can integrate skills in this way. First of all, deliberately train yourself to integrate inductive consciousness, and when you encounter scattered knowledge points, quickly use your brain's operating system to incorporate them into different categories.

It's like computer folder management. Some people's computer desktops are messy, and all files are piled up in disorder, making it difficult to find them. Some people's computers have a clean desktop and their files are divided into categories, making it easy to find the files you need quickly. If you are unfamiliar with summary before, you might as well start by organizing your desktop.

Secondly, we must also pay attention to individual small skills and practice them separately to become proficient. Otherwise, the basic skills are not solid, and even if integrated, the lethality will still be limited.

Finally, output is the best opportunity for integration. When you need to teach others, your brain will unconsciously integrate it so that the output is smooth and organized, so you might as well try to be a good teacher.

Feedback

The acquisition of any skill is based on a feedback mechanism. Therefore, when we practice hard skills, we must also set up an evaluation link. The evaluation here should include both self-evaluation and external evaluation, as well as testing of output capabilities.

We conduct self-evaluation almost all the time, but we should pay attention to overcoming psychological traps, avoid belittling ourselves, and be wary of being arrogant. The best way is to learn from others and compare yourself. On the one hand, as long as you are better than your past self, even if the improvement is very small, it is a win for you. On the other hand, as long as you find that other people's methods have merit, you should actively learn from them and draw wisdom for your own use.

External evaluation can come from specific people, such as your instructor, or it can come from certain testing standards, such as exams. For a person who regards English proficiency as a hard skill, various grade examinations are the most fair evaluation criteria. For a person who regards writing ability as a hard skill, the number of clicks and readings is the most timely evaluation.

Finally, the best criterion for learning new knowledge is to be able to teach. Seize every opportunity to export your insights. Every time is an exercise and a test.

Develop physical inertia

Learning any skill requires a good habit. Use the 21-day habit development method to develop your body's inertia and try to continuously expand your comfort zone.

The more comfortable the position, the more dangerous the career. Everyone who lacks core competitiveness has a psychological barrier that dares not step out of their comfort zone. On the road to self-improvement, everyone is constantly challenging their comfort zone and constantly abusing themselves. When an opportunity arises, you must understand that "dare" is more important than "will" and seize it decisively. When opportunities are scarce, work hard to create them.

5. Input and Output

Life is like a juicer. If you put an apple in, it will not squeeze out orange juice.

Work is a process that constantly demands to squeeze out delicious orange juice. A person can efficiently supply orange juice only by continuously inputting high-quality oranges. Goal management, time management, and efficiency improvement all require continuous input to support and continuous output to improve.

Input system

First, the most efficient channel is to learn from people. This includes both direct experience transfer and observational imitation learning. Listening directly to first-hand experiences from experts falls into the former category. This requires us to find such people through various channels, create opportunities to communicate with them, be prepared to ask questions, and ask them politely at the appropriate time. The Internet has created such opportunities for ordinary people. The seven character method belongs to the latter. This requires us to observe carefully and patiently and objectively analyze the characteristics of outstanding people.

Of course, when we focus on managing interpersonal relationships and constantly accumulating network resources, the first and second situations may also overlap.

Second, the most convenient channel is to believe in the power of reading. By making good use of this, ordinary people can effectively make up for the lack of the first point. We may not have the opportunity to communicate face-to-face with big names, but we can directly communicate with their thoughts through words. Even if they did not write the books themselves, we can still trace their thinking and learning through the books they read. The books you should read most are not necessarily those on the best-seller list, but those that are repeatedly recommended by different celebrities.

Third, by participating in industry conferences and trainings, you can also obtain the latest knowledge and trends. By choosing a professional platform that focuses on the field of personal improvement, we can learn the required knowledge conveniently and systematically.

Fourth, believe in the power of walking. The ancients said that reading thousands of books is worse than traveling thousands of miles. Traveling and walking are also excellent opportunities for input. Other people's things belong to you more than others. Only your thoughts and feelings are unique knowledge that belongs to you.

Output system

Input and output are an organic cycle. All inputs are for outputs, and outputs feed back to the former. The ways of output include speech and writing. We have already done special interpretations. You can refer to "Efficient Speech", "The Power of Speech" and "You Can Write Good Stories". These pathways are very easy to implement and you can try them today. These methods are very good at tempering the mind and are very effective in improving abilities and happiness. It is never too late for anyone to start.

Conclusion

Many people ask, why can’t they live a good life despite hearing many truths?

I think it’s because neither principles nor methods can replace your actions. The author has listed all the ways to improve the efficiency of life for you, just waiting for your action! Whether your life is beautiful or homeless, the key is always in your own hands.

When in doubt, look back at the action guide here. If you are still not satisfied and have new questions, more courses by the author Zhang Meng have been launched in the Knowledge Supermarket. You are welcome to continue to go there to find out more.

Exchange points for books