My 30 minute plan
How many times do you say “I would like to do that, but I don’t have time”? Probably a lot, huh? I will admit I can definitely be accused of using the phrase too often too. With that being the case, I have tried to come up with a solution for me where I can more efficiently break up my time and make progress on all the things I would like to do.
Right now I have a lot of thing going on that I would like to do:
- Write more
- Learn another language
- Read more books
- Learn the iPhone SDK
And this list could go on.
So, I have list of what I would like to do. I also know where my priorities lie on the more important things that I must put time on that are not “extras”. So what can I do to put the time needed on the high priority items, but still put some time the other things I would also like to accomplish? I call my plan the 30-minute plan.
When I think about the amount of time I could possibly have free during a day, I have about 5-6 hours that I could put on whatever I wanted. Some of this time must be spent on necessary things like housework and cooking dinner, but that still leaves a decent amount of time to work on other stuff. Since the time is not continuous, I really have to focus on smaller blocks of time which is where the 30 minutes comes in.
For most things I want to do, 30 minutes of time per day would result in a lot of progress. So if I have 5-6 hours, than results in 10-12 blocks of time to devote to something. Removing a couple of blocks for the basics, that would give me time to put 30 minutes of focused activity on possibly 10 different things. Even if I am only half productive, that is still progress on 5 items. Yes, there are things that will take more than 1 block, but even breaking up the task into multiple blocks still has its benefits.
The main goal of this plan is to have short blocks of time focused on one item. Since my mind tends to get distracted on other things, I developed this plan to give myself a limit. Having the limit forces me to cut out other distractions and focus on the task at hand to get something accomplished. I have done just that with this post, and that was to write it, review it, and post it under 30 minutes.
I hope it does not give too much of a headache.