There are different ways to approach your workday and make sure you get stuff done. From cutting out small chunks of time to organising your tasks by importance, let’s go through a few focus techniques to help you be productive.
The pomodoro technique
Named after a tomato shaped egg timer, the pomodoro technique is very straightforward: set the timer for 25 minutes and only work on your agreed task for those 25 minutes. No distractions, no emails, no pings on your phone, just 25 minutes of getting your head down.
It’s surprising how far you can get with 25 minutes of undivided attention. Once the timer goes, have a 5 minute break. Rinse, repeat.
If you’re up to it you can test yourself with longer timespans, but make sure to take regular breaks, atleast once an hour. The technique is set up to give you moments to be distracted before focusing again. Trying to focus continuously can be extremely energy draining and won’t last the whole day.
Time blocking
Similar to the pomodoro, time blocking is all about scheduling your day in small time blocks, and assigning a few of these per tasks. If you use 15 minutes increments, you might have 2 blocks for email in the morning, and another at 2pm. In between there is no checking your email or sending a quick reply: you are focusing on your other time blocked tasks.
Starting your day with time blocking, or even ending your day with planning the next, removes all doubts about what your purpose is for the day. Allow for regular small breaks and bigger breaks such as lunch time. If your job changes quite often allow some overflow time to pick up sudden tasks, but keep focus on your main tasks for the day.
Time blocking is also known as time boxing, revolving around you setting boundaries for a task. Giving a time limit to a task not only makes it more achievable, you are more driven to fill up (and possibly finish) the task in the allotted time. It’s not so much about finishing the task, as making it easier to achieve and more manageable.
Eat the frog
An expression attributed to many people by now, but originated by Mark Twain, “eat the frog” refers to that hard task you don’t really want to do. If you need to eat a frog, you might as well get it over with first thing.
It allows you to start fresh, and once you have eaten the frog (or finished that big report), everything else feels a lot easier. You don’t work the entire day with this dreaded task hanging over your head, and you kick the day off with feeling massively productive after your first frog task.
Scheduling your day the night before, prioritising your frogs and main three tasks firsts will help increase your productivity, and make your work feel more rewarding. Be careful not to plan the whole week ahead: eat your frogs one day at a time.
Use the Eisenhower matrix
If you’re not sure about your frogs, or have many smaller tasks that you don’t know how to prioritise, consider aligning them on the Eisenhower matrix. Following to axis you need to decided if your task is urgent or not, and if it’s important or not.
You’ll quickly find that if your honest, everything may feel urgent, but only a few tasks are. Similarly, importance is also inflated by yourself (or other people!).
Set out your tasks and prioritise them accordingly. Not everyone can delegate tasks, but they are clearly not your first priority; use eat the frog and time blocking to go through your do’s and delegates.
What NOT to do to stay productive:
- Don’t allow distractions. Phone, email, slack, teams; use the “busy” function and silence mode to give yourself some true focus time. You can always check in on your breaks.
- Don’t multitask: it’s been proven not to work, which is why all these techniques are about focusing on one thing at a time. That includes your email inbox or making your lunch.
- Don’t plan a day full of meetings. Meetings take more energy than you think, and if you have them back to back you won’t have time to reset, let alone do your day to day tasks.
- Don’t beat yourself up. Be kind and compassionate to yourself if you’re having a bad day, or if your planning completely went off the rails. You’re human, and things don’t always go to plan. Take a deep breath and start afresh the next day.
Staying productive can be difficult, especially when working from home. Finding a technique that works for you and your energy throughout the day can really help you maximise your productivity.