Manage your time better
Are you one of those people that loves to make to-do lists? Crossing things off feels so good, am I right!? Here’s the thing though, it never ends! If you’re anything like me you also have a million ideas, start and sometimes finish. It feels like there’s more things to do and less time!
What do you do? You make the most of the time you do have. Once upon a time I had 8 hour days and I remember not getting as much done as I do now in 4 hours. What changed? I’m intentional about the time I do have using the Pomodoro Technique. Let’s talk about this practice.
Plan Out Your Weekly To Do List
Instead of having a daily long to-do list, look at your to-do's for the week then break it down so that you only have 3 things to do each day. If you have time left over then you can add to your daily to-do list but you MUST complete those 3 things first.
Track Time of Your Tasks
Each Pomodoro is a 25 minute increment. Then 5 minutes of review or a break. As a creative sometimes I’m in the flow and go through to the next Pomodoro and take a 10-15 minute break after the next one. Do what works for you.
When you’re making your daily to-do list estimate how much time it’s going to take you to do each task. This forces you to break projects down. Here’s the difference, when you write “Do Jon’s website”, that’s a pretty big task, that’s a project. Most likely if you have a limited amount of time it’s not going to get crossed off but if you break it down you’ll know exactly how long and how many days you need to complete that project. It can be broken down to “Complete content for Jon’s website”, “Complete Jon’s home page”, and so on for the rest of the week. You know exactly what you need to work on. A lot of future tasks and projects are repeated so this gives you a better idea estimating time for future tasks.
Focus
25 minutes is short but just long enough to get something done and that’s the idea. Total focus on the task at hand. You cannot have any distractions. If you do get a wandering thought, write it down but stay on track with the task.
That’s it! It’s easy, right!? It’s so easy and yet so effective.
Time Tracking Tools
Phone App
There are a few apps that support the Pomodoro Technique, a lot simply have a timer but what I love about this app is that it gives you the option to put your daily tasks along with the timer. It also gives you daily, weekly, monthly, reports. I like to know how much time I’m spending on my business weekly and monthly.
Timers
If you like to have something on hand like a timer these are some fun ones.
Planner
The Productivity Planner supports Pomodoro. I’m a visual person and love all the beautiful planners but I found that there was just too much to fill out, I would start it only to leave it less than half filled out. I needed something simple and to help me focus on my time. This planner is it.
Try it!
The best thing is that this is not only for businesses but for every day tasks too. Set the timer on for 25 minutes and focus on that laundry! For people that like to get things done, trust me this method is so satisfying.
If you try the Pomodoro technique I would love to hear how it’s working out for you below!
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