One of the most useful tools for managing your time is, strangely enough, a timer. Most SmartPhones come with excellent timers, but any old timer will do. Note that I’m not referring to an alarm, though these can be useful time management tools too.
My very first book “Get Everything Done” was about the use of a timer to work on tasks for increasing intervals. The intervals I used in the book were increasing intervals of 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes and so on up to a maximum of 40 minutes. if you work on a task in increasing intervals right up to a 40 minute interval, you will have worked on it for three hours.
Guess what? Twenty-one years later the system still works.
However there are many other ways of using timed intervals, and the only limit is your imagination. And one of the great advantages is that you can use timed intervals in conjunction with almost any other system.
So for instance I am writing this blog post using intervals of one minute increasing by one minute each time. There’s no gap between the intervals. The intervals are just there to keep my concentration going - and they are very effective at that.
Currently I’ve just started a six minute interval, which means that so far I’ve been continuously writing the blog post for 1+2+3+4+5=15 minutes.
This blog post is actually the third item on a list of five items, which I am working through one task at a time. I’m timing each item individually but an alternative (and equally effective) way of doing it would be to time the whole group of five as one.
Another way I’m currently using a timer is for reading books. Though I love reading, it’s very easy to get distracted. Using timed intervals makes it much easier to maintain concentration. I use a slightly different technique for this. This time I count down as well as up. So I aim to read up to ten minutes and then count back down to one. If you want to read for a shorter period or longer period you can use more or fewer intervals, e.g. up to five minutes and back, or fifteen minutes and back.
How much concentrated reading time does going up to ten minutes and back down to one give you? If you’re not a mathematician you may be surprised at the answer. It’s one hour and forty minutes. That’s a powerfully long session of concentrated reading.
I find increasing the intervals upwards only is best for tasks when you don’t know exactly how long they’ll take. But increasing the intervals upward and then downward is for something like reading which you want to do for a set time.
My current seven minute interval is coming to an end, and I’m just about at the end of writing this post. So it will have taken me 1+2+3+4+5+6+7=28 minutes.
Why not give it a try? There are many more possible variations. You can experiment to see which suits you best.