On time management

Time drain and the trinity

Usually, there's a trinity closely related to time waste problems: Procrastination,
interruptions and lack of discipline. Procrastination often begins with attending
to a interruption which is accompained by a lack of discipline to maintain focus
on the original work.

Time management techniques

- Sensoring: Keep a log on the activities done in work time.
- Setting goals: Identify and record all the objectives. Stabilish (adequade)
time limits and outcomes.
- Prioritizing: Arrange the goals in order of priority. No dual tasking. Work
on the highest priority goal until its done or you have temporarily exhausted
the resources to achieve it.
- Planning: Gather the necessary material before starting. Break tasks in
smaller handable parts. If you cant concentrate, set up a good place to work,
without distractions, get away from your cellphone and internet.
- Time analysis: Take a look in your logs. Look out for the trinity.

Some thoughts on time management

A day has 24h, lets analyse them. 8 straight hours are reserved for sleep, no
discussion there, you shouldn't sleep more or less. You should have 3 complete
meals a day: breakfast, lunch and dinner, one hour each. For a healthy routine
1 hour must be reserved to physical activities.
With that said, we are left with 12 hours that should be divided in work, life
stu and recreation in three periods: morning, afternoon and night, lets talk
about them:

Morning
Each one can modify this according to his/her schedule, we are gonna go with
7am as wake up time. You got 1 hour to have breakfast, as you just gotta up
you should work, no need for recreation and you shouldnt waste rested time
in mundane tasks. Say you like to have lunch early, 11am. You have six 30
minutes periods till there, put it to work.
A alternative cenario would be waking up earlier, that is recomended as mor-
nings are the most productive time of the day, the challenge on that is actualy
being able to wake up, in the routine presented before you would stand up at
7am, thats already dicult for most people, but if you wake up 6am you would
gain a extra 2 periods to work in the most ecient turn of the day. So, its
highly recommended but we know its not for everyone.

1
Afternoon
This is not the most awesome time to work, but you can be productive at it,
here are some tips: Dont eat too much at launch, drink black coee, dont leave
the most complex work to this time, average complexity is ok. In this case, the
afternoon starts at 12:01 pm and goes till 5pm.

Night
Goes from 6pm to 10pmm than its sleep time. You wont be able to accomplish
alot at this turn, leave it for recreation and life necessities like grocery shopping
and stu like that. Reading and maybe play a instrument. Nights are not the
time for serious bussiness.

Classication of Tasks
A task should be classied according to the following criteria:
Due time

Complexity

Volume

This can be summarized in the following equations:

(i)H
h(i) = N
P
(i)
i=1

C(i) + V (i)
where (i) = , H is the total amount of time avaiable, N the num-
P (i)
ber of tasks and C(i), V (i), P (i) the complexity, volume and due time measured
from 1 to 10. Example:

a) Consider H = 12h and the following tasks:

C V P h
Task 1 10 10 21 0,9524 3,8709
Task 2 3 1 2 2 8.129

b) Consider H = 12h and the following tasks:

C V P h
Task 1 10 10 21 0,9524 2.8916
Task 2 3 1 2 2 6,0723
Task 3 5 5 10 2 3,0361

2
Scraps of time
Analysing the example above we see scraps of time in the form of decimals,
rounding is a possibility but as you can observe they always some up to 1 hour.
You can round up it or round down and take this extra hour for emergency.

Routine Example
Suppose its tuesday and we have the tasks from example b). In the morning
the most urgent and complex tasks must be tacked, so:

Tabela 1: Morning
SEG TER QUA QUI SEX SAB DOM
08:00 PRED TASK2 QUA QUI SEX SAB DOM
08:30 PRED TASK2 QUA QUI SEX SAB DOM
09:00 PRED TASK2 QUA QUI SEX SAB DOM
09:30 PRED TASK2 QUA QUI SEX SAB DOM
10:00 PRED TASK2 QUA QUI SEX SAB DOM
10:30 PRED TASK2 QUA QUI SEX SAB DOM

Since its very urgent, we'll keep working more 3h on that in the afternoon, the
rest of it will be used for Task 1, since its more complex then task 3.

Tabela 2: Afternoon
SEG TER QUA QUI SEX SAB DOM
12:00 PRED TASK2 QUA QUI SEX SAB DOM
12:30 PRED TASK2 QUA QUI SEX SAB DOM
13:00 PRED TASK2 QUA QUI SEX SAB DOM
13:30 PRED TASK2 QUA QUI SEX SAB DOM
14:00 PRED TASK2 QUA QUI SEX SAB DOM
14:30 PRED TASK2 QUA QUI SEX SAB DOM
15:00 PRED TASK1 QUA QUI SEX SAB DOM
15:30 PRED TASK1 QUA QUI SEX SAB DOM
16:00 PRED TASK1 QUA QUI SEX SAB DOM
16:30 PRED TASK1 QUA QUI SEX SAB DOM

The problem with this approach is the daily alocation of tasks, one could simply
choose to not work on something in a day, so it makes more sense working weekly
organization.

0.1 Application in my routine

First step is to organize all the tasks: