I have been experimenting with a new way of getting more done.

My life is a busy one. I have 4 children, the youngest is 8 months and the oldest is 10. I run The Business Bakery, I’m on a few boards, I write columns, I give talks, I run strategic planning workshops, etc etc. And I’m no wonder woman. A few things fall through the cracks. Usually the important but not urgent stuff.

Looming rather large in that category right now is the content for the Zest part of this website. It’s been on the go for ages and I’m the bottle neck letting the side down

So I was excited recently to read a suggestion by Tony Schwartz of The Energy Project (theenergyproject.com) called the 90 minute plan.

I’ve been doing the 90 minute plan for a couple of weeks (not that long, I know) and it’s really working for me so I thought I’d share it.

The way to do it is this:

• start the night before by deciding what important work you want to do the next day (important in my world means building the business rather than replying to email)
• decide at what time the next day you will start working on the project
• at the appointed time turn off all email, phone etc devices, set your stop watch for 90 mins and get started
• you are not allowed to stop during the 90 mins
• you are not allowed to go over the 90 mins (apparently 90 mins is the optimal human limit for focusing)

I have decided to ‘find’ ten 90 minute sessions a week. That sounds easy but it’s really not! So far I have two sessions each during the day on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and evening sessions on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night.

That’s 900 minutes - 15 hours. Doesn’t sound a lot but I now realise, in terms of concentrated focused time, it’s way more than I was doing! Armed with my new tool I‘m hoping the Beta version of Zest will be open by 1 Jan 2012.....

Have you tried this? What do you do to find really ‘good’ work time?