I prefer to work on longer and more involved tasks in the early afternoon, and settle in on editing and writing in the late afternoon. I personally find myself much more productive to start the morning working on short tasks, such as answering quick e-mails. Briefly write down each task in a short list, and prioritize! Some people find tackling long tasks easier when they're broken down into tiny little pieces. If there are any ideas or thoughts that pop in your mind about anything at all during focus time, such as a request your coworker made the other day, or what you feel like eating for lunch later, just jot a short reminder note about it on paper to have a look at later, and continue to work on your task.īreaking down your projects into smaller tasks that are more manageable is key in the pomodoro method. Your own mind also tends to distract yourself. Get your colleagues on the same page by explaining your work plan if you need to.

Your boundaries might be different such as shutting your door to your office, or headphones might mean do not disturb. Working from home, I have established some ground rules, such as not being disturbed when I'm in my home office, while my friends know that they won't be able to reach me during work hours. Devices make it easy to automate shutting down your notifications during certain times, so I have set my phone and computer to have quiet periods during my work hours. Make sure you shut down possible distractions such as muting your phone and browser notifications beforehand. Today I'm going to talk about the basics: The key to the pomodoro technique is simple. This has helped me immensely in prioritizing tasks, and figuring out how much time a certain task will take when working on similar projects.

For the uninitiated, the pomodoro technique is a time management method that helps focusing on one task at a time, block distractions, and forces you to take breaks. I've actually been really, extremely bad at this until I found out about the pomodoro technique. Moreover, sometimes you do need to step back and have a look over what you're doing to make sure that you are tackling the task efficiently. 'You don't seem like you have been taking breaks'

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