As a software developer, there are days where my concentration is quite simply, useless. There can be no doubts that sitting down in front of a computer day upon day can get a little weary, and tiredness or your environment can make this even worse.

At times, I’d find myself flipping between lots of different things - programming, email, browsing the web, and not really spending enough time doing something constructive. And when I started working from home the problem could potentially become even worse, because there was no-one looking over my shoulder and ensuring I was working!

My first attempt at sorting this out was something I called “microtasks”, but don’t let the catchy name fool you as this is nothing particularly innovative. I simply identified a small period of time, maybe an hour or so, and set out a small number of tasks I wanted to achieve in that time. There were two advantages of this: firstly, I actually did some work! Secondly, and more importantly, I’d focused my mind for an hour and become productive. I’d managed to shut off distractions and concentrate on my microtasks.

There was no doubt that this worked for those few occasions when I found myself unable to concentrate. But doing this at work led me to realise something more fundamental about the way I needed to structure my day.

If I wanted to be consistently productive, my brain needed to be focused on concrete tasks at fixed times in the day. Rather than sitting down to work and having a big cloud in my head which represents what I have to do in the day, I need to plan each hour out an map real tasks to actual time.

I’m fully aware that this no revelation - I am not coming up with some genius new idea. But what I am trying to highlight that although you may be full aware of the tasks facing you during the day, and you may have plenty of time to do them, it could help you to be a little more explicit in the way you’re going to use your time.