Improving Focus: Timesheet
The last thing I use to improve focus is to create an accountabiity system for myself.
Out of my working day, how much was I focused? How much was I not focused? What tasks was I working on?
I would put this information into a basic spreadsheet and compare over time, am I improving the number of tasks I’m focused on? Decreasing?
No matter if that number is going up, down, sideways, I just leave it and don’t agonize over it. (Because I want the number to go up, as soon as I reason why it’s not, I am wasting time and energy - that would be better to focus on something else!)
The way I do this is just have a basic “timesheet” for myself:
09:00 pomodoro 1 - topic 09:30 pomodoro 2 - topic 10:00 pomodoro 3 - topic 10:30 pomodoro 4 - topic 11:15 pomodoro 5 - topic 11:45 pomodoro 6 - topic 12:15 lunch 13:00 pomodoro 7 - topic 13:30 pomodoro 8 - topic 14:00 pomodoro 9 - topic 14:30 pomodoro 9 - topic 15:15 pomodoro 10 - topic 15:45 pomodoro 11 - topic 16:15 pomodoro 12 - topic
Of course, this is the ideal and I would love if I even hit one of these days, alas, I have not, so my days look more like:
09:00 pomodoro 1 - topic 09:30 pomodoro 2 - topic 10:00 pomodoro 3 - topic 10:30 chat with coworkers 10:50 email 11:00 surfing hacker news 11:15 pomodoro 4 - topic 11:45 lunch 13:00 pomodoro 5 - topic 13:30 reading blogs 13:45 pomodoro 6 - topic 14:15 chat with coworkers 14:30 pomodoro 7 - topic 15:00 email check 15:30 chat with coworkers 16:00 help coworker 17:00
By recording what I did, I have a chance to look back and see where I can improve and let myself guide me to improve (hence, not agonizing over why I wasn’t working).
Improving focus takes energy, sleep, and discipline.
Related articles