Let’s tackle time waste due to technology with the help of technology itself this year!

By Eng. Pavithra Abhayawardana

Getting work done has become harder than ever. We have so many on our plates.

When you pick up that boring report, you think of the recently changed profile picture on Facebook. “Just have a peep and see how many likes are there” your wandering mind whispers and you eagerly obey. You lift your head after an hour or so your head swarming with the videos, photos, updates, and news you have seen in the Facebook newsfeed. Your report lies forgotten and you leave it for another time.

I think this story is familiar to many of us. We have so many things to do. We balance careers, postgraduate education, memberships of professional organizations, raise good kids, take care of elderly parents, construct houses, manage part-time businesses and god knows what. Though technology assists us in balancing most of the time, it can also steal our time under our nose.

Luckily, there are apps and techniques available which save these valuable 5, 10-minute slots and let us invest them in productive work.

Pomodoro Technique is one. Simply put, it is putting a timer on and dedicating your focus to only one task. After the Pomodoro, you are rewarded with a 5-minute break. If you want to browse social media, now you have time. Then again, Pomodoro-break-Pomodoro-break, until the task at hand is done and dusted.

Many apps are very useful for this technique like Forest, Study App. The apps are free and very user friendly.

In Forest, a tree grows while you work and you have to kill the tree if you want to use your phone. At the end of the day, you can observe the forest you have grown by working.

Study App, which is most suitable for my female colleagues, contains a Bunny Rabbit who studies with you. By the time you spend focused, you earn gold coins which can be used to buy trinkets for our Bunny. Oh, we can give him a name, and this darling start crying when we do not study for prolonged periods. Believe me, you become motivated to work.

Social Media usually saps our time making it slip through our fingers. These Apps aid us to collect the teeny tiny 10–15-minute packets and use them for something worthwhile.

The New Year has just passed, we still have our list of resolutions somewhere. Let’s tackle them with the aid of technology. Let’s use that Pomodoros to help us tackle our resolutions.

Eng. Pavithra Abhayawardana
AM IESL, BSc (Hons), MSc (IWRM)