Time management — 5 brilliant tricks from my productivity coach
Your… what?
Let me explain this first. Back in 2008 I started looking for someone to help me keep track of my projects & motivate me because I realized it gives a massive boost to what I can achieve. Back then, it was hard to find someone who can do that. Today, that’s a profession; it’s called a productivity coach. So yes, I hired people to do that for me, and just last year I seem to have found a quite competent one; she’s working with me for 10 months now. (No one lasted that long before.)
Not gonna lie: I had to adapt my mindset to be able to follow her lead: a certain amount of new habits and reports were required, but what I gained in return is literally twice as much billable hours, and free weekends, a term I had to google after all my freelance years.
You may think, okay, there are tools for boosting productivity, managing time, dealing with projects, so why pay someone. Right? Maybe, maybe not; try and see for yourself. I guarantee you will learn a lot from a person who knows what she (usually, she) is doing. So let’s see some of the things I would have never started doing without her — there are plenty so I cherry-picked the top few that I wouldn’t have done by myself.
Let’s start with my all-time favorite.
1: Time Tetris
There are different names for this, some call it Time slot listing or Best-fit, also there are many variants. Here’s what I mean: imagine your time as a series of 5-minute or 15-minute slots, and your tasks as Tetris pieces! (We’re gonna play in a single dimension now, aka time.) You can place elements ahead, like scheduled meetings, family programs, other appointments, so after a while you end up with gaps between them.
Now what’s something you can sort out in that 45-minute gap?… You start to go through your todo lists, think of every task, how much time they might take, and spot one of them. Does it fit in? Okay, let’s to that one. But that’s quite random, not very efficient, slow, repetitive, and you will always find the first one on the list that fits in. So it’s not even very productive.
Instead, you can be prepared!
Create a dedicated list of 5-minute tasks, another for 15-minute ones, then 30, 60, 2 hours and so on. You can do this any way you decide: separate folders, or tags if you have an advanced todo list app. The point is to have them organized by estimated duration; give them a little more than the happiest path, make it reasonable. Fixing a bug? Could be 5 minutes, could be hours. Give it hours. Grocery shopping? Shouldn’t be more than one hour. Sorting out your desktop folders? Well, depends — for me it’s 15 minutes, for my father it’s 3 hours to make it a little less chaotic. (Yes he’s a developer.)
So now it’s like buffet breakfast: you have all the options for a certain amount of free time! You already know you need 2 of the 30-minute tasks, even add some 5-minute easy pies if you’re really determined.
Maintain a list of tasks for every duration!
Here’s the structure I’m working with:
The last one is called “tough cookie” for a reason: it’s where long and unpredictable tasks live — side projects, typically. They can take several days, so I only open this list when I have less clients than usual, therefore extra time that would otherwise be wasted. It’s a good way to make even your low-income periods pay you back in the long run.
2: Moving boxes
Everyone has seen a calendar like this.
Now when I started working with Yana, she told me to plan the week ahead. I was like, what? Anything can happen in a week, I can’t just predict it by the minute. Her reply was,
“Yes you can, and others will learn when you’re available.”
That’s exactly what happened. I was no longer the guy who “can make time anywhere in the day” (because I work from home, what a luxury in 2023!), suddenly I had definite answer for the question “does Friday 15h work for you?” and suddenly it was easy to not get interrupted by anyone anytime.
The next thing I did was drawing long working sessions (4–5 hours) and lunch breaks in the middle. No, she said, that’s not the way:
“You can’t sit in a car for 4 hours.”
Never thought of that, but quite to the point! A car seat is probably the single most convenient place to sit, yet 4 hours is just about the upper limit without giving yourself a break.
I made it 2 hours per block. No, she said: 100 minutes of work, followed by a 20-minute break. Turned out to be 105 + 15 because it’s easier to represent in Google Calendar, but you see the point. After 1 hours and 45 minutes, you just deserve a break. And stand up from your desk — that’s something I’m adding, lie down somewhere if you can, your latissimus dorsi will thank you.
So now we have the boxes. Everyone has the boxes. What’s the game? Well, her instruction was:
“You can move them around but never delete.”
And that’s just what I did. MAGIC! Suddenly I had a steady total amount of productive time, and I could be sure it will all happen; even if I leave the computer for a couple of hours, I just need to move the box I failed to deliver, and move it somewhere else. It all started to make sense. Free time started to appear in the calendar; I left some space for flexibility, but I found myself not even moving the boxes around, or just very rarely. Sometimes they were moved to the weekend (which was bad news) but then I never needed to do that again; it became clear that with the 15-minute breaks I can do just about any amount, right on time, unless my mind is gone for the day.
So — have your boxes planned, and never delete them! That’s your guarantee of free time, and that everything will be delivered by the end of the week. NOT including Saturday and Sunday, of course. (Yana is very strict about that.)
3: Let free blocks have a name
Closely related to the previous point: when you’re done drawing your productive boxes, start filling the free time slots! With everything you always wanted to do. Now you have the time for them! Journaling? Making music? A walk in the park? Harassing old friends with phone calls? You name it. But literally, name it. Give those freetime-boxes names!
“Why”, I hear you ask.
The reason is because others (people / activities) are happy to eat up your spare time. If you don’t have a plan, they will always have three. And somehow what you wanted to do — even if it’s just resting on your couch — will never happen, it will be lost in the Always Tomorrow. No, my friend. That’s not the Way of the Samurai. You wanted to write your journal from 5pm to 6pm, and then you’re taking a walk. Believe me, others are very good at waiting, and if they’re not, give them time to practice!
Dedicate most of your free time to yourself!
You can still leave some time unplanned, let friends & family tear you apart, but think of yourself! If you’re a single freelancer, consider yourself a company: you need to make your only developer happy, right? You don’t want them to leave. It’s 100% of your developers. You keep them satisfied with their life. Give yourself enough time to feel respected and valued and you will never leave Yourself Inc.
4. Frog Time
“Eat the frog first”, they say. Do the thing you hate to do, and do it like first thing in the morning. Yana basically told me the same but with a twist: pick a time block where it will happen. Know it’s there, be prepared that it has to happen!
Now with the frogs I had, it was not easy to accomplish. There are roadblocks in development, things you stare at and hear your mind say “nooo please not that one”. These frogs can grow pretty big after a while. It’s almost like refactoring: after a while you need to face all the mess silently piling up in the corners, and clean them the hell up. That’s what happens here. Tedious tasks like sending out follow-up mails, billing, writing summaries of recorded meetings, or even just upgrading your environment to a new version — it can be something you’re always procrastinating. Give it a block of time in your calendar: even give it a different color, to see it’s there, it’s coming, and be prepared to not run away. It’s what you want to do in that box! It’s your decision. You’re attacking one of the demons, from 3pm to 5pm, because you said so. It will happen, and you can be sure by 5pm you will have one less of them. Mission complete!
Actually, I can’t explain why it works. But it does, and partly because you give yourself control over the situation by pointing out the time. Choose a time when you’re still active (have enough brain power) but after a few pleasant tasks, also don’t forget to put some reward after you did it.
Believe me, frogs are already afraid of you as you read this. Look around, do you see any of them?… You’re welcome.
5. Park on a slope
When you end the day, or switch to another project, you’re tempted to just drop the mike and walk off the stage. You had enough, your mind is tired of the whole thing, foque this sheet (French for “I don’t think I’d love to have more of it, thank you very much”).
But do something for yourself.
Either write some lines about where you finished — this can be a short summary like the commit message, or a 10-line source comment somewhere; the point is to help the future yourself to pick up where you left off. Or, if you’re a skilled guy, stop the development at a point where the very next task is something enjoyable.
This works like magic.
The next time you open a project, you’ll realize you just can’t wait to do that particular thing. It can be some UI improvement — I love to leave freshly generated pages without CSS and add the looks next time — or the final step of something complex you just solved, like adding a certain element to every page, and now you created the component so all you have to do is insert it wherever needed. Something lightweight that reminds me you just finished lots of work the last time, and now you’re just eating the fruits.
The reason I called it “parking on a slope” is because old cars often had problems with their battery, and then you had to give them a “rolling start”. It was easy to do by just letting them run downwards in second gear and releasing the clutch; but on a flat street, without gravity to help you, well, it was painful to push the goddamn monster several times before the miracle happened.
Give yourself an easy start for next time!
To sum things up
It’s not easy to fulfill every desire of a productivity coach. That’s what they’re for. You have to do some extra work; but in return, you have amazing productivity, translated into dollar bills just pouring in as you open the door. If you let them manage your time, you’ll end up with more free hours in a week, and during all the work hours you’ll have the amazing feeling of getting somewhere.
Again:
- Time Tetris: maintain a list of tasks for every duration
- Moving Boxes: stay flexible & keep the total work amount guaranteed
- Let free blocks have a name: put yourself first in your resting hours
- Frog Time: decide when is the time to do what you hate
- Park on a slope: leave something easy for the next start
These five things changed my life, no matter how awfully experienced I already was in 2022. There’s more of these little things, and I hope I can add some of my own too, but that’s for next time. Right know there’s something more important: I’m going for a walk.
Because I can.
Because I have my weekends.
