With the rise of remote work, managing your time and calendar has become more important than ever. Without the structure of a traditional office environment, it can be easy to lose track of deadlines, appointments, and daily tasks. Whether you’re working from home or on the road, organising your time and calendar is crucial for staying productive and avoiding burnout. In this topic, we’ll explore strategies and tools you can use to manage your time and calendar effectively in a remote setup. We’d like to offer a few simple strategies to begin hyperfocusing on your intentions. These will become infinitely more powerful as you learn to tame distractions in advance.
Starting a hyperfocus ritual
Establish a time limit
- Start by feeling out how long you want to hyperfocus. Open a dialogue with yourself about any resistance you might feel toward this mode of focusing, particularly if you’re about to undertake a difficult, frustrating, or unstructured task.
- This is something that you can train! It’s incredibly rewarding to experience your hyperfocus time limit increase over time. Push yourself, but not too hard. Begin with 5 minute blocks of time, punctuated by a 5 to 10 minute distraction break. Over time, work your way up to 60 minutes, or even longer. You’ll soon become accustomed to working with fewer distractions.
Anticipate obstacles ahead of time
- If you know you have a busy few days coming up, schedule your dedicated hyperfocus periods at the beginning of the week. This way you make sure to carve out time to hyperfocus, instead of getting swept up in last-minute tasks and putting out proverbial fires.
- Such planning lets your coworkers know not to book you during these times, and also reminds you when you are committed to focusing. During busy weeks, a few minutes of planning can save hours of wasted productivity.
Set a timer
- You can use your phone, which might sound ironic, given the distractions it can bring.
- If these phone distractions will cause a focus black hole, either put it on airplane mode or use a watch or other timer.