How I’ve Increased my Productivity Tremendously this Month

Hey everyone! I hope you had a lovely weekend. Today I want to share one single technique that’s helped me to increase my productivity tremendously this month.

I’ve been able to get stuff done, stay focused, and maximize my time and my energy using this method. — It’s the Pomodoro Method.

Have you ever seen one of these guys? A tomato timer, right? But there’s a method to it — and I’m actually using it right now to write this post.  It’s completely free (or at least it can be,) and I just love it.

If you are an online fitness professional, or you do any kind of work and want to maximize your productivity, this will help you.

Before we jump in, I want to caveat this with the following — this method will only work if you have a task and know how to break down your work into sub-tasks. And if you’re an entrepreneur, that’s a critical skill to have anyhow. So if you have a project or something that you’re working on that doesn’t necessarily have a deadline, you need to be able to break that up into “mini-deadlines” to do beforehand — that’s the first step.

You all know I am a huge fan of “power hours”. Basically, I set the timer for an hour and get as much stuff done as possible. They’re great and used to help me boost my productivity… but the hour was a little too lengthy, and left it open to too much interpretation.

I would get some stuff done, sure,  but then I would also check my email and then check Facebook, etc.

Pomodoro Method

So my husband introduced this Pomodoro method to me, and I’ve been telling everyone about it. It’s basically a 25-minute ticking timer. It has an audible noise for the timer so you can hear it ticking away, which exudes a sense of urgency.

Plus, it’s also only 25 minutes, so there’s enough time to complete a task – or atleast a chunk of it – but not enough time to play around. I have found as long as I have my to-do’s written down on my “Today’s Plan of Attack” to-do list, which is something else that makes me so much more productive, I can quickly move from one task to another.

I’m a multi-tasker at heart, so I really need to force myself to focus, and having that 25 minute timer totally does it for me. I choose one task from this list, set the timer, and I hear it going in the background, and I am not distracted! I can write a client’s training plan, or respond to emails, or update a client’s nutrition plan, without any distractions, and it has been a life saver.

I’d never heard about it before, but the Pomodoro Method developed from the little kitchen timer many of us have sitting next to our ovens, and can be set for up to 25 minutes. Basically the Pomodoro Method is seeing how many “pomodoros” you need to complete a task.

For example, every week I go in and update the programs for every single one of my VIP online training clients. At around 15-20 clients, this is a pretty time-intensive task. However, being laser-focused and using the pomodoro method, I’m able to complete this task in 6 pomodoros, if I really buckle down and focus.

There’s a whole book to it, and you can actually buy a physical pomodoro timer, but I’ve found that just following the sequencing method has worked well for me. And, since I’m not interested in accumulating more things, I just use this online pomodoro timer. 

How it Works

The method is 25 minutes on, and then you get a 5 minute rest, and so that’s when I’ll go check e-mail, or check Facebook, or go to the bathroom. And then it’s 25 minutes back on, 5 minutes rest, another 25 minutes on, and then a 20 minute rest; so it’s 3 work cycles and then you get a longer rest. That’s when I’ll usually go out and take a quick walk, grab the mail from the mailbox, or something like that.

This has truly helped me so much in the realm of productivity. Just hearing that ticking in the background gives me a sense of urgency to get things done. Now I know that building a client’s nutrition plan from scratch — going through their consultation, building their spreadsheet, building their parameters — takes a certain number of Pomodoros. It’s really kind of cool for planning in the future, too. I know if I have a new online nutrition coaching client starting next week, I know I have to plan out 7:00-10:00am to really focus and really get their stuff done. The same thing applies to blog post, I know it takes me about “X” amount of Pomodoros.

I just wanted to share this simple method with you guys, I hope you find it as helpful as I have! It’s free, it’s awesome, and it’s really helping me, so let me know if you try it out and if it helps your productivity! 

What methods do you use in order for increased productivity?