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Happier New Year: Getting Organized
By Tim Gross - Internet Business Blog | January 2, 2007
Well, it’s January 2nd, the first day of “getting down to business” for the year. How successful your efforts are over the coming year will depend on a large part to how organized you are in managing your time and tackling the most important projects on your plate.
I’ve spent time and effort trying out different time management systems, and most are either too complex, too time-consuming to maintain, or just don’t fit into the natural flow of how I work.
A huge percentage of people have a terrible time getting motivated to get work done without a boss or some actual deadline for when they need to finish something.
With twenty different things that need your attention and feeling overwhelmed with so much to do, what happens is that you get less done because you lose your focus.
Setting Artificial Deadlines
The first trick to making yourself productive is to set written deadlines for yourself on projects (or on getting pieces of a project done) even if there are no “real” deadlines you need to meet.
The second trick is to create real deadlines by announcing a launch date for a product you’re working on. Nothing forces you to kick your own butt in gear like putting out an announcement to your list saying, “On March 1st I’m going to be releasing my new product on __________, stay tuned for an announcement on how you can get it at a special pre-release price of 50% off.”
…And then start freaking out as the deadline gets closer and you’re not done.
The result? -You work harder than you would have to meet that announced deadline.
The third trick - And this is the one I consider to be the most crucial - is to break your day into finite sections of time, each section focused on a specific project or topic, and use a timer to adhere to your schedule.
It won’t work unless you get a physical count-down timer with an alarm (preferrably a digital one that doesn’t “tick” to distract you).
Here’s how you do it:
First, never work more than 45-50 minutes at a time without a break, no matter what. So if you plan on working on one project for 2 hours, break it into 2-3 sessions.
Even if you’re in the middle of something, when the timer goes off, STOP. Take 10-15 minutes off as a break… You deserve it, and more importantly, you need the psychological break it gives you.
Maybe this is your potential workday:
8:00-8:45 - Answer customer support email and check news headlines and X & Y discussion boards to stay up on what’s going on
9:00-9:30 - Work on updating PDF report so it’s still current
9:30-9:45 - Change bonuses offered in one of our sales letters to see if it affects response
10:00-10:50 - Work on project X
11:00-11:45 - Continue working on project X
Lunch Break
12:30-1:45 - Work on sales letter Y
2:00-2:30 - Return phone calls, check email
2:30-2:50 - Search online for potential partners to JV with
If you’ve never tried working with a timer, I think you’ll be very surprised what it does for your productivity.
Don’t use a stopwatch that just tells you how long you’ve worked on something. Use a countdown timer with an alarm that counts down to your break.
Psychologically it re-orders things in your head so that an enormous amount of work is “chunked” into easy to handle pieces, and the forced breaks make it feel like you’re not even working that hard…
But the BIG TRICK is that by forcing yourself to take 10-15 minute breaks every hour, you’ll get way more done than just trying to work non-stop for hours on end.
Hope that helps, and best of luck to you in the upcoming year! - Tim Gross
P.S. -Most time management books/programs never seemed to be that helpful to me. The one that had the most impact on me was No B.S. Time Management For Entrepreneurs, by Dan Kennedy. It’s very nuts-and-bolts, none of that “A clean desk equals a clean mind” crap (heh). Definitely worth getting.
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