Don't you often wish you had a 26-hour day to get more accomplished? I do.

My clients often express frustration about their tendencies to procrastinate and waste time. So, together, we brainstorm ways to complete tasks that might match their preferred working styles, and then they go away and practice for a week or two. Sometimes the new techniques click right away --- more often, it takes quite a bit of experimentation to find a work method that really suits each of them.

I'm always on the lookout for different ways to use time more effectively, so I enjoyed coming across this blog post today about the The Power of 48 Minutes.  In it, blogger John Richardson describes a technique of setting a timer (he gets fancy and recommends an on-line timer, but I think a good old kitchen timer works as well) for 48 minutes, focusing intently on the task at hand without permitting interruptions, and then taking the last 12 minutes of the hour to take any kind of break you want - finish that Soduku, Sunday crossword puzzle, answer e-mails, get a cup of coffee etc.

Curiously, I had suggested something similar to many clients but I'd settled arbitrarily on 45 minutes of work followed by 15 minutes of self-care, reading e-mails (and valuable blog posts like this <smile>) or just goofing off! This method yields an extra 3 minutes an hour which I am sure adds up over time. So I defer to the power of 48 instead, and plan to try this technique for at least a week. I'll let you know how I go!

If any of you have good suggestions for managing time, I'd love to  hear them. Just post your reply by clicking on the blue link at the top of this post.