One very important skill that all home – based professionals must master is time management. Many of us have limited time in which we can do our work, and even those of us that have more work hours available to them want to get the most that they can out of every one of those hours. Today I am trying out an exercise that is said to help individuals maximize their productivity.
You may or may not have heard of the exercise called “50 Minute Focus”. The exercise itself is simple. You spend fifty minutes intensively focused on one task, and then you take a break for ten minutes before diving back in for another fifty minutes of focused effort, and so the cycle goes until your work time is over. Some people suggest a twenty minute break, but I decided to use ten minutes so that the focus period and the break fit nicely into an hour.
I am now in my second, fifty minute stretch of working and I feel like I am doing well. During the first focused time period, I worked on a writing project that is ongoing. Now, obviously, I am concentrating on writing blog posts. The ten minute break that I had a little while ago enabled me to get a snack and tidy up a few things around the house, a task that I had wondered whether I would get to this evening. I’ll probably do the same at the next break time, too.
The fifty minute focus exercise has not been difficult for me so far. I think that I would have more difficulty with it if I were more of a multitasker. I am definitely one of those people that does not multitask well. While some people may see that as a fault, I am beginning to see it as a strength because it means that when I choose to focus my energy on something, I can do that without much effort for a set period of time. I will certainly be adding the fifty minute focus to my time – management tool kit because it is working well for me.
Photo by earl53 on morguefile.com.