Do you often find yourself distracted when you’re trying to get an important report written? Or perhaps you have trouble getting yourself moving on it at all? Perhaps you tend to find yourself wandering off around the net while you’re supposed to be answering your e-mails. If you have trouble with any of these, then the answer may be a very simple piece of technology – a timer.
Timers are my favourite time management tool. I started off years ago using a clockwork kitchen timer. Now I’ve progressed to an electronic one, which can also be used as a basic stopwatch. It is a flexible tool with many uses, most of which are to do with helping you to concentrate on your work and avoid being distracted.
If you have paid attention to my articles in the past you may have introduced some more structure into your day, in the shape of breaks and a definite time for stopping work. This sort of structure works best when the timings are exact. Imagine you are back in school. When the bell goes, you all pile out into the playground. The last thing the teacher wants is you hanging around in the classroom during a break. But as soon as the bell goes again, you all troop back in for the next lesson. You may have noticed how annoyed you get when you attend a seminar or a conference when the timetable starts to slip. It destroys your ability to concentrate on the subject under discussion. A timer or an alarm (like the one on a mobile phone) are excellent ways of keeping to any structure which you may have laid down for yourself.
The timer is also great for working in timed bursts. If you have a big writing project it is usually most effective to work in bursts of, say, twenty minutes with a brief pause between each. The exact length of the burst doesn’t matter so much as long as the fact that it is timed and as long as you stop immediately when the timer goes off, even if you are in mid-sentence. Make sure you time the breaks too because they will be more refreshing as a result.
The mind goes on working while you are taking a break, and you will find that it’s easy to get back to the task and that your mind has moved on because it has had a chance to assimilate.
When you are resisting a big task really badly you can try working on it for a very short timed burst of five minutes. Then you can gradually increase the burst each time, perhaps by five minutes. So you work a series of 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes and so on. This is a very good way of overcoming resistance and procrastination.
An alternative way is to say “I’m going to work on this for not less than five minutes”. Once the timer goes off you can stop or go on working as you please. But note that you must have decided which method you are going to use before you start. It’s no use saying “I’m going to do a timed burst of five minutes” and then going on working when the timer goes off. You will lose all the effect and make it more difficult for you to use the technique in the future.
Another method is to use the stopwatch for occasionally timing such things as clearing your daily email. Make it into a competition with yourself to see whether you can beat your own record. It’s surprising when you are working against the clock in this way how conscious you are of how much you normally waste time.
If you’ve never used a timer as a time management tool, then why not dust off that kitchen timer now or invest in a cheap electronic one? You won’t regret it!