Time and Value are the determinants of billing for professional accounting, tax and auditing work and so tools that help allocate time wisely are often used in the profession. The first exposure to these tools for me came in the 70’s in a seminar given by a great presenter demonstrating his system of planning, prioritizing and recording important items in a schedule. It changed my view of the use of time and was very helpful. Later, other systems came to the fore and I examined them. The tool in vogue at the beginning was the DayTimer, a convenient sized notebook with pre-printed pages. Then others expanded the ideas creating the Franklin Planner then the Franklin-Covey system, each one seeming to add complications such as choices of sizes and times covered such as daily, weekly, monthly, etc. They were well publicized and become popular and relatively more expensive. Over those years, after trying many of the “improvements” I found the systems eventually were put aside, probably for the most part because of the extra “time” necessary to follow the systems.
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| Probably My Last Franklin-Covey Organizer (Classic Size) |
When there are things that need to be done that involve mental engagement such as accounting, writing and blogging, etc. It is good to have a plan and approach to avoid the discouragement of procrastination. I have run across a simple approach that is working well for me now. It still requires some daily organization time but gives you a way to create and track packets of time which the creator calls pomodoros. Since the use of this system does not require you to go to a seminar, buy a planner or even pay for the information, it is easy to get started using it. If it might be useful to you, go to the website and learn more about it. You can google the name, Pomodoro or just go here: http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/ and see for yourself. By the way, pomodoro is the Italian word for tomato which is the shape of the timer the author, Francesco Cirillo, used when he created this approach to help him study in college.
For your curiosity this blog post took one pomodoro to create and post. Unfortunately, we have not been able to find a tomato shaped timer here in Brazil so I’m using an inexpensive digital one. You can see here my second day using the new system. I created this form on the computer and will print them as needed.
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| September 9, 2011 |
I've been an unofficial tomato timer person for years, as my children will attest. It's the only way I stayed sane while keeping up with our seven children's needs and schedules. I'd even set my timer and leave a note by it to remind me why the timer was set and it was usually to remind me to set it again for another hour and go about what I was working on without fear because I knew the timer would let me know when it was time to leave to pick up or do something. I've seen Jim accomplish many "procrastinated" on projects, in short order, since he started doing his "pomodoro techniques".
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