Take a look at your day and identify the time-fillers, like social media and email, that you might usually spend ten to twenty minutes on and see if you are Crushing The Bees Of Productivity. These little time fillers are what are known as ‘cockroaches’ in the productivity world. These activities do nothing to move you forward in reaching your goals.
Instead of spending a leisurely 20 to 30 minutes in the morning reading through your email, give yourself five minutes. This goes for all the time-filler tasks that you identified. Don't provide these tasks with any more attention until you've completed your to-do list for the day. Once you’ve completed everything you need to complete, then you can indulge in some social networking, email reading, or fee reading for as long as you’d like.
These are the kinds of tasks where 10 percent of what you do is important, and the other 90 percent is entirely useless — committing to avoiding these tasks until your essential work is completed forces you to focus on the critical tasks.
How To Implement The Golden Pomodoro Method
The Pomodoro Method was invented by Francesco Cirillo in the early 1990s and can help you power through distractions, hyper focus, and accomplish things in short bursts, all while taking frequent breaks to relax.
The methodology behind this productivity and time management method is simple: when you are faced with a series of tasks or an enormous task, break the work down into short, timed intervals, that are spaced out with short breaks.
This technique of working trains your brain to focus for short periods and helps you stay on top of deadlines.
The Pomodoro Method is one of the most straightforward productivity techniques to implement in your day. All you need is a timer. Start by choosing a task on your to-do list and set your timer for 25 minutes. Work on the selected task until the timer goes off, then put a check on a piece of paper. Take a short break of about five minutes, then set your timer for another 25 minutes and get back to working on your task.
For every four Pomodoro's or checks that you have on your paper, take a more extended break between 15 and 30 minutes.
If you repeat this process of working in 25-minute intervals, with short breaks in between, you'll find that you get a lot accomplished, while taking the necessary breaks to help you relax and recharge your brain.
It is important to note that if you are distracted during your 25-minute session, for any reason, you either have to end the Pomodoro there, or you have to postpone the distraction until the Pomodoro is complete.
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