Get More Done With the Power of Timeboxing
Episode Stats
Summary
Time Boxing is a simple, easy system for spending more of your time on what matters to you, so that you live a more intentional life and see more of them through. In this episode, we unpack what Time Boxing is all about, and its benefits as a time management system, including how it can help you get more done, live with greater intention and freedom, and even create a log of memories. In the second half of our conversation, we get into the practicalities of Time Boxing, from how to capture the to-dos that will go on your calendar, to how to deal with things that might pull you away from it.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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From work to chores to entertaining distractions, there are many options for what you can be
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We often endlessly toggle between these options and, as a result, feel frazzled and frustratingly
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We feel ever haunted by the question, what should I be doing right now?
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My guests will share a simple but effective productivity method that will quash this feeling
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of overwhelm, answer that question, and help you make much better use of your time.
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Mark Zow Sanders is the CEO and co-founder of Filtered.com, a learning tech company, and
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the author of Time Boxing, The Power of Doing One Thing at a Time.
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In the first half of our conversation, we unpack what time boxing, which brings your calendar
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and to-do list together, is all about and its benefits as a time management system, including
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how it can help you get more done, live with greater intention and freedom, and even create
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In the second half of our conversation, we get into the practicalities of time boxing,
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from how to capture the to-dos that will go on your calendar, to how to deal with things
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We end our conversation with how you can get started with time boxing right now, and have
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a more focused, productive, and satisfying day tomorrow.
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After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash timeboxing.
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So you've got a new book out about a productivity system that you've been using for the past 10
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In a nutshell, Time Boxing is a simple, easy system for spending more of your time on what
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matters to you, so that you live a more intentional life, set more intentions, and see more of
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The definition I use, and which I came up with, and is in the book, is what, when,
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So first of all, what are you going to do that day?
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Then one is doing that one single thing and nothing else, and not multitasking.
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And enough means doing it to a good enough standard, not trying to do it perfectly.
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And the way I described it to myself when I was reading this, it's basically your to-do
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I mean, look, more concretely, I wake up in the morning, I get dressed, I brush teeth,
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So there's a 15-minute time box at the start of my day.
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It recurs, so I make sure that it's going to be in there.
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And in that 15 minutes, I'm planning out the subsequent 15 hours of my day.
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And so I know that what I want to do, when I'm going to do it, and all the way through
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And I know that once I've planned it, I know that if I see that through, it's going to be
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And the main benefit is that any given moment, I know what I'm supposed to be doing.
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How is time boxing different from time blocking?
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Because I've done that in the past, where I look at my calendar, and I block off time
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In time boxing, you've got the notion of completing something within that time frame,
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In my definition, which had the what, when, one, and enough, the what, when, one is absolutely
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So time blocking is also deciding what to do, when to do it, and sticking to that one thing.
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But time boxing adds a fourth dimension to that, which is, I'm going to do it.
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I'm going to get something done, something done that I can ideally share with someone else.
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So I'm moving the thing on, the baton of productivity moves on at the end of my time
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So in a nutshell, time boxing has a notion of completion to it.
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Okay, so with time blocking, you might put something like, you know, work on essay on your
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With time boxing, it's going to be more like, finish first page of essay.
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And we'll keep unpacking what time boxing involves throughout this conversation.
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Well, I mean, it's a long story, but I'm 44 years old.
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There were mental health issues that came from that performance.
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After a couple of years of frankly suffering and not doing very well, I developed my own
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system of personal productivity, which I called a daily work plan, DWP.
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It didn't enable me to collaborate with others.
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It didn't give me that answer to the question of any given moment, what should I be working
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So to answer your question, we get to 2013 when I just came across an article by a guy called
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Daniel Markovitz in Harvard Business Review called Why To-Do Lists Don't Work.
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So it's coalescing the calendar and the to-do list in such a way that together they bring
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a lot more value than either of them on their own.
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So when I saw this, the logic of it really resonated and I started doing it straight away.
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I'm bringing some of my own thoughts and applications to it.
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And so in 2018, so five years later, having done it for five years, I wrote my own Harvard
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The original article actually didn't call it timeboxing.
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It was on their most popular pages for some years, actually.
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It was nowhere near as popular as a TikTok video that someone made in 2022.
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And one of those watches, one of those views was from Penguin Random House, and they got
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What problems do you think timeboxing solves in general when it comes to personal management
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So in terms of like what problem it solves, first of all, modern life is tricky.
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There's so much going on and we feel like at any one time stressed and frazzled and overwhelmed.
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And this is partly because of a constellation of megatrends.
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So there's the internet, obviously, there's smartphones, there's knowledge work.
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More recently, there's more and more work from home.
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So that means that about a billion of us that are knowledge workers have a huge amount of
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That obviously sounds great, but it leads to a feeling of it being a burden.
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Three quarters of us report mental health issues.
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And a big part of that is lacking clarity, intention, agency, or autonomy.
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And that's kind of the price that we pay for technology.
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And what this means is that we often don't use our time well.
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So ultimately, that's really the problem that timeboxing is focused on.
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We default to smartphones and feeds and streaming.
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So timeboxing is a simple system that addresses this by saying, well, spend 15 minutes or whatever
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it is in the morning or the night before deciding what's most important for you to do and just
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But on your question of, well, how does it compare to other time management techniques?
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So I mean, there's a few things to say there, but one of them is that it's just consistent
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with all of the other time management techniques.
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I can't think of a single one where it doesn't fit with and doesn't facilitate and doesn't help
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So that's 25 minutes of hard work and then five minutes break, as you all know, since
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I mean, is that the right number for every single human being?
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So what timeboxing is, is completely consistent with the Pomodoro technique.
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You know, do 25-5 if that works for you, but if it's 30-10 instead or 45-15, do it that
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So it's consistent with, but supportive of, more flexible than the Pomodoro technique.
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So this is the idea that it's better, it's more productive, it makes you feel better to
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I actually much prefer to get the difficult stuff off my plate at the start of the day
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But there are other people that like to build momentum by starting with some easier tasks.
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The point I'm making about timeboxing is that it accommodates either approach.
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It's flexible to, you know, eating that frog or eating that frog later.
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So Eisenhower, the important urgent matrix, you know, that two by two.
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Well, with timeboxing, I mean, it absolutely is consistent with that.
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That's a way of ordering your tasks or prioritizing them.
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But at the end of the day, which are you going to do and when?
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It gives you, I mean, literally gives you a timetable of slots, options to put those
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important urgent tasks and the other ones into your calendar and get them done.
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So that's the sense in which it's a very, very nice method because it's just,
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There are all kinds of benefits and it really is consistent with all of the other time management
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Another one that's consistent with is getting things done.
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We've had David Allen on the podcast before to talk about that.
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And so with getting things done, one of the big takeaways I took from that idea is that
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when you list an action or to do that, you want to get done, you want to make sure it's
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You don't just want to be vague with it where it's like, oh, vacation planning, or I don't
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That's, I mean, I might, that's maybe that's not a good example, but like with, you want
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to be very concrete and with timeboxing, same thing.
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You want to make whatever you put on your calendar, you're boxing off time to do something.
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You want to say, I'm actually doing this specific thing and not be vague.
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I mean, just to pick your example, I think it is a pretty good one.
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So you need to break that down and make it smaller, more actionable, more actionable,
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partly because it is smaller, like break it down into a half hour task, you know, so which
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You know, make sure that that meeting happens or meet up with them to make that decision.
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I mean, this is really, really basic stuff, but the thing that timeboxing brings is that
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once you've broken it down, it gives you a specific time in which you're going to do
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So you're not just saying, I want to do such and such, like go on a vacation.
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You're saying at a certain time, I'm going to do this action, which is going to be a milestone,
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a step towards getting that thing done that you want to get done.
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Okay, so timeboxing, you're taking your to-do list, you're putting it on a calendar, you're
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scheduling out the things you're going to do on your to-do list.
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And I think a big benefit to that, it gives your day a concreteness.
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I think a lot of times people in knowledge work, as you said, we have all this stuff coming
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into our inboxes and just passing our screens and it's kind of just bleeds together.
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And then you just kind of pick and choose what you're going to do and you leave things
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half finished and then you have all these open loops going on because you're just pulling
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With timeboxing, you just basically plan out your day.
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It's like in 15-minute increments or 30-minute increments.
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And there's something about adding that structure to your day that it alleviates a lot of the
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stress that I think comes from having all those open loops in your head.
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I mean, I think with open loops, you put it very well.
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I think it's also, it's just that protection from any other task.
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Like, you know, for most people, Brett, they could be working on any number of the emails
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There'll be several work streams that they've just got open.
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In fact, it's very likely that several of those are going to occur to you in any given moment.
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What timeboxing is saying is whatever occurs to you, whatever distractions arise, there
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is just one thing that you should be working on.
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You, in a better, quieter moment that morning or the night before, said that that was the
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So come back to your time box, even if you're feeling distracted and stressed and chasing
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a couple of tasks, come back to the time box, do that one thing.
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I mean, the specific thing that I do is when I have that feeling of being distracted or sort
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of chasing a rabbit down a rabbit hole, basically doing that second task or maybe thinking of
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And what I've trained myself to do is associate that feeling which is uncomfortable with the
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I mean, I literally say this to myself, one thing at a time.
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And that mantra, that utterance, the act of uttering that mantra, it calms me down.
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And where I need to be is just to come back to my calendar because I probably lost track
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Like that's actually the main, there's all kinds of benefits, right?
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You've got a log of what you've done and more intentional life, all of this stuff.
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But every single day for me, I get the benefit of feeling calmer when I have those thoughts
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that occur and I start to go down rabbit holes.
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And it's a mental health as well as a productivity benefit.
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So time boxing also brings in another productivity idea, monotasking.
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But I think this idea of structure is really underrated when it comes to your mental health.
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I think that's why a lot of people have a lot of issues now and feeling anxiety and just
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If I look back in my life, the periods where I felt the most on it, the most productive,
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the most just flourishing, there was a structure to my day.
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And when you're a young person, you might have the structure imposed on you because of school
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When you're an adult, you have to impose that structure on yourself.
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And time boxing is a tool that can help you do that.
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If you do that and you're imposing the structure on yourself, that is freedom.
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Because you're setting those intentions and then you're living them out.
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So some people look at my time box week and they say, well, that looks really restrictive.
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You know, you've got all of these boxes everywhere.
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Maybe we'll come back to the color coding in a second.
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It is literally it's a picture of freedom because every single one of those boxes I decided
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on and then by and large, I mean, not absolutely every single one, but 90 something percent
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That to me is close to the very definition of freedom.
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Over the last 10 years, I've probably done 50,000 time boxes.
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So another benefit that time boxing can provide to help you get more done is it harnesses the
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What are implementation intentions and how do they help you get more done?
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Well, the formal definition is it's a statement that you make of the form when situation X arises,
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So not just I want to lose weight or be kinder or go on vacation, but you're saying that when
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a certain thing happens, then I will do such and such and such.
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So time boxing is exactly that because it's saying with the situation arising, it's at a
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So when it's a one o'clock, I will do such and such activity.
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And what the science behind it says, and you can Google this, right?
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You'll see a bunch of journals that basically say, look, if you say that you're going to
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do something at a certain time, you're very, very likely to do it about 90% chance of doing
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Whereas if you just have a vague notion of, well, I probably should do it.
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And there's some light encouragement that there's, it's more like 30%.
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So actually there was a study in which there were three groups.
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So they're given the instruction to just record when they do exercise.
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The second group was given some motivation and educational material, and also asked to
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And then the third group were instructed to time box it.
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About 30, 35% of them did the exercise or exercise weekly.
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But the third group, the time boxes, they did it to, I think it was 91% of them exercised
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I think, first of all, it's just a study, right?
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If a study is convincing, all it really means is, okay, there's a good chance that this might
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But it also makes sense, I think, in terms of, you know, I mean, take this meeting between
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Like it might have been that we couldn't go ahead because something on your end or something
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on my end, actually, that very nearly did happen.
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But how often is it that we actually need to cancel meetings?
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You know, once we've made that commitment, I would say it's single digits, percentage-wise.
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So basically, you know, and it just makes intuitive sense.
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So if you say you're going to do something, probably you're going to do it.
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If you put it into your calendar and there's no way that you're going to forget, you get prompts
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from that calendar, there's a little bit of a public commitment as well, because with
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shared calendars, other people can kind of see what you're saying that you're going to
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It's no wonder that you get to your 90-something percent.
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So that's the sense in which implementation intentions are important to timeboxing, because
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And they provide a lot of the science that backs it up.
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I mean, that's the other difference between timeboxing and a lot of other time management
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techniques is there's no science behind the other ones.
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I'm not going to say that's the truth for absolutely every single one.
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But there's just quite a lot behind timeboxing and implementation intentions in particular.
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Yeah, we got an article about implementation intentions on our website.
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But yeah, timeboxing can be a tool, not only help you get through your to-do list and your
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workday, but this can be a great tool for self-improvement.
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If you always wanted to start exercising, well, you just put it on the calendar.
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If it's three o'clock in the afternoon, I'm going to exercise for 30 minutes.
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And you're more likely to do it if it's on the calendar.
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Exercise is a great example, but obviously there are many others.
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I've got a mnemonic which might be helpful to listeners, Brett, which is Mr. Elf.
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So Mr. Elf stands for meditation, reading, exercise, learning, and friends or family.
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So the idea here is that if you're at a loose end, so either because you're planning your
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day at the start and you don't know, okay, what am I going to do 10 to 11?
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What would be a good use of time that I won't regret later?
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Think of that mnemonic, Mr. Elf, and it might help you out.
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It's also very helpful, I find, when sometimes an expanse of time just opens up before you.
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So I know someone, you're going to have dinner with someone, you had to get there, and then
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So all in all, it was going to be three or four hours, but they cancel on you.
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All of a sudden, you've got three or four hours.
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Now, it's very easy to then get into, well, just stream from Netflix or go to social media.
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But what I'm encouraging people to do more of is in that moment when you realize that,
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Let's think about how I'm going to spend my time and choose the right thing.
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So with Mr. Elf and these five activities, it's just very easy to remember.
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And it's a good thing to keep in mind when this expanse of time just opens up before you,
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like if you've, you know, dinner plans get canceled.
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Rather than just defaulting to very easy, but not all that worthwhile activities,
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And you probably use your time better and feel better about it after.
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So not only can timeboxing help you get more done, can improve your life,
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help you achieve those self-improvement goals you've had for a long time,
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but you also talk about the record-keeping benefit it provides.
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I just want to say that the other benefit and to do with getting more done,
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The main reason that timeboxing helps you in terms of productivity is that it gets you
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There's a quote from Drucker, which you may have heard of before, but he puts it really well.
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There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not
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So it's making sure that you do the right thing rather than just more of it.
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But I'm glad that you brought up the point of, you know, the record of what you've done.
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This for me is the least important benefit, but it's also the most underrated.
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The benefit here is that it enables you to remember what you did on planet Earth in your
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Because it's in your calendar, you can go back and you can see how prepared you were
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to present to all of those people last time you presented to them, or when the last time
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you had a one-to-one with someone was, or how you celebrated your son's 10th birthday.
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When you last had a date night, obviously photos capture some of that too, but they're
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not quite so well structured and they're not quite so comprehensive.
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There's only certain kinds of events where people will take pictures.
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And a time box calendar is more objective because it's just kind of everything.
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And if you use a Google calendar or Microsoft or whoever the provider is, the way that search
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And if you've got some kind of log of what you've done, it's not like that's the end
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So let's take the example of my son's 10th birthday.
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There'll be a time box on that Sunday when we did.
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And if I just look at that time box and that date, memories will flood back.
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Memories that just would probably have been inaccessible to me without that time box.
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And that can be useful in a kind of defensive mode if you need to sort of give an argument
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as to why you were doing a certain thing at a certain time.
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Or just emotive, positive reasons like remembering a date night or a 10th birthday.
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And my grandfather, he kept a pocket diary his entire life.
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And he did some time boxing in there, some rudimentary time boxing.
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But he's able to use his diaries throughout his life to write his memoirs.
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He'll tell you, like, I visited so-and-so to discuss this topic on this meeting.
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So I really appreciate that he time boxed and was able to write that memoir.
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I mean, it's very useful if you're going to write a memoir and a story of your life,
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In fact, I was out for seeing a friend for a drink last night.
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And she was asking me, how long did it take to write the pitch for your book?
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But I thought, well, I just have to go back through my calendar and see the time boxes.
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And the answer was, I don't know, 15, 20 hours.
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So you can answer some questions that help some people, including yourself.
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And mostly it would be for yourself if you've got it recorded somewhere.
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Another benefit of time boxing, and you mentioned it earlier,
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is it can help us collaborate more effectively.
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Well, this comes from the fact that for most people,
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the calendar that they use is a shared digital calendar.
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But I'm going to focus on the shared aspect of it here.
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So if you share it with some people that you trust,
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They can accommodate that with their work demands or their life demands.
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I mean, if they've seen that you're planning to see the new Dune movie, for example,
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it might be a natural icebreaker next time you see them.
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And there's also just the efficiency of interpersonal commitments.
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So, you know, if you ask me to do something, Brett, and I say, okay, yes, we'll do.
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That is of some benefit, because I've told you that I'm going to do it.
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If instead I say to you, I've time boxed it for such and such a time,
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it's a lot more reassuring for you that it's going to get done.
00:25:59.440
You're going to know when it's going to get done.
00:26:01.400
And also, I mean, just to come back to the collaboration in the shared calendar,
00:26:06.740
you might not even ask me in the first place, if you look in my shared, you know,
00:26:11.240
look at my commitments and you see that, you know, I'm just having a really busy week.
00:26:14.920
So you might just hold that back until next week.
00:26:18.120
So one of the things it helps with is the efficiency of interpersonal commitments
00:26:21.980
and how we interact with each other, just to, you know, increase harmony and reduce friction
00:26:27.960
through just efficient knowledge, information exchange about what we're up to and when.
00:26:34.020
Now, that's a kind of very positive way of putting it.
00:26:39.840
And, you know, if you work at a place where you don't have, you know,
00:26:42.420
have trust issues with some of your colleagues, then that's a tricky thing.
00:26:46.600
I mean, you can do some things like, you know, change the permissions
00:26:51.440
That's something you've got to keep in mind as well.
00:26:54.040
But in an ideal world where you can trust and you can be transparent,
00:26:58.200
it's a very, very efficient way of describing to people what you're up to and when.
00:27:03.120
Yeah, I interviewed Cal Newport a few weeks ago about his idea of a more sustainable,
00:27:10.080
And one of the things he said is the problem with our current work system is that it's not transparent.
00:27:15.860
People can't see how much you have on your plate.
00:27:18.180
And so they don't think twice about adding to your load.
00:27:20.800
And this is one of his suggestions is to let people see your project list or your calendar
00:27:25.620
so they can see, you know, I was going to add another project to your plate,
00:27:30.320
but actually now that I see how much you've already got going on, I'm not going to.
00:27:37.340
We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
00:27:46.360
All right, let's dig into how we can start timeboxing,
00:27:48.780
get into some big high-level principles for people.
00:27:51.180
You recommend a digital calendar because the versatility of it is amazing.
00:27:55.080
You can have it on your smartphone, your desktop.
00:28:01.040
Is there software that you prefer or is any one fine?
00:28:06.300
Like, frankly, the functionality between these different providers
00:28:10.560
So I think it's become a commodity, which is one of the reasons it's free.
00:28:14.460
So no, I don't particularly recommend anyone in, I mean, obviously there is one that I use,
00:28:19.540
but I don't think it's even worth mentioning which one it is
00:28:21.660
because it's not like I'm endorsing it specifically.
00:28:27.820
but I don't think that's particularly pertinent to the practice of timeboxing.
00:28:33.760
Another part of this timeboxing element is capturing the things you're going to put on
00:28:38.900
Do you have any recommendations about that on how to capture all the stuff that you need
00:28:45.160
So capture is very much part of the David Allen method,
00:28:47.740
and that's absolutely consistent with timeboxing.
00:28:53.420
It's a single Google Doc with all my meeting notes as well.
00:28:56.940
I update it every three months or so, otherwise it gets too big.
00:29:01.400
And it's really important to do that for exactly the reason that David Allen says in general,
00:29:06.740
and I think he said actually on your podcast, which is that you want to make sure you capture
00:29:12.380
it so that you don't forget it, but also so that it doesn't linger in your mind and distract you.
00:29:18.480
You know, you can kind of offload and free up your mind.
00:29:28.460
And I don't think that that's the perfect method for everyone.
00:29:33.760
But how it links to timeboxing is when you're in that 15-minute session at the start of the day,
00:29:38.680
planning out your day, that's when the to-do list comes in.
00:29:42.600
So, you know, whatever the version of the to-do list is for you,
00:29:46.380
It's the 15 minutes that the planning, and then you decide, you know,
00:29:49.240
what you're going to do and when over the course of your day.
00:29:56.340
So it's not only like I put in ideas that I have that I think I could take action on eventually.
00:30:01.880
Maybe they're not fully formed, but they could be fully formed.
00:30:06.700
I even put emails in my to-do list because if I found if I don't,
00:30:11.180
I don't think treating your inbox as a to-do list is very useful.
00:30:17.120
So if I had an open text message I didn't respond to,
00:30:19.240
I put that in my to-do list and then I sort that out during my weekly planning.
00:30:25.060
Or you can sort that out during your daily planning or your timeboxing.
00:30:28.880
Well, the thing that, I mean, the pertinent point there, I think, Brett,
00:30:34.200
So you know that everything is going to be there.
00:30:39.880
well, you're probably going into it daily, right?
00:30:45.920
You know, when you move that along to when you're actually going to get something done,
00:30:48.560
because the calendar is just so central to so many of us.
00:30:55.440
We have to return to the calendar, whether we like it or not.
00:30:59.320
The point with a to-do list and your timebox calendar is that you need to just make sure
00:31:04.800
that they are a destination that you go to frequently enough that you're going to not miss anything.
00:31:15.260
The things that are on our to-do list onto the calendar, like how do you know you're going
00:31:19.680
through your list and you see a task and you're like, is this timeboxable?
00:31:24.520
Like, how do you know if the way it's phrased or set out or established, you can timebox that?
00:31:31.920
I mean, it's really just anything you want and need to do, right?
00:31:39.540
So the timebox today, timebox, which is 15 minutes at the start of the day.
00:31:50.700
I mean, for me personally, I don't love doing exercise.
00:31:53.720
So having this extra commitment that is in my calendar, it makes the thing happen.
00:31:58.000
And then I feel, you know, I get the benefits later.
00:32:03.060
I do actually want to just explain this because I think this is really underestimated as a thing to do at work.
00:32:09.700
So this is a 30 minute timebox that I have not every day, but most days in which I will go through all the meetings that I've got later and just do a little bit of preparation for them.
00:32:21.080
That might just be two minutes of preparation, you know, checking last time I saw that person, what was the last email, who's going to be on the call, maybe check the meeting notes from last time or read a report.
00:32:31.460
But that means that every time I come to a meeting over the course of that day, I'm a little bit prepared.
00:32:38.700
We're hitting the ground running in the meeting.
00:32:50.060
And this is the sense in which we're all already timeboxing because we've got meetings.
00:32:54.480
So really timeboxing is easy because it's an extension of a habit that almost everyone listening to this is already engaged in.
00:33:04.220
I've also got timeboxes, you know, one-to-one time with the kids, with my wife.
00:33:08.060
There's one later for later on, which was writing an email to a potential client.
00:33:13.380
So really just anything that you feel like you want to do, it is important to do that day.
00:33:18.180
I mean, with that example that I just gave of the potential client, I met this person a few nights ago.
00:33:24.180
There is an urgency because I didn't want to leave it too long before I got back in touch.
00:33:28.600
So it did make sense for it to go on to today's schedule.
00:33:31.900
So I think mostly, Brett, people have a good idea of what makes sense for a timebox.
00:33:38.720
And timeboxing, it just means that you've got to start time and end time.
00:33:41.780
And you bring a little bit of pressure to getting it done within that time.
00:33:46.060
Do you have a recommended increment of time you like to use for your timeboxing?
00:33:50.140
Is it 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour?
00:33:59.120
Obviously, you can have any combination of numbers.
00:34:04.960
So, you know, you're not sitting down to do a task.
00:34:07.480
And then part of your brain is lost in, well, should this be a 14-minute task or a 17-minute task or, you know, lots of different options.
00:34:17.420
Anything less than 15 minutes, for me, just doesn't make sense.
00:34:25.000
Sometimes that 15 minutes will consist of, you know, three very small tasks or even five very small tasks.
00:34:32.200
But, yeah, 15, 30, and 60 are the three sizes I have.
00:34:37.080
And I don't have anything more than 60 because, I mean, obviously, sometimes a task will take more than 60 minutes.
00:34:42.640
I had to write a long blog, a longish form blog this week.
00:34:45.840
And that definitely took me more than 60 minutes.
00:34:48.180
But breaking it down into more manageable chunks was a big part of my method for getting it done in the, I don't know, two hours it took in total.
00:34:57.460
So I wouldn't have a two-hour time box for that.
00:34:59.240
And I did break it down into several smaller time boxes in those denominations, 15, 30, 60.
00:35:04.660
I like to break up my day in 15-minute increments.
00:35:07.400
I wonder if that's from my, I was an intern in a law office.
00:35:11.400
The billable hour is like based on 15-minute increments.
00:35:16.480
How do you figure out, so you're looking at your task list and you're trying to decide how long this task will take to complete.
00:35:22.600
How do you figure out how long it's going to take?
00:35:26.280
Because like there's this idea of the planning fallacy.
00:35:28.000
Sometimes we overestimate or underestimate how long something will take.
00:35:35.620
So there's a lot of tasks where it's just really easy.
00:35:39.760
Like you're saying, well, I'm going to meditate for 30 minutes.
00:35:42.580
So there's no way you can get that wrong, right?
00:35:44.620
You just set a timer and the 30 minutes elapses and then that's the end of it.
00:35:48.800
So there's just no estimation that can really go wrong with that.
00:35:53.400
Or you go for a 5K run and you know that it takes you 25 minutes or 30 minutes or whatever.
00:35:58.040
So I do want to say that although, yeah, I'll come on to the planning fallacy in a second.
00:36:01.840
But there are a lot of tasks that just are very easy to size almost by definition.
00:36:08.180
And then on the planning fallacy, which is basically that we are a little bit optimistic very often.
00:36:13.440
There's some wishful thinking going into how we think about a task.
00:36:22.160
The way to get around this, and this is reasonably well understood I think now, is make sure you're not setting a time box unless you have some experience of it.
00:36:32.000
So if you've done this before, let's say the task is to write a 500 word blog.
00:36:37.580
Well, you could say, well, it's 500 words and it doesn't take me very long to write, say, 100 words, multiply that by five.
00:36:44.900
That's very likely to suffer from the planning fallacy because it wouldn't take into account the edits, your dissatisfaction.
00:36:51.860
Yeah, just some of the gnarly details of the real world.
00:36:54.200
But if instead you have written a 500 word blog before and you know that it took you 45 minutes or 90 minutes or whatever it was, that's a much better indicator.
00:37:05.640
You can obviously work on that and try and improve on your personal best in the future.
00:37:10.960
But really, the main solution to the planning fallacy is to base it on experience where you possibly can.
00:37:16.420
And if you've got a brand new task, it's harder to do.
00:37:19.080
And so you're going to have to be a little bit more experimental and keep some leeway in your schedule.
00:37:23.960
So speaking of that, let's say you're planning this new task you've never done before.
00:37:34.540
You're like, oh, I'm not going to get this thing done.
00:37:41.500
Or do you like, OK, I got to stop this for now and move on to the next item and then schedule this for later?
00:37:52.140
But I'd say a couple of things before we even get to that moment.
00:37:55.800
So first of all, in the planning in the first place, be really, really careful about how you're estimating as much as you can, how you estimate those time boxes.
00:38:05.120
Then secondly, don't just wait until you get to the 60th minute and then say, oh, I'm almost out of time.
00:38:12.940
So, you know, if you've got a task, let's use the blog again.
00:38:15.980
So 500 words you've got to write in 60 minutes.
00:38:23.880
But still, even if you set a midway checkpoint, you might get to that scenario that you just described, Brett, of, well, I'm kind of running out of time now.
00:38:33.020
And in that situation, you've got to use your judgment.
00:38:35.400
I mean, it depends kind of on how important is that blog?
00:38:40.720
Is that something that's flexible or is it a very hard stop?
00:38:45.780
In my experience, though, if you time box carefully and you do the midway checkpoints, it's not very often that you need to change them.
00:38:54.420
You know, something like the 10% I was talking about earlier.
00:38:57.500
So, sure, you need to be flexible, but that's built into the system of time boxing.
00:39:01.800
It's not saying at the start of the day that when you, in those 15 minutes, everything's got to map out exactly that way.
00:39:08.940
So, another element of this time boxing isn't just, as you said earlier, it isn't just making sure you have every 15-minute increment of your day scheduled out and time boxed.
00:39:20.920
But you also want to think about the order you do that in.
00:39:23.860
You're not just going through the list and just kind of haphazardly, okay, it's 9 o'clock to 9.30, I'm going to do this, 9.30 to 10, I'm going to do this.
00:39:31.040
You actually want to think about this like, okay, when during the day, when will I be most effective at getting this thing done?
00:39:39.320
Does it need to get done earlier in the day or later in the day?
00:39:41.360
So, you also want to be thoughtful about the order you create your time box.
00:39:47.420
The most obvious sense in which it matters is that there are certain dependencies that you might have, right?
00:39:52.760
So, let's say you've got a meeting on Thursday afternoon.
00:39:57.100
You definitely need to do some preparation for it.
00:39:59.800
Then your prep meeting for that will need to go at some point earlier in the week, right?
00:40:04.260
So, that's pretty obvious and people need to take that into account.
00:40:11.380
But then you've also got mood and energy, like you say.
00:40:14.820
So, for me personally, I'm pretty low energy mid-morning and mid-afternoon.
00:40:19.500
So, I tend to do a bit of exercise in the mid-morning because that just perks me up in the first half of the day.
00:40:25.640
And I'll tend to do easier tasks in the mid-afternoon.
00:40:31.320
But different people are going to work differently.
00:40:33.320
So, this is not me saying, well, you should do everything in the morning or you should do exercise in the morning.
00:40:38.620
You've just got to work out what is the way of curating your day and planning your day that's going to bring you the most fun,
00:40:45.260
work with the schedule that you have and how you're collaborating with others, and get stuff done on time.
00:40:53.960
One is to write a report and the other is just to do some exercise.
00:41:00.360
Is it exercise then report or report then exercise?
00:41:04.200
And that would just be different for different people.
00:41:06.660
For some people, if you do some exercise first, the blood's then flowing.
00:41:13.660
That might be great for the creativity you might need to write that report.
00:41:18.100
But for others, it might be that, well, I want to write the report first, get some of those ideas in my head,
00:41:23.520
and then do some exercise like going for a run.
00:41:26.040
I'll be able to think about it, think of improvements.
00:41:28.360
I'll be able to come back and then update the report.
00:41:33.060
It's just what will be most productive and enjoyable for you.
00:41:37.280
Again, to come back to the word I keep using with timeboxing, intention,
00:41:41.620
the point is think ahead about your day, how things are going to go,
00:41:45.940
what's the order that's most likely to yield what you want to get from the day and do things in that order.
00:41:52.940
Let's say you've done your timeboxing, you got your day all nice and scheduled.
00:41:58.960
People have different systems of color code for work time, personal time, etc.
00:42:05.620
But let's say you've scheduled out your day, your timebox perfectly, and you're like, this is amazing.
00:42:11.680
First couple of timeboxes, you pull off without a hitch, just things are running smoothly.
00:42:15.940
But then some unexpected, urgent, but important matter pops up during the day.
00:42:22.620
And it causes you to have to deviate from your plan.
00:42:26.980
Well, I mean, I guess first of all, I just question, do you really need to deviate?
00:42:31.220
Is it really that urgent, the thing that's come up?
00:42:37.480
And of course, there are situations, like let's say your kid's sick or you have some sort of an accident
00:42:42.680
or there's a really pressing work thing that has come about.
00:42:49.240
It's a proportion of the, you know, it's not very often.
00:42:55.180
So when it does, you just move your timeboxes around in the 5%, 10% of the times that it happens.
00:43:00.900
I don't think I've ever set out at the start of the day.
00:43:03.840
And this isn't probably quite true, but it's very rare that I would plan in those 15 minutes,
00:43:09.880
plan out the rest of the day, and not a single thing changes from there.
00:43:14.540
And occasionally, a lot changes because there's some big, you know, urgent thing that comes along.
00:43:23.820
I mean, if you've got some unpredictable phase coming up, and for example,
00:43:28.420
you've got a bunch of deliveries that are coming that afternoon,
00:43:30.520
then it just doesn't make sense to set some timeboxes where you've got some deep work planned,
00:43:35.100
because you know you're going to be interrupted and distracted by those things.
00:43:39.020
So in that case, well, you know, probably don't set any timeboxes for that time.
00:43:43.300
Maybe go for a walk or do something that you can be interrupted from,
00:43:49.580
So I think that this actually is, Brett, this is the most common objection that I hear
00:43:54.380
to timeboxing is, but what about if plans change?
00:43:57.820
And so I just say, look, set realistic goals at the start.
00:44:04.200
Know that it's not going to happen that often, really, probably less than 10%.
00:44:07.900
And in those 10% of cases, when it does, just move them about.
00:44:12.500
Yeah, I think that idea when something urgent and what might look important pops up,
00:44:17.860
ask yourself, does this really need to be taken care of right now?
00:44:20.700
And I would bet nine times out of 10, the answer is no.
00:44:23.160
I've noticed this with people who are in positions where they're in helper positions.
00:44:28.000
It could be a pastor, a caretaker, and they'll get this frantic text or call at 7 o'clock at night
00:44:39.040
And they're like, okay, well, I'm busy right now because I'm with my family.
00:44:44.260
I can't, can we schedule it for tomorrow at 6 o'clock?
00:44:57.920
In the moment, it feels urgent because it's happened just then.
00:45:01.560
I think actually for modern knowledge workers, for most of us,
00:45:07.240
So some email comes in and it's from someone reasonably important,
00:45:11.140
like a client or a boss or, you know, a colleague or whatever.
00:45:13.940
And it feels like this is something, it's just been said to you.
00:45:20.440
And there is this natural inclination to want to react straight away.
00:45:25.080
But in reality, like you just said with that example, you know,
00:45:30.060
And actually the way to fix this and not be bothered by it is to just not see your inbox.
00:45:36.120
Don't see your inbox apart from in those time boxed occasions when you are supposed to be in an email.
00:45:47.420
For me, it's actually only about three times a week.
00:45:49.360
So that for the rest of the time, I don't get bothered by the apparent urgency of some email that's come in from someone.
00:45:57.180
So I think you can protect yourself from apparently urgent requests on your time by not seeing certain things.
00:46:03.840
Let's say you've got your time box scheduled and you're working on something that requires you to be online doing research.
00:46:12.280
And then you find yourself down this rabbit hole and you've bled over into the next box.
00:46:18.100
How do you avoid getting distracted from your time box schedule?
00:46:21.400
Well, I think to some extent, it's not a bad thing when that happens.
00:46:27.500
I mean, in the example that you just gave, like you're down a rabbit hole, but it's kind of it's interesting and feels important and you're getting some stuff done.
00:46:34.460
So, and to some extent, I would say that's not necessarily awful.
00:46:39.000
But I think the thing to do is, look, you get these distractions and sometimes it is just something that's very, very interesting.
00:46:46.160
The trick, which I mentioned earlier in this conversation, is to try and notice, and this is, I would say, honestly, this is the only thing that's at all difficult about time boxing.
00:46:56.820
But really, this is about managing distractions because distractions are going to occur whether you're time boxing or not.
00:47:02.300
The trick is to notice that feeling that you're going down and you're doing this second thing, this thing that you're not really supposed to be doing, that you, not this thing that you said that you're going to do.
00:47:12.780
You're moving off, you're going off track, you're going down a rabbit hole.
00:47:16.900
Notice that feeling and associate it with a controlled and better response, which is to, I mean, in my case and what I'm advocating, coming back to your time box and coming back to that one thing.
00:47:31.760
You know, now I, it's not like I don't get distracted.
00:47:34.460
I get distracted several times or many times, you know, over the course of the day.
00:47:38.240
The difference, I think, between me and a lot of people that, you know, have an issue with distraction is that I don't get distracted.
00:47:42.780
For very long because I'm associating that feeling with coming back to my calendar.
00:47:46.720
So yeah, it definitely happens, but try and associate it with a better behavior and coming back to, to what you're, what you're doing and you'll feel more in control and less likely to be down those rabbit holes.
00:47:58.780
So let's say someone's listening to this and they think, I want to give time boxing a try.
00:48:03.380
Well, I would recommend this set a calendar appointment right now.
00:48:06.680
You're listening to this unless you're driving, you know, do that on your phone or on your computer in your digital calendar.
00:48:14.240
Set an appointment for tomorrow for 15 minutes at the start of the day, soon after you wake up, whenever it makes sense for you.
00:48:19.640
When that time comes tomorrow morning, take a look at your to-do list.
00:48:23.120
You'll also have a bunch of stuff in your head about what you might do and put two or three items in your calendar for later on.
00:48:28.700
I have this way of remembering, which is 15-15.
00:48:32.560
So I think of as 15 minutes at the start of the day to govern the remaining 15 hours of your waking life.
00:48:39.120
Obviously, you don't need to time box 15 hours.
00:48:41.380
So I'm suggesting to get started, just put in two or three items from your to-do list.
00:48:48.440
You probably will, like I was saying before, when we were discussing implementation intentions, there's a 90% chance you are going to get them done.
00:49:00.140
So I'd strongly recommend set that 15-minute appointment right now.
00:49:08.060
But then that calendar appointment will come up tomorrow and remind you to do something.
00:49:14.000
Put it in your digital calendar and start time boxing tomorrow morning.
00:49:18.480
Well, Mark, this has been a great conversation.
00:49:20.280
Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
00:49:24.300
This was actually part of the pitch, which was timeboxing.com.
00:49:28.260
But Penguin, the publisher, said, no, don't do that.
00:49:36.840
And zalsanders, no hyphen, Z-A-O-S-A-N-D-E-R-S.com.
00:49:40.820
And there's a newsletter and you can sign up and follow my thoughts on time and time management
00:49:46.200
and time boxing and intention agency and what have you there.
00:49:58.880
It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.
00:50:01.420
You can find more information about his work at his website, markzalsanders.com.
00:50:05.060
Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash timeboxing, where you can find links to resources
00:50:43.520
Remind you to not listen to the AMO podcast, but put what you've heard into action.