Whenever you work, chances are you need to concentrate to get the job done as best as possible. However our minds aren’t really tuned to be able to concentrate on one thing for hours on end, especially if its something monotonous and boring. If you love your job or hate it, use a work - rest rule to make yourself more productive and happier.

I often use a 60 -10 rule, which means is 60 minutes work, and 10 minutes of play or rest. I mainly devised this to keep my head, eyes and back from overstress, but it has a great psychological effect on me as well. I love what I do, but I look forward to the next 10 minute break when I can stroll around, paly a round of solitaire, just lay on the bed, or whatever I want. If you hate your job you will feel better knowing you only have to work through the hour and you can rest a bit, taking something bad an hour at a time is better than a day at a time.

If you work in front of a computer all day this will also have some health benefits, especially if you use the time to get away from your monitor. Stand up, do some exercise, walk around, stretch, do whatever you need to feel better, rest and get ready for the next hour.

I suggest creating your own rule, the one that works best for you, and also, not to be afraid of breaking it sometimes. Often I am very into something, and taking a 10 minute break would mean at least 30 minutes extra work, so it would be more productive to work 120 minutes and rest 20 just that once. You could also use a 90 -25 rule, or even a 90 - 90 rule, depending on how much you need to work, and how much rest you need to feel good.

You can extend this to the day level as well. Perhaps you hate taking breaks and would rather work 8 hours in one go, and having a long rest after that. In this case you could devise a 2 - 1 rule, where after every 2 days of work, you take 1 day off. This is of course only possible for those of you who work at home, but those of you who have an office job can utilize the hour based rule well.

Oh God, this is going to be a lecture isn’t it? Well, yes and no, you will see that this post is about being honest to yourself when setting up your own goals and projects, since without this you are doomed right from the beginning. Let’s take a look at a financial example which shows this in numbers.

I recently started some money management and I was faced with my credit card statemet. Now my credit card has an available balance of about $400, so I could write that I have $50 cash on me $300 in my savings account and $400 on my credit car, adding up to $750. This is technically correct, but the reality is very different, since my credit card is actually spent out, I have $400 left out of the original $1800. This means that I owe the bank $1400, and in reality my total is not $750, but -$950, a very different picure. This is a very obvious example, but small “white” lies in our every day life stop us from performing as we should because we cheat on ourselves.

If you know you’re a lazy type of guy for example that’s not a problem. The problem comes when you schedule too much work and you say “I’ll get it done somehow”, when it’s obvious you won’t because you’re a lazy type of guy. If schedule only what you can do you will be more efficient, productive and you won’t be in allthat much stress.

This is why it is vitally important to know your limits and not to lie to yourself. All you will accomplish is temporary, your problems will come back, since you are not solving them, merely hiding them. When scheduling, commiting, etc, always face the real situation and don’t hide behind numbers or half truths.

This post is actually an attempt to organize myself more than anybody else, but let me share what I propose to introduce into my own life, perhaps you will like it too. My problem is that I want to do too much, and I have too little time. This is an age old problem and I think I’ve found a quasi solution to it. The problem with large multiple projects is not so much that you don’t have enough time, but you need to divide your focus between them, and this division of labor if you will is the cause of much time wasiting.

The way I am trying to solve this is not to split up days into working on all of them, but to split my week up into days dedicated to one project. This creates some problems, but also solves a lot and problems created can be remedied, at least in my case.

Currently I can split my life into about 5 different large projects. These are Hack Your Day, Guest blogging, Code a Day (an upcomming css blog), my upcoming music project and Blogtastique. Ideally I would create a separate day for each of these projects, except for Blogtastique, which requires at least two. Since I can blog about things in advance it’s ok to separate only one day, even put two blogging projects on the same day, I can just schedule posts for a later date. This means I can spend the optimum amount of time on the most time consuming tasks, Blogtastique and my mystery musical project.

You can do the same thing I have done in your life. Identify your key projects and set up different days to work on them. If you have a day job you can still apply the same method to other tasks or hobbies you have. Separating projects like this helps you focus on one at a time, keeping a clear mind and you will be able to work much more productively overall.

The negative side is of course quite prominent with Blogtastique. Since I provide services, I can hardly keep a new client in the dark for 3 days. Even if my Blogtastique days are Tuesday and Thursday, this would still be an unacceptable time lag. So the question is, how much do I keep “out of touch” with a project on unspecified days?

This can be remedied quite easily actually. I have determined that the best course of action (for me) is to make emailing a global task, since that doesn’t take much time, and leave the actual work for scheduled days. So if a new client contacts me I talk through his order with him, and I notify him on which days I will be wrking on his order.

If you have multiple projects, but you can’t separate them like this, I still suggest some kind of barrier between them. Drink a cup of team between working on separate things, go for a walk, clear your mind and start each new project with a clear mind and you will be much more productive and effective!

In many cases in my own life I find that I am either productive or comfortable. By this I don’t mean that I have to sleep on the floor after a productive day, what I mean is that many times you need to trade your personal freedom to work productively according to GTD and other task management theories.

The reason is mostly scheduling. I have three projects and I could schedule each subtask for a day next week but I won’t. The reason for this is that if I don’t complete my schedule on a given day I’ll feel bad, and the whole project will suffer overall.

If you have projects which do not have a very strict deadline I would advise against scheduling them daily because it will cause you discomfort. Writing a to-do list for the week is fine, or doing 4 day to do list is perhaps even better, this way if you don’t complete a task you can bump it to next time.

The advantage of scheduling flexibly like this is that you can make use of your personal highs and lows. When you feel you don’t want to work just don’t, take the time to relax, and when you do feel like it, you will be able to complete twice as much.

The obvious drawback is that this method is not for those who can not discipline themselves. If you are looking for a cheap way to bump your tasks and not do anything then this is not for you, you will only get set back more.

I used to find myself so many times in situations where I needed to do a lot of work, but actually didn’t do anything because sorting out the initial chaos seemed so impossibly that I just pushed the whole load in front of me. Doing some scheduling works wonders if you have similar problems, just writing it down will clear you head and you will know what to do and when.

Keep in mind that the approach below works best when you need to sort out a lot of stuff in a short time, but I am finding it increasingly useful for my day to day stuff too. I use a 3 step process here’s how.

I create two lists and one table at the end. You could merge all these into just one table, but I find that having them separately helps, so you can view your tasks in context. As my first step, I jot down the projects I need to work on, usually in order of priority.

1. Write blog(s)
2. Create my main personal site
3. Record CD

After I’m done, I write down the sub-steps that need to be taken for each project. I try to get medium detail here, I don’t want to be to anal about it, this is just scheduling, not breaking down stuff into actions, like in GTD. For some reason I find it useful to group these by project, but not actually write down the project name. I think I like it more because the project names are five lines above and it just makes redundant information.

• Daily Hack Your Day Post
• Daily gHacks Post
• Make Use Of post twice a week
• Create a site template
• Install content management system
• Create all the content
• Record guitar tracks
• Sing the song
• Mix the songs
• Create album art

Now that I can see all my items, I create a table with the following properties. The first column contains the day of the week and the date. The next column contains the deadlines and the following ones the tasks. I also have some rules set up for my task columns. For example, I only allow myself two tasks a day (apart from blogging). This is most useful when you have many projects, you can restrict yourself to 2-3 for example. You can take a look at the table I made in the picture, it contains all the tasks and projects.

The reason I allow only 2 tasks per day is that this is for emergency work, when I need to go through things fast. I can’t have my mind wandering everywhere, I need to keep focused. I would limit it to 4-5 in a normal schedule and the table would probably be more elaborate.

I think you need to spend about 30 minutes on a fairly complicated table, but the clarity of thought and productivity it can give you will be worth it. You can also tweak and tune it any which way you like, I prefer to keep it as simple as possible.

When talking about task management and productivity on the web, I can only think of one to do list to rule them all. Remember The Milk has tons of features, it is fun to use and offers real collaborative power.

The heart of Remember The Milk is a structure that allows you to add a huge amount of data to each task. You can choose a location on a map, then group by locations, shown on the map, you can add dates, invite users, add tags, etc., etc.

The reason I find it very useful and flexible is the relaxed approach it takes. Don’t know what date your task is due? Simply type: “tomorrow”. Elegant, and simple. You can also input “the day after tomorrow” and “next Wednesday” for example.

You can apparently create unlimited lists, and easily copy items, copy lists, mark items done, and when an invited user marks an item done, it will show up done for you as well.

I just love this service, if you really need more and can’t decide, just look at the logo. How cute can you get?

Remember The Milk (found by myself)