If you came here without reading what led to this article, you should visit here.
Go read and come back. I will wait!
So the story goes like this.
Year 2013, take any day you like. :-)
I was stuck with two problems.
I was not able to finish up any work on time.
I was also not able to do important work for a day.
Setting up and attending meetings, giving knowledge sessions for juniors, hands on coding, client and stand up meetings and so many on. A day at my work looked like this.
The daily analysis of what I accomplished for that day, was always nothing.
Days passed, my day looked busier with less important work.
The Pomodoro way
Time to beat this habit in a different way
You don't discover something from thin air. People help.
The immense desire to do more important work and set aside the less ones, led me to read on pomodoro technique.
Simple technique, you work on a small task for 25 minutes and take break for 5 minutes. The break gives your brain proper rest time to resume next set of pomodoros.
I happily completed one pomodoro that whole day.
Yes, you heard it right.
Just one, out of 8 hours work day, I was able to focus only for 25 minutes.
What an idiot!. Said myself.
By practice and practice after 7 days...
ahem..ahem..
My bad.
By practice and practice after 7 months, I was able to finish full set (10 pomodoros) on a single day and there after. This was the time, when I had undivided focus on completing a piece of task.
Proud moment
The Eisenhower matrix way
Now that I could solve my first problem with pomodoro. I moved to my second.
Eisenhower matrix(quadrant) helped me here.
The four quadrants:
Urgent and important
Not urgent yet important
Urgent but not important
Not urgent and not important
I was easily able to prioritise my tasks with the quadrant theory.
Yes, it seemed difficult at first, but with my experience on practising pomodoro technique, I was able to tackle this one too.
I started doing the important and urgent ones first and moved across quadrants.
The book, Eat that frog by Brian Tracy (Click Here to read one), really helped me in getting better at prioritising my tasks. You should read it too!
The solution to second problem was much more easy when clubbed with pomodoro technique.
Now with full confidence I could say, I am doing meaningful work since 2013, take any day you like :-)
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