- Why is time management important?
- How to manage time?
- Time Management Techniques
- All of this from a Developer’s Perspective
- The End?
- References
Why is time management important?
There are numerous reasons to manage time, but I’ll list just some of the main ones:
- Time and Quality of life: Time is one of the most valuable resources we have, and its management can directly impact our quality of life. Managing time efficiently allows us to carry out our daily activities, achieve our goals, and have moments for leisure and rest.
- Productivity: Efficient time management increases our productivity and efficiency in the tasks we perform. This allows us to accomplish more tasks in less time, which gives us more free time to do other things.
- Balance: Efficient time management allows us to maintain a balanced life, avoid stress, and overload of activities. This helps us maintain physical and mental health, which is essential for our well-being.
- Motivation: When we are motivated and engaged with the tasks we are performing, it’s easier to maintain focus and concentration, which increases our productivity and efficiency. On the other hand, when we are demotivated and uninterested in tasks, it’s easier to get distracted and waste time with less important activities.
Among many other reasons, in summary, there’s a phrase I like to reference when the subject is time management:
You cannot manage what you cannot measure, you cannot measure what you cannot define, you cannot define what you do not understand, and there is no success in what you do not manage.
— William Edwards Deming
How to manage time?
Before getting into this topic, which is the most interesting one I’ll talk about here, it’s important to understand that time management involves different dimensions, including mental, physiological, and technical aspects.
Mental Dimension
In the mental dimension, it’s important to manage our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors so that we can maintain focus and concentration on the activities we are performing.
We must understand the value of time and be motivated to make the most of it. Often, it’s easy to lose sight of the value of time and fall into the trap of thinking that there will always be more time in the future to do the things we need to do.
Physiological Dimension
The physiological dimension relates to our body and its limits. Like everything in life, we have an optimal point of productivity, which is the point where we can perform tasks efficiently and with quality. If we exceed this point, we may end up harming our physical and mental health.
To ensure that your body is always close to the optimal productivity point, there are 3 mechanisms to take greater care of:
Sleep-Wake: Sleep is one of the main regulatory mechanisms of the body. Sleeping too little or too much impairs your performance and health. Have a time to sleep and a time to wake up, sleep enough to feel rested and ready to carry out daily activities.
Hunger-digestion: The body needs energy to function. If you do not eat properly, your body will not have energy to carry out daily activities. Additionally, eating too much can also impair your performance, as the body will spend energy digesting food, which can cause drowsiness and fatigue. You always need to be aware of your energy demand; a good tip that ties into the next mechanism is to start doing physical exercises.
Stress x Relaxation: Everything is dynamic, and the body is no different. You need moments of relaxation so that your body can recover from the stress caused by daily activities. It’s almost like a seesaw where when you stress your body mentally too much, physical stress is necessary so that your body can recover, hence the importance of physical exercise.
Technical Dimension
The technical dimension encompasses the tools and techniques used to manage time efficiently. It’s important to learn to use the right tools and apply techniques that are effective for our work profile.
Time Management Techniques
There are several techniques that can be applied in time management. Some of the most popular are:
Weekly Planning
Weekly planning is one of the simplest and most effective techniques for managing time. The idea is to plan the activities that will be carried out during the week, defining which tasks will be performed on each day of the week.
It’s important to note that weekly planning should not be too detailed, as this can cause anxiety and stress. The ideal is to define only the most important activities and leave the rest to be defined on a day-to-day basis. Additionally, there is a great danger of falling into the Planning Fallacy.
Planning Fallacy: The planning fallacy is a phenomenon that occurs when people overestimate their ability to perform tasks in a given period of time. To avoid this trap, it’s important to be realistic and consider unforeseen events that may arise during the day. Therefore, it’s important to leave free time for unforeseen and unplanned activities in weekly planning.
Planning by Objectives
This technique is widely used in companies to define the objectives and goals that will be achieved in a certain period of time. The idea is to define an objective and the goals that will be carried out to achieve this objective.
And remembering that an objective is different from a goal, an objective is what you want to achieve, and a goal is what you will do to achieve this objective. For example, if you want to lose weight, your objective is to lose weight, and your goal is to exercise and eat healthily.
Creating objectives and goals is important to maintain focus and concentration on the activities we are performing. Additionally, it’s important to define goals that are realistic and achievable, as this increases motivation and productivity. Moreover, the creation of KPIs is a great way to measure the progress and efficiency of activities carried out. I recommend reading: KPIs: What they are and how to define your company’s performance indicators
Pomodoro
Probably the most well-known technique when it comes to time management, the Pomodoro is a simple and effective technique to increase productivity and efficiency in the tasks performed. The idea is to divide time into blocks of 25 minutes, separated by breaks of 5 minutes. During each time block, the goal is to focus on a single task and avoid distractions.
Bringing this into the context of software development, it is very common that during the development of a feature, the developer ends up getting distracted by other things, such as responding to messages on Slack, reading emails, etc. This can cause delays in the development of the feature and harm the developer’s productivity.
The Pomodoro helps to avoid these distractions, as the developer knows that they will have only 25 minutes to work on the feature and cannot be distracted by other things during this period of time. Additionally, the Pomodoro also helps to maintain focus and concentration, which increases productivity and efficiency in the tasks performed.
Why 25 minutes? Why does Pomodoro work?
There are 4 principles followed by the Pomodoro technique that make it work:
Stress x Relaxation: Respecting the physiological dimension of time management, by finding a good time in which you can maintain focus and concentration, you can work more efficiently and productively. The time of 25 minutes is a good time for most people, but you can test other times and see which works best for you.
Against Multitasking: We know from A to Z that it’s not worth trying to do several things at the same time, as this will only make us more tired and less productive. Therefore, the Pomodoro helps to avoid multitasking. If you have a task to be performed, dedicate 25 minutes to it and it alone.
Set-up Time: Set-up time is the time we take to start doing a task. By dedicating to only one task at a time, you minimize set-up time and can be more productive.
Batch Lots: Principle of Production Engineering, which says that the production of batch lots is more efficient than the production of unit lots. This means that during the Pomodoro, you will be accumulating tasks to be performed in the 5-minute break or in the next Pomodoro, such as responding to people on Slack, reading emails, etc.
In addition to these 4 principles, there are two theories that explain why the Pomodoro works:
Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” By stipulating a time to perform a task, your brain unconsciously will strive to perform the task within the stipulated time. How many tasks in your life do you know you can do in minutes but don’t do because there is no deadline for them? Now reflect on how many tasks that seemed very complex and that you thought would take hours to perform, but that you managed to perform before the stipulated time simply because you had a deadline for them.
Pareto Principle: “80% of your results only depend on 20% of your effort.” To understand this principle applied to the Pomodoro, let’s suppose we have a test to be done on day x (deadline), you know you have 5 days to study for this test, you know that studying a little of the content of the test every day until the day of the test (20% of the content per day for 5 days) is much more efficient than studying all the content of the test the day before the test. This happens because your brain will be working on the problem during the 5 days, even if you are not studying, and when you go into action, you will be more prepared to solve the problem. Now from the Pomodoro perspective, this applies with the 25min Pomodoro lots, by dividing the task you exert less effort and obtain more results.
Eisenhower Matrix
When everything is chaotic and you don’t know where to start, the Eisenhower Matrix can help you prioritize tasks and organize your day. The idea is to divide tasks into 4 quadrants, according to the importance and urgency of each task.
- Important and Urgent: Tasks that need to be performed immediately.
- Important and Not Urgent: Tasks that need to be performed, but don’t need to be performed immediately.
- Not Important and Urgent: Tasks that need to be performed immediately, but are not important.
- Not Important and Not Urgent: Tasks that don’t need to be performed immediately and are not important.
It is extremely important to know how to say no to tasks that are not important and not urgent, as this will help you maintain focus on tasks that really matter.
All of this from a Developer’s Perspective
Now that we’ve seen some time management techniques, let’s see how we can apply them in practice to manage time efficiently.
I, you, and most developers I know, have a very similar work routine, which consists of meetings, code, and review. How can we apply time management techniques in this context?
Let’s start with the theoretical part, which is the question of the mental and physical dimension.
- Mental Dimension: It’s important to be motivated to be able to perform daily tasks. For this, you must have a clear and well-defined objective: why are you developing features, participating in meetings, doing reviews? Define your Objective and what your goals will be to achieve this objective. With this done, you will have greater engagement with daily tasks.
- Physical Dimension: It’s no use being motivated if you are tired, hungry, thirsty, etc. Respect your lunch time, meet your body’s energy demand, do physical exercises, etc. Your body is also a machine and needs maintenance.
Now let’s go to the practical part, which is the question of time management techniques.
We have already used a technique in the theoretical part, which was Planning by Objectives creating our KPIs and goals, but here we will leave the macro view and go to the micro view, which is the day-to-day.
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Weekly planning: You probably have a schedule with all your meetings, daily, weekly, planning, retrospective, whatever the development rhythm adopted in your company, create the habit of planning your week in advance. If you have goal x for the week, use the principles learned here to decide which times you will dedicate to it. Attention, don’t forget to leave some free time for unforeseen and unplanned activities in weekly planning, as they will happen.
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Eisenhower Matrix: If you have conflicting tasks due to an unforeseen event or any other setback, use the Eisenhower Matrix to prioritize tasks and organize your day.
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Pomodoro: I’ve talked a lot about Pomodoro, but let’s look at my perspective, how do I do it? I use lots of 25 minutes / 5 minutes for tasks that I have a certain notion of what I should do, and for tasks that I don’t even know where to start, I first create a 30-minute Pomodoro to learn about the topic and decide if I can do it alone or will need support from someone.
The End?
There are many other techniques I didn’t mention here that can help, such as S.M.A.R.T goals and OKRs, but I believe that the techniques I mentioned here are the most important and can be applied in practice. It’s important to remember that everything listed here is a process of continuous improvement, adapt and find what works best for you.
References
- Course - Time Management: how to increase your productivity
- Wikipedia - Pomodoro Technique
- Wikipedia - Time management
I hope you enjoyed the article and that it can help you manage your time efficiently. If you have any questions or suggestions, leave a comment below or contact me through LinkedIn.