Difficulties of Staying On Task
Recently, I’ve been having some trouble staying focused during “work hours.” One big thing problem is that with more flexibility in my schedule, I find myself saying, “oh yeah anytime next week is fine.” And then I find myself with a mid-afternoon commitment, destroying my afternoon get-stuff-done block.
When I was at Google, I found that even a half hour meeting in the middle of the day can really affect my productivity for that day. The morning is…well, the morning. Sometimes I could get a big chunk of work done, but more often than not, it was spent syncing up with coworkers and catching up with work email (work…but not “real” work). Early afternoon is spent trying to get work done, but anticipating having to stop for a meeting, and then having the meeting, and then you only have a few hours left.
I think I need a good 4-5 hour chunk to psychologically put me in get work done mode. At least for coding. Maybe I can train myself to get work done in smaller chunks though. Or maybe I can write down smaller tasks and get those done in the smaller time chunks. Any advice for how to stay on task during half hour to one hour blocks? Or should I give up on that and just make sure I have big chunks of time to work every day?
i’ve had some success staying on task using this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique
Using a timer can be surprisingly helpful. Another trick is to just keep careful track of when you’re focused/distracted. Somehow when I take the extra effort to pay attention to that, it motivates me to focus more, esp if there’s a written record!
[...] I was wasting time on Google Reader. I had heard of it before and it was recommended to me in my previous post on staying productive within chunks of time < 4-5 hours. It was early afternoon, and I [...]