Break OR Half Time Management Methodology

Have you ever felt that 24 hrs in a day is not enough for you? Or that you have so much work and don’t know how to work your way around them? or that you always get stuck while doing tasks and they block you from doing other tasks? or that you don’t have feel motivated enough to work?

If your answer is yes to any of the questions above then you are at the right place. The break or half methodology was initiated by me after I had a chat with my mentor on time management at Cotta & Cush, a software engineering firm where I currently run my 6-month Siwes (Student Industrial Work Experience Scheme) internship program. It is a simple method and it is quite simple and interesting to use.

Materials needed:

• Stop clock.
• A Task board.

You can use any form of stop clock - a mobile app, desktop app, wrist watch etc. Just make use of the one that is not far away from where you can notice it.

Your task board can be a notebook, sticky note, mobile/desktop to-do app etc. again make sure you use the one that is most convenient for you.

How it Works

You simply write all your tasks and assign a completion time to each task With this rules to follow

• Make sure no task is assigned more than 30 minutes.
• Break down complex tasks to smaller simpler tasks that can be completed within 30 minutes.
• Make sure you estimate well, Don’t allocate too much time to simple tasks. Your estimation skills also gets better over time as you continue to use this method.

After doing this, the next step is to start working on tasks by timing yourself. If you complete the task within the specified time, good then you mark this task as break(done) and you move to the next one, If you don’t,then you reduce the time by a factor of 2 (half), If you still don’t break it, you reduce the time again by a factor of 2 and repeat reducing the time till it is less than 1 minute. When it gets to this point you drop this task and move to another task on your board.This iterative way of working kind of puts you in a loop and sets you up in gaming environment where you catch fun while you work efficiently without being tired or bored.

Summary:

I currently use this method. It is extremely fun to use and it increased my performance level 3x more than what it used to be. I am confident that this method can be used by anybody in any field because of its simplicity.You can give it try tomorrow and you will be amazed at how much more effective you will be at work.

Don’t forget to drop your comments below, I would love your feedback. ;)