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You are surrounded by a lot of distractions. You are overloaded with projects, goals, tasks, phone calls, emails, and your relatives, friends and colleagues constantly demand to devote time to them. But you can still remain calm in the heart of this chaos. Reduce, simplify and unload your schedule. Find time to do urgent things, and focus on doing important work.
The bad news is that time flies. The good news is you're his pilot.
It's up to you to decide which tasks are prioritized and when they should be performed. The human body works in cycles called Ultradian rhythm / Wikipedia ultradian rhythms. During each of these cycles, there is a peak when we are energized, and a period of exhaustion.
People who follow this pattern work better. It is very important to understand the natural rhythms of our body and coordinate with them your periods of activity and rest. Therefore, determine your personal "peak time" and try to do as much as possible before your energy and willpower run out. I call it the 90/30 rule.
For the past three months, I have started my working day by focusing for exactly 90 minutes on one of the most important tasks that I had to solve. I chose it the night before so as not to waste time in the morning on planning. After 90 minutes of hard work, I took a break for 30 minutes. And then repeated this cycle.
And in those 90 minutes I managed to do more than in any comparable period of time during the rest of the day. I am very pleased with the results.
I decided to adopt this practice because I found that my energy and ability for intensive mental work drop throughout the day. And I also noticed that some difficult tasks that I cravenly postpone for the evening often remain unfulfilled.
Why did I take a time interval of exactly 90 minutes, and not 25, as in some method Pomodoro? Because research P. Lavie. The Enchanted World of Sleep Yale specialist Peretz Lafie shows that this is the optimal length of time during which a person is able to effectively focus on one task.
Tony Schwartz, blogger, writer and founder of The Energy Project, came up with T. Schwartz. A 90-Minute Plan for Personal Effectiveness / Harvard Business Review the 90-minute method, based on the results of this particular scientific work.
For almost 10 years now, I have been starting my working day by focusing on the most important task I chose the night before. After 90 minutes, I take a break. In order not to be distracted, I do not check my email during this period, close all unnecessary windows on my computer and do not come to the phone.
In addition to Lafi, Schwartz referred to the work of sleep researcher Nathan Kleitman. He opened N. Kleitman. Sleep and Wakefulness a phenomenon that he called the basic cycle of rest‑activity. Its essence is that within 90 minutes your brain goes through five stages of sleep, then rests for 20-30 minutes, then repeats the cycle. Kleitman found that the body obeys such a schedule during wakefulness.
Strictly speaking, the calculations of the scientist indicate that only 20 minutes is enough for rest. However, the co-founder of the Buffer service Leo Vidrich, as well as the writer and literary critic Benjamin Che Kai Wai, who tested the method on themselves, found 1. Cheah Kit Sun. The 90/30, 8/10 Rule
2. L. Widrich. The Origin of the 8‑Hour Work Day and Why We Should Rethink It / Buffer that a 30‑minute break is more effective.
You need time to rest, recover, allow your body to replenish its energy reserves. 20 minutes is not enough, at least for me. 30 is a more realistic minimum rest period. And it also makes life planning easier, because people are used to thinking in half-hour segments.
It was thanks to the 90/30 method that Schwartz wrote his book "The way we work does not work" in less than six months. He worked for an hour and a half, rested for 30 minutes, then repeated the cycle. After the first cycle he had breakfast, after the second he went for a run, after the third he had lunch. And the book was finished ahead of schedule, without overstrain and haste.
The method is based on force of habit. You should train yourself to solve the most difficult tasks for the day in the first 90 minutes, bringing such a routine to automatism. Then you will not need a lot of energy and pumped self-discipline and you will really be able to achieve maximum results.
Productivity can be achieved only by purposefully working on it. If you have a clear goal every morning, which you can immediately begin to fulfill, your ability to focus will increase many times. Therefore, spend the last 20 minutes of each day thinking about the tasks for tomorrow and setting priorities. And concentrate your energy on achieving your goals as soon as you get up the next morning.
Try it — and you will be surprised how simple and convenient it is.
