Life Management School

In the process of setting and achieving goals, there are many points in which you can make mistakes.
And although mistakes are cool, in this case they greatly reduce the likelihood of achieving the goal. Therefore, it is important to know them and exclude them.

The most common mistakes in goal setting:

• Don't set goals at all.
• Everything is clear here. Not setting goals means not using your potential.
• Setting goals that are too ambitious.
• You cannot jump over the goal levels, because your thinking will not be ready for other levels. Development is a sequential process.
• Set goals for a certain period. For example, for a year.
• You can never estimate your workload and the speed of achieving goals, you can only assume. Therefore, it is better to have a permanent database (archive, backlog) of goals, where you will throw ideas of goals at any time.

And there you will be able to allocate priority 1-5 goals to work on them. As soon as the goal is completed (which can happen in 2 weeks instead of a whole year), you can take the next one, and not wait for 11 months to improve your life.
Not to see development prospects, to have only one goal.
If you set goals in isolation from reality, then you will have a lot of resistance to achieve them. After all, we are afraid to be left without a goal :)
An archive of goals from the previous paragraph will also help with this, which will allow you to build a whole further strategy, choose new goals and remove the fear of losing the meaning of life.
It is too much to visualize the achievement of a goal or to tell others about it.
Yes, all these esoteric techniques of visualization and manifestation do not help our success (from the point of view of science) because they give positive emotions and social approval on credit. After such practices, our brain gets what it wants (emotions, recognition) and loses motivation to do something.
Postpone improving the quality of life for later and direct all resources to the goal.
At some point, this demotivates the brain to work because nothing changes for it, there is no reinforcement and small victories.
Hormones of happiness are produced the same way from any achievements, so it is better to constantly feed on them due to small improvements in your life while you are going to the goal.
Confuse goals with tasks.
The most important misconception about goals is that they must be clearly recorded, described and completed on time.
Goals are hypotheses of ways to achieve your vision of life and success in it, your mission and values. This is not some clear plan or task that must be completed. This is the described result that you want to get.
And it is very important that you do not quite understand how to get it — otherwise it becomes an understandable task (or a project with tasks) that can be planned and executed.
Having an understanding of the result, you can try different ways (also hypotheses) to the goal in order to speed up and simplify its achievement. And not to get hung up on one way.
So the goal changes from "going to the gym every day" to conditionally "be fit (specifically, what does it mean) and healthy (according to such and such indicators)". And in the process of testing different options for achieving this goal, you may find that swimming or playing tennis is also useful for the goal, but much more interesting for you.
The design thinking cycle
Innovations (new life) occur only in a cycle: make - measure results - analyze - learn, make changes. This is the cycle of design thinking.
As Deming said, "what matters is not setting quantitative goals, but correcting the method by which these goals are achieved."
Only such an approach gives the necessary flexibility to effectively achieve goals by constantly adjusting methods and plans. The real purpose of all changes is to find out what we don't know yet.
Check your set goals — don't you fall into one of the listed traps. If you need help in analyzing your goals or in creating a convenient database of goals and a planning system, come to work with me personally.
Visit the website of my author's life management system, subscribe to my telegram channel "life as a project", where I publish more materials about the design and management of my life, and download my book "Life Design".

I want to share my criticism of modern productivity, specifically, to talk about three main problems: about productivity gurus, about promoting a toxic version of productivity, and about unethical sales.
Problem 1: Toxic productivity
The modern concept of productivity has become toxic.
It is no longer about doing more things that bring pleasure and lead to your goals (eco-friendly productivity).
It's more about how to be the best, do a hundred things a day and achieve more and more (toxic productivity).
Toxic productivity is a consumer attitude to their time. It will never lead to happiness and tranquility, because its essence is that you always want more and ask for more from yourself.
The feeling that you need to do more and you have achieved nothing is always with you. If you suddenly think that everything is cool with you, urgently go to Instagram (or another social network) and you will remember that there are much more successful people around, and you are not like that at all.
It undermines unconditional self-respect, and forces you to evaluate yourself based on the results (often expressed in money).
Toxic productivity leads only to workaholism, achieving not your goals, envy, FOMO, guilt for rest and for any activities that do not earn money.
Especially people who have already achieved something have these symptoms. A year ago, I often had to communicate with the directors of departments (HR and IT) of medium-sized Russian companies. And they sincerely did not understand how it was possible to do something without monetary payment - just for pleasure or for social capital.
In addition, toxic productivity promotes the idea that the result depends on the amount of work. The more hours you work, the more you will achieve. In fact, this is not the case — achievements depend on the right strategy and quality of work. If you do not pay attention to the strategy and do not stop periodically to reassess it, you can come to completely different goals.
It turns out that running is not to the goal, but from your own life.
I myself have understood productivity for years precisely as an opportunity to do and achieve more (after all, that's the only way they talk about it), and this approach has already led me to burnout several times.
Perhaps, from my posts, the idea can also be traced that we need to develop more, do more, and manage all spheres of life. This is not quite true — on the contrary, I have always been against successful success and achievement, because they lead to an imbalance in life. But I am in favor of doing better what you want and going to "your", authentic success. Which often consists in living more and working less and achieving :)
I think discipline is cooler than hard work. Somewhere I saw a joke that while you are resting, your competitors are working, but soon they will burn out, and they will leave the race for a long time. Of course, this joke is also funny only in the paradigm of a competitive approach, but it correctly conveys the idea of the importance of constant and sustainable development.
Problem 2: Productivity Gurus
Who can be considered a productivity guru? Someone who does a lot of projects? Who earns a lot? Who has a balanced life?
I believe that you need to learn from those who have managed to achieve the goal you want — to make them your mentors and test their techniques on yourself.
My biggest problem with productivity experts is that most of them have succeeded simply by creating content about how to be productive. Most productivity gurus do nothing but infobusiness on this topic.
Every time they give examples of how they maximize their productivity, they talk about how they shot a lot of videos on YouTube. It turns out that the only thing that makes them productive is their ability to "productively" create YouTube videos that talk about productivity. This is the same as teaching successful success by earning money (your success) in these courses.
Disclaimer: In no way do I belittle the merits of infobusinesses, this is also a job, and it is difficult and important. But if you are considered an expert in some field, shouldn't you use them yourself in your life?
After analyzing about fifty of my Russian and foreign colleagues, I found less than ten of those who really confirm by their example what they are talking about. The rest of us productively make videos or lead stories on Instagram.
For a long time I doubted myself whether I could be considered an expert in this topic, because I don't have hundreds of thousands of subscribers, I don't buy branded things, I don't have an expensive car and other attributes of social status. But after this analysis, I have a little more confidence in my expertise, because I not only know different methods of productivity, but also have real achievements due to their use - in addition to the blog itself, I have a startup, pet projects, regular travel, research, education and personal life.
Productivity is not a goal in itself, it is only a method that leads to a goal. To understand whether an expert can be trusted, you need to evaluate his achievement of goals. Of course, everyone's goals and priorities are different, but in order to be considered a productivity expert, you need to create more than just content on this topic?
Problem 3: Unethical promotion
Among all the abundance of content on the topic of productivity and self-development, there are not very many high-quality and meaningful ones. Frequent mistakes — focus on what is not important. I wrote more about popular productivity mistakes in this post.
I consider it unethical to write articles "10 new productivity apps". Yes, they sell well (gain more views), but they take readers away from solving their problems. That's why I don't write such articles, and if I see this from someone, I regard it as confirmation that the author does not fully understand productivity or is profiting from unethical business.
The goal of any productivity product should be to solve the client's problem — that is, to turn him into a more productive one (some specific improvement). If after reading the materials/viewing the course, you need even more articles and courses, you have not solved the problem.
In the course of unethical promotion, toxic productivity is also connected. To sell a product, you need to make sure that the buyer needs it. Therefore, in order to sell the topic of productivity, we are forced to think that we need it — that we are not good enough and should work harder. I am for another value proposition. Not "you will be able to do more things," but "you will be able to do more of what you want and live more meaningfully."
What do I do differently?
In my life management products, I try to avoid the problems listed in this article, so as not to create another unethical productivity program. My system is different in that it:
Not abstract and not theoretical. All products focus on practice, but I also research deeply and sometimes write about the philosophy of a responsible and proactive approach to life.
Not a collection of random tips and life hacks. The system consists of proven fundamental tools and the principles of communication between them. Separate life hacks that are not built into the system simply will not work.
Does not offer to work for you even more. On the contrary, I developed a system to do more with less of my time and energy, and invest them in things that are important to me.
Does not offer to improve and change yourself. It adapts to your limitations and lifestyle so that you enjoy your spontaneity and uniqueness.
It is not tied to any particular application or program. Trends and products are constantly changing, but the principles of organizing and maintaining life are not. If we have the skill to manage life, it will be possible to do it even if we lose digital technologies.
P.S. the registration for the course "Life Management 101" is closed, as the places have run out. I don't know yet if there will be a next thread, but you can leave your contacts on the site to find out about it first.
Visit the website of the life management system, subscribe to my telegram channel "life as a project", where I publish more materials about the design and management of my life, and download my book "Life Design".

In 2 years of blogging and 1.5 years of consulting and mentoring on life management, I have helped 40+ people organize their lives, optimize life processes and learn how to manage time and information.
I share the life management cases of three of them.
Clients of different professions come to me: from founders of federal companies, heads of departments and actors to digital specialists and students.
Each of them achieved different results depending on the motivation and degree of involvement in the work. But with each one we have found a solution to his individual request for life management.
It turned out to be difficult to collect full-fledged cases, because the real result of the client can be evaluated only 1-6 months after our joint work. Below are the stories of three of my clients who have built their own life management system and have been using it for some time.
KSENIA'S STORY
Intro: Ksenia is 44 years old, works as the head of the customer care department at the bank. She lives in Moscow with her husband and two daughters.
Request: Ksenia came to me with the problem of lack of time for herself and her development, dissatisfaction with the level of intimacy with her family and the words "my life is like chewing gum." By the way, besides Ksenia, a couple of other clients compared the mess in life with the feeling of chewing gum :)
We could have just set up time management and the family sphere, but I decided to approach it systematically. At first, we took up the design of life — we found out and designed the desired life of Ksenia. Then, we created a time management system - implemented GTD for task management and time—blocking for personal boundaries in time. And in the end, we moved on to the establishment of the family sphere — we prescribed household processes and optimized them, based on the identified values, set clear goals for improving relations with her husband and children, and chose joint hobbies.
In 2 months, Ksenia defined her values, set measurable goals, organized all tasks and information, set up family life.
As a result: she finally got out of the "gum", began to do actions to her goals, and in her free time began to get closer to her family - she began to go dancing with her eldest daughter (she combined the task of maintaining health with maintaining relationships), and with her husband they introduced a ritual of weekly dates and went to a psychologist for resolution of small conflicts.
THE STORY OF CYRIL
Intro: Kirill is 36 years old, he owns and runs a construction equipment manufacturing company with a staff of 100+ people. He lives in Sochi with his wife, recently they had a son.
Request: Kirill came with the problem of the balance between business and life, processing in the evenings and difficulties with planning and storing information. We set the task to create a planning system and align the spheres of life so that he spends enough time with his family and has time to enjoy the development of a small child.
To do this, we found out the values and real desires of Kirill and his wife (he asked her to do a couple of exercises to understand her needs for a relationship). Based on them, we determined the basic principles of organizing time with the family, and engaged in prioritization. At this stage, Kirill came to a decision for the time of his son's early childhood to abandon additional projects that do not bring income in order to concentrate on the important.
Then, we chose the optimal planning tool (before that, Kirill tried many different applications and eventually returned to simple notes), developed a personal affairs planning system together with workers and created an information repository. There we organized the sphere of everyday tasks and health (for him, for his wife and for the child with tests, checks and all the necessary information).
As a bonus, we have created a photo management system to optimize the sharing of photos of a child with relatives. After completing the work, he himself continued to gradually organize the rest of his life.
As a result: Kirill began to come home from work on time, walk with his son and give his wife a rest several times a week. Also, he got rid of some of the business in his company and delegated several household chores, and began to devote the free time to his family and a new hobby (from real desires, we found out that he always dreamed of sailing).
SVETLANA'S STORY
Intro: Svetlana is 26 years old, she works as a freelance graphic designer. Lives in Germany with a young man.
Request: Svetlana came with the problem of disorder in work projects and everyday life tasks. She worked very hard and was stressed by the huge number of files on design projects and the fact that they were confused with personal photos and documents. Therefore, she wanted to understand the principles of electronic planning and maintaining order in all files. She has already tried to create CRM tables of clients herself and manage tasks in Trello and Notion, but it didn't work out well to organize and maintain everything.
During a month of work, we created a freelance project management system, prescribed repetitive work and life processes, optimized some of them, and automated the other.
As a result: Svetlana got rid of some of the operational tasks in her work and life, stopped losing information about clients, stored a lot of files and folders on her computer and disk, and began collecting customer reviews and all information about them in one place.
A month after completing the work, she wrote that the stress from work had gone away, everyday life became clear and defined, and thanks to this, she was able to take on several additional clients last month.
I am very proud that such cool clients come to me. And that it turns out to help them set up and maintain their life management system. The examples of my clients prove all the time that in any situation / specialty /age/ place you can make your life easy, pleasant and effective.
Visit the website of the life management system, subscribe to my telegram channel "life as a project", where I publish more materials about the design and management of my life, and download my book "Life Design".