Productivity and task management tools
An FP Explainer
Are you wanting more time in your day? Are you looking at your ‘To Do’ list and worried that you just aren’t getting through the tasks? Do you feel like there must be a better way?
There are many time management and productivity hacks aimed to help with this. We’ve outlined some of our favourites in this FP Explainer.
The Pomodoro Technique
Ever get distracted from work or try to break the back of a large task and find yourself staring off into space 50 minutes in? The Pomodoro Technique aims to help with overcoming this. It’s a time management method designed to improve focus, productivity and mental clarity.
Named after the Italian word for tomato (the pomodoro), and developed by the late Francesco Cirillo, the technique takes its name from a kitchen timer shaped as a tomato. Cirillo used the timer to set work into short and focused intervals, usually of 25 minutes, called pomodoros. Each of these intense sessions of work are followed by short breaks from five to 30 minutes.
The technique has the following steps:
- Choose a task.
- Set the timer (usually for 25 minutes).
- Progress the task.
- When the 25 minutes is up, take a short break of 5-10 minutes.
- Repeat steps two to four until you finish four pomodoros.
- After four pomodoros take a longer break of 20-30 minutes.
This structured cycle helps maintain concentration while reducing mental fatigue. Using this technique, you can plan out your ‘to do’ list in a day to think about the tasks you have coming up, sequence them and map them out into 25 minute blocks.
Eating the frog
Do you ever have that task that you just keep putting off? It might be a little trickier than other tasks and take a little longer to work through, so you avoid it. ‘Eating the frog’ aims to help to overcome this.
Brian Tracy’s book, ‘Eat that Frog’ outlines a technique that focuses on identifying the most difficult, important task or ‘the frog’ and tackling it before you move to other tasks.
The key steps in this technique are:
- Identify ‘the frog’, that is the most important and difficult task. Choose something you can complete in up to 4 hours and break a larger task down if you need to.
- Eat ‘the frog’ first by completing this task while you are at your most focused and before you start to get distracted by other smaller tasks.
- Prioritise the biggest ‘frog’ first.
- Plan the night before, by creating your list so you know what the plan is when you come in the next day.
It aims to help to overcome procrastination, alleviate anxiety and increase productivity by working through the trickiest task first.
The Eisenhower Matrix
When every task feels like they are snowballing and they were due yesterday, how do you even get started on what is the most critical task? This is where the Eisenhower matrix comes in. In a speech by President Eisenhower in the 1950s, he famously said ‘I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.’
The Eisenhower Matrix grew from this concept. The framework helps to clarify which tasks need to be prioritised based on urgency and importance. The matrix is divided into four quadrants.
The aim is to list tasks in four quadrants:
- Urgent and Important – Do now – Tasks with immediate deadlines or consequences that directly affect key outcomes and must be handled right away.
- Important but Not Urgent – Schedule – Activities that contribute to long-term goals, growth, or prevention and should be planned deliberately.
- Urgent but Not Important – Delegate – Time-sensitive tasks that create pressure but don’t require your specific skills and can often be handed off.
- Not Urgent and Not Important – Eliminate – Low-value distractions or busywork that neither advance goals nor require immediate attention and should be minimised or removed.
The goal is to spend less time reacting and more time focusing on what truly moves the needle.
For Purpose delivers training on time management, email management and more.
2 February 2026
