Money can be earned, knowledge obtained, but time has the property of only decreasing. And I think this is one of the most important resources that we need to learn how to manage and spend wisely. I’ll say banality, today when every day an avalanche of the information flow falls upon us all, it’s very hard not to get into the swamp of procrastination. I do not always manage my time efficiently, but as Jack Nicholson said in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – “at least I tried”, in my case at least I keep trying?. I want to share with you my 3 favorite tools for time and project management. Houston web design

1. Xmind Mindmaps

I love love love this tool. Let’s say you have only an idea so far. Then you list general steps on how to make it true. Then each step may have tentacles with what exact tasks you should complete and what deadlines it may have. For example, I want to have a successful Digital Agency in Houston. Then I start thinking about how this process may look – for example – register a company (LLC or Sole proprietorship), – 100% women-owned business (how to get it and what benefits it gives), create a website (deadline), promote a website (SEO, Google Adwords, Referrals) and etc. Thus, the map gives me a general vision of the picture as a whole. Next, I move to Trello. Houston web design

2. Trello

We all know this App. You can create a project and share it with your team. It’s very convenient and easy to use, you can install it on your phone too. So what exactly do I do here, right after Xmind. And if the last one is like a road map, Trello is more like a grocery shopping list – you have a task, you do and cross it off. Houston web design

I create a project => Add general tasks (SEO for example) => in each task I write a checklist of specific steps to complete it (Add Sitemap to a website, set robots.txt, Set-up CDN for speed, Get Backlinks, Write a list of interesting topics for articles and so on). When the step is completed, I mark the checklist and this item is crossed out. The finished task goes into the done section. It’s pretty nice to look at the completed project and which path preceded it. How often do we tend to forget about our achievements?  Houston web design

3. Pomodoro

And my cherry on top is Pomodoro. It’s very small and has light software.

Once, I passed the test for ADHD, and to 9 of 10 questions, I answered: “Yes” ?. Perhaps it is true, or maybe it’s just self-hypnosis (as in the cases when we read our horoscope) or maybe when you have small children, a desire to promote your business, deepen your hobbies,  develop yourself mentally and plus need of taking care of your family routine life like cooking, laundry, grocery shopping and etc. it cannot be otherwise than just crazy difficult to focus on any one thing while being taken by this life centrifuge ??. So, that’s why I’m using all of this ☝?. Houston web design

It was a lyrical digression, and now let’s come back to the point.

The application is very simple, it acts as a timer. The bottom line is that you turn on the timer, it lasts 25 minutes, then a break of 5 minutes, and again you can turn it on. This means that for 25 minutes you devote your attention only to the task you are working on, without being distracted by Instagram, Facebook, chats with friends. You can answer a call or message during your 5-minutes break. At the end of the day, you can proudly look at the number of tomatoes “eaten”. Houston web design

And that’s it.

You should be careful with the number of applications for time management, there is a bunch of them and you can get bogged down just in the planning itself. For example, there is the Eisenhower matrix application, which personally didn’t suit me personally. In it, you divide tasks into urgent important, non-urgent important, unimportant non-urgent, and urgent unimportant. Honestly speaking, dividing tasks into categories (especially for me as Libra) made me think for a long time about how really urgent the task and whether it is important or not. ))) Houston web design

And I have one bonus method for those who prefer paper books instead of electronic 🙂 Houston web design

You buy a big white paper poster in Walmart and draw 7 columns. Then you draw rows that are going to split your day into periods, for example by hours from 7 am to 12 am or by time frames from 9 am to noon, 12 pm – 3 pm, 3 pm – 6 pm, etc. Next, you take memo stickers and write down all tasks that you need to complete for the upcoming week. And spread it out all over the board for the whole week. It’s very important to plan time for your week in advance, because then if you have a lot of tasks you won’t be perplexed by..oh what should I do first and how it usually happens eventually you do nothing. When you complete the task you don’t throw it away, you put it in a little basket or in a paper file and you will see how it gets thicker to the end of the week and how your wall planner gets cleaner. I really loved this method, but now I prefer to keep everything on my mac and phone and don’t use paper in order to have less stuff surrounding me.

I hope it was useful and interesting for you. Share with us what tools or tricks you use for your time management. ❤️