Time eaters

If everything seems not to be so scary and there are only sunbeams and a rainbow around, use the "Timing" technique. As soon as the hair stands on end, make a counterattack.

Uncontrolled chronophages

Uncontrolled time eaters appear when there's conflict of two or more people's interests. And there's what we have. "Mr Smith is going to be late." "It's a 20 minute break." "There's traffic jam in the street."

These chronophages include:

• traffic jams;
• waiting in a reception room;
• waiting in lines;
• waiting for a person being late for a meeting;
• power outage.

To deal with them, you need to arm yourself. Create some lists in SingularityApp:

It's a good idea to take your e-book as a weapon against the chronophages. Of course, it should be a book that you have desired to read for a long time, and not just a random selection. Look through your list of books in Check mode regularly, and upload them to an e-book.

Tag all things that require clarification and approval with #call. When there's a traffic jam, you can open this list and use the time to your advantage.

It is also helpful to have a list of issues for thinking over in your planner, so that it will be a focused and effective process and not just wasting your time.

Controlled chronophages

Greetings to Parkinson, who proved that if someone comes to visit us in 15 minutes, the apartment cleaning will take just 15 minutes. And if nobody comes, it will last all day.

Controlled chronophage can also include:

• Computer games;
• Social networks;
• Email check;
• Web surfing;
• Phone calls;
• Any procrastination.

Everything becomes complicated when we have an uncontrolled chronophage (the computer restarts after installing the software), then we switch to a controlled one (we surf social networks). And when we stop, we realize that not 5 but 40 minutes have passed.

We can win controlled chronophages only by deadlines. Reduce your time for cleaning, cooking, getting dressed, shopping, social networks and similar time absorbers. Use Pomodoro to have 40 minutes of concentrated work rather than to do the same amount of work for 3 hours. Make some efforts, and controlled chronophages will disappear from your life.