By Valeria Iuleva
I always liked to challenge myself. I have been doing several activities simultaneously for as long as I can remember myself. Since my six years, I was matching a regular school with musical education, during the last classes I was studying, working part-time and leading an indie-rock group same time. While studying at university, I was working full-time and organizing public events as a hobby. Many friends of mine asked me: “How are you doing all this? Do you have an extra battery hidden somewhere?! Looks like you’re never tired, what’s your secret?”
The secret is not in some kind of energy source in me, but in balancing activities.
First, I started looking for different time-management techniques and trying them, figuring out what served me best. For example, I realized that Hal Elrod’s “The Miracle Morning” techniques are not working for me, but the Pomodoro technique, using timer to balance work with obvious rest-time periods, really elevates my productivity.
Secondly, I realized that sometimes I started to feel exhausted at lunchtime (too early in my opinion). So, I started journaling every activity (during active work and rest-pauses as well). I realized, that during breaks I was doing three-four things simultaneously (like cooking + listening to educational podcast; or sewing + listening to e-book in a foreign language + rehearsing pronunciation of foreign words I was hearing in the book). It made me feel overloaded, and after such “rest” I needed to do more work! So, I limited myself to do only two tasks at the same time, not more.
The most important thing for me is to follow my productive and non-productive time periods in a day. I know for sure that I’m very productive between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m., and then once again, between 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. Time block in between these two is great for socializing, household tasks, doing sports and going for a walk, and doing any creative tasks (embroidery, video filming or writing music in my case).
Knowing my best hours, I create blocks in the Calendar to apply the “Pomodoro method” (I use an online timer for it – https://pomofocus.io/) and combine a Calendar app with the Reminders app on my phone. All that helps to stay on track with academic, work and personal deadlines.
The productivity and effectiveness secret is in welcoming one’ body and mind needs, delegating deadlines and events’ details to set the brain free, and to feel satisfaction crossing out every task “done” in the daily list. Choose your hero time-management method and stay focused!
