Maybe you are like me, pushing the hard task last instead of tackling them upfront, maybe you are procrastinating and doing other things than you should. Are you jealous of colleagues that are super focused and get their tasks done on time?
We all have the same amount of time daily, the difference is how we organize our time, I wrote an article a few years ago You have a problem if you are always busy. In this article, I will suggest a few tools to get tasks done even the hard ones.
If you see yourself as a procrastinator, then read on and leant how to beat procrastination and do the things you needed to do, even the difficult things, quickly.
Have you heard about the Pomodoro Technique? The Pomodoro technique is a time management system that encourages people to work with the time they have – rather than against it. Using this method, you break your work into 25-minute chunks separated by five-minute breaks.
These intervals are referred to as Pomodoros. After about four Pomodoros, you take a longer break of about 15 to 20 minutes.
The technique is the ability to break tasks up into smaller time-based tasks and to be able to stop after 25 minutes to get up reflect, think and get back for another round. This is a very effective way of doing work in my opinion, I have used it for a while now and it has helped me to be more focused on starting and completing tasks.
To install a sense of urgency with a timeframe is the main idea behind the technique, you may work on deadlines, the urgency for you is the deadline if you break down each task you need to get done before the deadline and make each urgent you will meet your deadlines on time.
You can extend the length of the Pomodoros Technique and their breaks, you can double the time, it is all up to you how you structure the length. I like to do (50 minutes working, 10 minutes off, which I repeat 3 or 4 times).
Breaking down task
To use this technique you can use a task management tool or a notebook, start by creating large tasks and breaking them down into smaller and smaller tasks so you have actionable, measurable goals for each period listed below.
- Yearly
- Quarterly
- Monthly
- Weekly
- Daily
Daily goals will help you achieve your weekly goals, weekly goals help you achieve your monthly goals and so on. This helps you avoid spending any time deciding what it is you should be working on and gives you clear objectives on what you will do daily.
The Average Office Worker Is Productive
The average worker across all career fields is productive between 3 to 4 hours a day, which averages out to 60% or less each day. For office workers, however, that percentage drops drastically, which was found in research conducted by Voucher Cloud that determined that the average office worker is only productive for two hours and 23 minutes each day.
Your work habits are made up of the habits and rituals that allow you to get quality hours at work, by being focused on the work you do every single day. Using the Pomodoro technique you can now focus on your goals.
Here is how I do it on my working days
- Start the day with an hour of exercise
- Blocking my calendar for the deep work
- Avoid as many meetings, if i am invited to a meeting were i am not being an influencer – i decline the meetings to get time for deep work
- Sit down at my deep work environment, so I can not get disturbed
- Start with office tasks like responding to emails, writting emails, responding to any request for meetings, or chat
- 2 session of the Pomodoros teqnique.
- Break between the session for 10 minutes.
- Have lunch – make time to cook your own food if working from home.
- 2-hour deep work session.
- Break between the session for 10 minutes.
- Reflect on your deep work sessions and see if you achieved your target outcome.
- Plan work for tomorrow’s deep work session.
- I always add in training, at the end of the day I do some training clasess in any topic of my liking.
I hope you liked this article and are interested in more articles on the topic, let me know by leaving a comment.
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