Free Yourself with Timeboxing

It's impossible for you to finish a task.  Finishing is something you experience, not something you do.  What you can do is start a task, so focus on starting over and over.

What is timeboxing?  You're not going to find it in a dictionary, so I'll define it for you.  Simply put, "time boxing" is a time management technique that involves setting a timer, and focusing solely on one task or one set of tasks within that amount of time.  When the timer goes off, no matter where you are in that task progress you put it aside and move on to something else.

It's easy to get overwhelmed by big projects.  When I was in college, I would put off writing papers and studying for tests like no one's business.  I knew I should start early, everyone does.  But I also knew it was going to take hours and bring a lot of stress; besides, I have friends to hang out with and anime to watch.  So eventually the deadline comes looming in, and before I knew it it was the weekend or night before.  "Crap!  Where did the time go?  Alright, I'm just going to work on this paper 24/7 with the time I have left."  However, sure enough I'd fall into Facebook-checking-syndrome for a good hour or so at a time, before I'd remind myself of the paper's importance and get back to work.  By the final morning, running on little or no sleep, it would by some miracle be finished.

A lot of people who go through this same experience conclude that they work best under pressure.  Maybe putting things off to the last minute allows things to actually get done.  Right?  PLEASE TELL ME I'M RIGHT.

Fortunately, there's a much less stressful way of getting through those "big, tough, important" projects than being whipped by threats from your teacher, your boss, your parents, or yourself.  The main point to take away from the cramming experience is this: the deadline.  With timeboxing, you create the deadline.  You control that last-minute tension that gets you moving, the pressure that brings out your deep concentration.

"Limits set you free. Freedom isn’t the absence of limits, it’s the freedom to set your own limits." -Khatzumoto, AJATT

Maybe you've noticed that the hardest part of any task or project is getting started, and once you get past the hurdle of what you're going to do and how you're going to do it it's easy to find your grove and float on.  Starting reveals the real work ahead of you rather than the imagined work that you've feared up until now.  Problems happen when you commit to doing a project - be that writing a paper, reading a textbook, or learning a language - for hours at a time.  You might start off energetic enough, but soon you'll be losing concentration and turning to easily accessible more entertaining alternatives (I wonder if Google+-checking-syndrome has caught on yet...).  "Ahhh, I gotta get on this! What's wrong with me?  Stoopid procrastination. :/"

The idea behind timeboxing is beautifully simple: start a lot.  The smaller the time box, the more times you're able to start your project.  And the more you start, the closer you'll be to experiencing "finishing."  Timeboxing says don't worry about trying to work for hours at a time, especially on something boring.  So aim small, set a timer for a maximum of 30 minutes.  If you can't maintain your concentration for that long, then try 15 minutes.  10 minutes.  Oooh, my favorite: 5 minutes.  Even with 2 minutes, you'd be surprised how much you can accomplish when you're working against the timer.  The key is to find a time limit where you can get into your concentration flow state and maintain it until the end, focusing on the task HERE and NOW.  Working to exhaustion can be okay sometimes, but continuously doing so will implant the idea that the task itself is exhausting.

There needs to be a point at which we can be satisfied with what we've produced on a human level and move on to the next thing.  You know what, I bet you like the idea of "quality over quantity."  Taking your time and creating something really great rather than a bunch of crappy good-for-nothing drafts.  But do you want to know what people who really succeed are aiming for?  They're focusing on 10,000+ crappy starts, which will get the task finished not only faster, but at a higher quality than one sitting there worrying about making something perfect on her first try.  In other words,

Quantity over Quality.

You're starting so many times that the quantity will eventually create quality all on its own from building up those raw experiences.  Final equation: starting + quantity = finishing & quality.  WTF?!

In my post on schedules, I introduced Neil Fiore's idea of counting your work in 30 minute blocks.  Timeboxing is, well, an evolved form of that idea.  Apparently it's mentioned in books like Eat That Frog (which I'd like to read one day), but I learned about it from AJATT through my Japanese studies.

One cool way I've been using timeboxing is to do something for a little bit every hour.  That "something" for me is reviewing Japanese through Anki (my SRS), and that "little bit" is 5 mins. at a time.  When those blocks hit 30 mins. I add them to my Unschedule.  Basically, if you break up starting your time boxes into small chunks every hour, it never feels like real work - even though at the end of the day, I have one hour of Japanese reviewing and half an hour of Japanese learning and review preparation to show for it.  Time over the course of a day can slip by, and this way you can link your day together with the time devoted to realizing your dream.

Other ways you can get even more out of timeboxing:

• Prioritize what you want to accomplish today, and start the highest priority task using a time box before working your way down the list.  I recommend beginning with a small time limit in the first round, 10 minutes or less, just so you can get that first hurdle out of the way.
• Do something REALLY fun before and after the timeboxing, especially if you're going for as long as 30 min. blocks in one shot.  At the very least, take a short break so you can recharge before turning up your concentration levels again.
• The task that you're timeboxing doesn't have to be super boring.  Try it with fun things too so that you can have that devoted time to get really into it.
• Something that's really helped me lately is focusing more on the timeboxing than the clock.  When you worry about things like, "why isn't it 5 o'clock yet? I want to go home!" or "I can only get stuff done until 11pm then I have to go to bed, I'll never finish this in time!" then its just going to stress you out.  Trust in the time box. Simply focus on the next thing you can do of highest priority, and accept the small step forward that you've made within that limit.

If anyone has anything else to comment on this form of time management, I'd love to hear it.  Take care, guys.

This post brought to you by 13 sessions of 10 minute timeboxing, taking a lot of crappy steps and just putting them together.