We’ve all seen countless articles promising to help us organise our time better so that we have more of it. And, of course, we are all expert time managers. We claim to be when we attend an interview for practically any role. We say what we think the interviewer will want to hear. We say that we use the Eisenhower Matrix. We draw a grid with four quarters titled important, urgent, unimportant and non-urgent. We write all of our tasks into this grid, and then we focus on the tasks that are most important. But, of course, we don’t actually do this, and it doesn’t actually help – well, not if you’re anything like me.
This would take way too long! This would require writing out all of our tasks. Not only that, but I also spend time thinking about how each task sits in the order of priority. Perhaps, intuitively, we prioritise things in this way. We keep to the top of our mind the important tasks, and if we don’t have the time, we don’t do the tasks that are not important. But for most of us, the task of drawing out such a grid would fall into the unimportant category, and so we let that task remain forever unfinished.
You probably already know about the Pomodoro Technique. This is one that I do find useful. Particularly when it comes to difficult projects or tasks or where I don’t really know where to start. I use it to make a start. I might use the time to break down a large task into a smaller series of tasks or, as I did today, just to get started.
If you are not familiar with the Pomodoro Technique, the idea is that you work for 25 minutes and then take a break for 5 minutes. Set a timer. I find it useful when I don’t know where to start. The only trouble is, not everyone has the luxury of 25 minutes of full concentration. The phone rings, email notifications pop up, and you find yourself at the end of the 25 minutes having not accomplished very much.
This is where my one simple trick will help you. It is so simple yet so effective.
Turn off your email notifications. That’s it. That simple. Just keep them off. You really don’t need that microsecond distraction every time something comes across. Instead, check your emails consciously and reply to them then and there. Stop duplicating your own work.
Checking and responding to emails then and there means you read the email once, not twice. You concentrate on it once, not twice. You are able to focus on whatever it is you’re working on without being constantly interrupted by that little box in the bottom right corner of your screen stealing microsecond after microsecond of your time.
By simply turning off your email notifications, you will stop duplicating your work. You won’t have your time constantly interrupted and will find yourself able to get more done by doing less.
Try it and tell me if it works for you.
One word of caution: this technique may not be popular with the human resources department, so just keep telling them you use the Eisenhower Matrix and the Pomodoro Technique.