I often write about time management and how to carve out efficient time for working at our home businesses. In fact, I often talk about how to protect your work time and create long stretches in order to stay focused and get things done. It dawns on me, however, that many us really do our best work in spurts—we only have time or energy for a little burst here or there and we work in batches instead of being able to spread things out over hours and days. This needs to be an okay way of working at a home business too.
The great thing about clumping your work into little bursts is that it can be incredibly productive and free up time to focus on other things. I find that when I HAVE to make use of an hour or two to get some needed work done; I can often be incredibly fruitful and productive with that compact little morsel of time. By consolidating my energy and my focus, I can get a bunch of similar work done and then move on to something else. For me, the key to making the most of working in bursts and batches is to work on similar tasks—several writing projects, making a bunch of phone calls, returning e-mails. It is the mixing up and multi-tasking that can be so time consuming to me. Switching from task to task means a great deal of stopping and starting and I lose efficiency and focus when I do that.
Take advantage of the little bursts of energy and focus, or the brief pockets of time you are able to carve out for your work by having jobs and tasks ready and waiting. This is also a good way to NOT waste the time trying to figure out what you can do. If you always have a notebook or a basket with projects that need to be tended to, you can dig right in when you’ve got the time to do so.
See Also: Getting Things Off Your Plate