Timeboxing Tricks

Posted 7 months ago at 11:30 am. 2 comments

“Timeboxing” is one of the most useful personal development skills I have ever learned. In fact, if there’s one skill you should learn from reading this blog, it’s this skill.

Timeboxing is a pretty simple technique once you understand the basics:

1. Choose a project to work on. Simple enough.
2. Set aside a block of time to work on the project. 30 minutes should be your bare minimum, though you can choose anywhere from 1 minute to any amount of time you’d like.
3. Try to finish that project in the allocated amount of time. Aim for completion of your project in the amount of time you gave yourself. Try not to go over your scheduled time, no matter what. It’s fine if you finish up sooner than you expected.
4. For the entire amount of time, stick to the task. Try not to take breaks unless you are giving yourself over an hour to work. It’s best if you can get into the stage of “flow” so your work becomes easier and more enjoyable.

Need an example? Let’s say you’re itching to write a new blog post, but you have horrible perfectionistic tendencies. Blog posts that should take you 45 minutes to write end up taking 4 hours. Because of that problem, it’s hard for you to commit to blogging. What should you do? Use timeboxing to write that new post! Set aside a block of time to compose, edit, and post the post, doing as best of a job as you can during that time frame. In this case, you could set aside an hour and a half, perhaps from 9:00AM to 10:30AM, and tackle the task to completion.

Having used this technique for so long now, I found there are two extremely useful tips I like to use that I’d love to share with you!

Tip #1 - Use it to knock off small, numerous, mundane tasks.

Batch together multiple, annoying tasks that need to get done, and timebox an amount of time to get through them all. Do you have several desk drawers that need to be cleared out and purged? Instead of doing one drawer at a time, timeboxing 30 minutes per drawer and spreading the task over three days, timebox one hour to purge all of the drawers. You’ll work faster, get the task completed sooner, and feel more accomplished.

Think of it this way. Before you go to the grocery store, you generally make a comprehensive list of everything you need so multiple trips aren’t necessary. Why take five separate trips for breads, fruits, vegetables, meats, and desserts when you can take one trip and buy everything you need in one swoop? Timebox multiple, similiar tasks for the same reasons.

Tip #2 - Timebox a small amount of time just for perfectionism.

Okay, so I admit it! I’m a total perfectionist when it comes to writing my blog posts. I can’t help but sit around and edit my posts after they’ve been up for days, trying to find the “right” phrases to make my posts stand out and shine.

However, I can’t let perfectionism run my blog. (Otherwise I wouldn’t get around to posting or doing advertising work!) Instead of gleefully editing all posts at all hours of the night for kicks and giggles, I instead timebox a small amount of time right after I post my post to let my perfectionism run free. I allow myself to do all of the editing I can in that small amount of time, and then once the minutes are up, I’m completely done and will never touch that post again. Does it work? Fantastically well!

Just remember - perfectionism can absolutely destroy a meaningful, valuable work; but on the other hand, if perfectionism is used constructively, it can completely enhance and boost up a project you are editing to an entirely new level. Timebox a specific time for perfectionism, and try this trick out for yourself.

What other timeboxing uses can you think up?

Your homework for tonight? Apply timeboxing to your life and see what a difference it makes! And after trying timeboxing out for a while, see what improvements you can make on this simple technique. You’d be surprised how much more productive you’ll become after just a few days of timeboxing tasks.