Stock Image | Tumblr.

Managing the Time You Have

Hacking your personal productivity with the Pomodoro time/1-3-5 task management pairing.

How many days have you come home from work feeling like you don’t have the time or the energy to do anything else? How many times have you packed your bag getting ready to finally head home with a partially complete to-do list mocking you from the desk? How many times has it felt like no matter how efficient you are at getting work done, work seems to be more efficient at piling up on your desk? Probably a few times, and it’s all right to admit. When you’re constantly juggling commitments, from work to dinner to family & friends, there are very few opportunities to step back and objectively think about how you’re managing your time. But fear not, with 2 simple techniques, you’ll be crossing everything off your lists, getting things done in a timely manner, and also develop an understanding of where your time is invested. The 2 techniques we’re going to talk about are the Pomodoro Technique for time management, and the 1-3-5 rule for task management.

Getting started, the Pomodoro technique stands on a very simple concept: time boxing. Time boxing refers to allocated set ‘boxes’ of time to your tasks and commitments. The Pomodoro technique breaks your time down into 25-minute blocks, known as pomodoros. After completing ‘1 pomodoro’ (25 minutes of undisturbed work,) you’re given a 5-minute break. You repeat this cycle for 4 pomodoros, where you’re then given a full pomodoro break. This seems like a very quantified approach, a rigid program that demands attention from the user; but the opposite is true, the technique is incredibly flexible, and can be implemented in a number of ways. This technique is effective for a number of reasons:

1. It gives every task you begin a definitive deadline. This is paramount to ensure small tasks aren’t eating away at the productive time you have left in your day. You start, work on your task(s) for 25 minutes, and stop.

2. It shows you how long you typically spend working on certain tasks. With this information, you’re able to assess things like: am I being as productive as I could? How long do recurring tasks normally take me? How long (hours) do I work productively each day? To improve your productivity, you need to have an idea of your starting point, or how long tasks currently take you. Quantifying tasks into ‘2 pomodoros’ seems much less daunting than “50 minutes straight.”

3. It gets you to take breaks. It does sound odd, this being a productivity post and all, that we talk about taking breaks. However, it’s proven that our mind/body works best in short, intense intervals, as opposed to extended lengths of time. Taking breaks helps your mind move from one task to the next, and helps to restore your energy / attention for the next task.

Now that we’ve looked at how to break down our time into productive blocks, let’s look at how to fill that time with our priorities. In comes the 1-3-5 technique, just as simple in theory as the Pomodoro. The 1-3-5 technique follows a simple principle: with the available time, energy, and resources we have on an average day, you should plan to accomplish 1 large task, 3 medium tasks, and 5 small tasks. Why? Because life happens. You get distracted, have an off day, need to park around the block, setbacks pop up. If you’re still not following, think of a typical workday. You have a very important meeting at 3pm (1 big thing), but you also have a large report due to your boss at 1pm (another big thing!?) Which is your priority? Most likely the report, simply because it’s due earlier. However the result of that tradeoff is that you don’t prepare well for the meeting. One task is completed at the expense of another.

Let’s change that scenario around. Say you still have the meeting to prepare for, and 3 things on your list to do before then. You have to outline your presentation for next week, compose an email to your coworker, and make a reservation at the hotel you’re travelling to. If you start at 11, and each takes an hour, you finish working at 2 with an hour now to prepare for your meeting. Problem solved.

“The idea behind the 1-3-5 technique is to have 1 major focus for the day, 3 critical tasks to complete and further your progress, and 5 small items to keep up with your workload.”

With this, you immediately understand your priorities, can choose the order you wish to work on things, and still feel good about accomplishing a lot.

Powerful by themselves, the true potential is discovered when you merge them.

However, the real magic happens when you combine the two techniques together. How? By fitting the 1-3-5 into a Pomodoro organization. Let’s phrase it like this: the 1 large task you have requires a lot of work and attention, so it will take a full ‘Pomodoro chain’ (4 pomodoros with 1 pomodoro break). That’s 2 1/2 hours of dedicated work towards your project. Perhaps your medium tasks will take an hour, which divides perfectly into 2 pomodoros (50 minutes of work with two 5 minute breaks). And finally, each small task can be assigned 1 pomodoro time block. If we do the math for this, you’ve theoretically finished 9 tasks in 6 hours. And what’s better, because the pomodoro technique emphasizes a distraction-free & focused environment, you can feel confident knowing you’re putting out quality work as well.

Given an 8-hour workday, 6 hours is a reasonable amount to still grant you time for things like lunch, meetings, washroom breaks, and anything else that may arise. To recap, we made time more tangible by dividing our day into blocks of 25-minute ‘pomodoros’. We then prioritized our work with the 1-3-5 technique, filling the projects with important tasks for the day. Once both of those were set up, we allocated a reasonable amount of time (# of pomodoros) to each task we had, based on its priority. That is where the true value of this combination is realized, you are proportionately spending your time on the tasks that require the most attention, or are of the greatest importance.

Managing your time and your priorities isn’t rocket science, but it’s also very difficult to do when you think in broad, abstract measurements of time and energy. By quantifying your time per project, and ensuring you understand what you need to get done, you can spend less time - doing better work. Have fun with it!

p.s. For more information on both of these techniques; the Pomodoro Technique, and Fast Company hosts a brilliant article on the 1-3-5 technique.