Make Your Days More Productive With Timeboxing
There are tons of tricks that claim to make you more productive. Now one is the “best”: timeboxing.
The idea behind the hack is simple. Whenever you have something to do, put it on your calendar. The idea is that instead of just creating a to-do list, you are actually choosing a “time slot” in which you have time to complete the task.
I have been doing this myself for many years. Productivity expert Mark Zao-Sanders recently reviewed the 100 most popular productivity tricks and also found timeboxing to be the most beneficial. The results of his research were recently published in the Harvard Business Review .
It is not hard to see how successful a practice can be.
With traditional to-do lists, you often create a to-do list, no matter how long each task might take. The end result is a daily to-do list that is likely a little unrealistic when it comes to getting things done. For example, you might have eight free hours a day, but you might have 14 hours of work on your to-do list. You will fail.
By jotting things down on your calendar, you force yourself to think how long the task will actually take. You also lock the time on your calendar to do this, so you won’t run into a situation where you will be busy in meetings all day and will not be able to accomplish what you personally have planned for yourself.
You also force yourself to schedule time for difficult things. Traditional to-do lists are a challenge for us to choose which tasks we want to complete first. In most cases, we will all aim for the easiest and fastest tasks first. While there is definitely something to be said about it, if you continue to avoid those tasks that require longer efforts, you will never get them done.
With timeboxing, you create a to-do list while at the same time creating an executable plan (based on the actual time you have available) to execute it.