When you are working everyday you often don’t even realize how much time you waste. Years ago, in prehistoric ages, man measured time by simple observation of the stars and then hewould know if it was time to work or time to go to sleep. In modern times time measuring is definitely much more complicated. We have to measure every single minute of time and estimate every task we are going to do. Why ? Well there are a couple of reasons, the most important is fact that our clients pay for our time. So to continue this great idea that our customers pay for every single hour of our work we have to estimate the cost of this work, and therefore place a value on our time.
But there is another problem, almost all types of work except perhaps, cutting grass, requires creativity. So now ask yourself: how long you are able to work non-stop staying focused and creative ? Two hours, four ? That’s most peoples limit.
To be creative you have to meet some requirements. John Cleese said that if you want to work creatively and be a creative person you have to do two things: create boundary of space and boundary of time – this is simple as that. The first one is simple, if you are not working in a bus station everything goes fine. But the second one is definitely more difficult. For example: if you have to do something you are going to estimate the time it will take, let’s say thirteen hours. Ok, now every day you are working maybe eight – ten hours. So think about it, how effective will you spend all that time ? Leonardo da Vinci said “Time stays long enough for enyone who will use it”. Yes, and usually we don’t use it properly. This is simply impossible. Impossible to work all day long with maximum concentration and with a creative spirit. We are after all just human beings not machines.
To challange this idea some time ago we have made something called the Paymo Experiment. It was really nice, there is a Paymo timetracker which is very cool, has all the stuff needed to measure time, create reports, analyse, and so on and so forth. Then we had another tool similar to twitter but with people who want compare their results with other people.
Now we have to admit one thing, in companies usually only project managers know how much time particular person spends on which task. So in our experiment you were able to find how long you work, on what and compare results with other people.
Of course as you can imagine it sucks. Because first of all this is going to be a workoholics center, and we don’t like workoholics, if you don’t know why read this: fire the workaholics. Secondly, I remember my best week’s score: 75 hours. I was very proud of that but now I just realize how stupid it was. I’ll explain why later.
I am a big fan of time management techiques and I read many books on the subject for example David Allen’s GTD, Brian Tracy – eat that frog which were brilliant. But only advise about how organize tasks not how to organize your time.
So how do we solve problem the problem of managing our time ? There is a technique called: pomodorotechnique. And this is brilliant, because we can learn how to use time properly. What is aims to do is teach good habits, we can also use it for team work as well, and for pair programming.
We can then turn time into a valuable ally to accomplish what we want to do and chart continuous improvement in the way we do it. Francesco Cirillo created the Pomodoro Technique™ in 1992. It is now practiced by professional teams and individuals around the world. What do you need to start? – A kitchen timer – You can use either a real timer (we love the “Pomodoro” kind) or a software timer e.i focusbooster.com. You don’t need a coach or a mentor to start using the technique, all you need to do is read the paper. You don’t need any specialized knowledge or study to begin, all you will need is a kitchen timer, a piece of paper and a pencil or just google docs.
If you want to use it, the essential action you will adopt is:
- Define an activity to be carried out, set the timer to 25 minutes – (the Pomodoro is the timer
- Apply yourself to the activity until the timer goes off, then mark it off with an “x”.
- Take a short break.
- Every four “Pomodoros”, take a longer break.
Using simple, progressive steps the paper shows how to collect and visualize information for better self-observation. You will also find out how to organize the day using the Pomodoro, how to deal with interruptions, how to organize a work schedule and observations on the results that have been achieved over years of application.
Pingback: Just manage something: Tasks | A productivity and software blog: Control of Chaos (by 314 Technologies)