Workalone UK Sometimes, when you work alone, you need a little help

While looking at my relentless and un-diminishing task list this morning and wondering how I could be better organised, I hit upon a new plan.

Most of what I do falls into one of four 'areas of focus'

• Xebit Ltd
• Boldfish
• Future
• Domestic

The first two are obvious business areas and the last anything that isn't income generation but needs doing. Future is for stuff like planning, learning and health and fitness.

Having worked that out, I realised that I'm not allocating my time fairly between them - more often than not I'm forced by circumstance to spend too long on one or the other areas.

my remedy?

to create an 'area of focus' cycle in my calendar, where each week one of the areas takes priority.

Obvious emergencies will be dealt with (as distractions) but now I know what I should be going back to when I've dealt with the emergency.

It also means that I can excuse myself for procrastination on domestic stuff - "oh, I'm focussing on that next week..." I feel less stressed already.

I think the split is reasonable - 2 weeks on income generation, one on domestic (includes admin) and one looking forward, learning and thinking about exercise. I did think about a shorter time-scale (splitting the day or splitting the week, but the two income generators generally require longer timescales to 'get into the flow' Maybe over time it might be three day chunks, but for now I'm going for weekly...