I don’t normally email about time management. but I’ve found a piece of inexpensive software that’s SO good I had to tell you about it.
I’ve been using The Action Machine for a few weeks now, and it’s boosted my productivity by what I can only guess is hundreds of percent.
How it works is incredibly simple.
You give it a list of things you want to accomplish today, set a deadline for each task (rounded up to the nearest 15 minutes). Then it displays those tasks all on a screen with a timer underneath each one.
Then all you do is pick a task, start the timer and get working in it. You can click to pause the task timer, but I’ve found the best way to use it is to keep working on each task, relentlessly, until you finish it.
And when the task timer beeps to say the time’s up… that’s it. You don’t do any more on that task.
Now the relentless focus — and the fact you’re ‘not allowed’ to spend any more time on that specific task — is a powerful way of making sure you don’t fall foul of Parkinson’s Law, which states “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
In other words the more time you have available to do something, the longer that task takes to complete. I find that a lot — which is why for me The Action Machine has made such a big difference to the way I work.
It’s incredibly simple, seriously effective software. I love it.
Click here to read more about how it works.
A lot of modern office and productivity software is suffering from ‘feature bloat’… where developers throw in lots of features you don’t need and never use so they can put a higher price tag on it. The Action Machine doesn’t suffer any of that. It does one thing, and one thing very well.
Check it out and see what a difference it can make to your day too!
-Ed.
