Do you procrastinate and carry forward tasks that should be done today to tomorrow? Are you up for efficient time management?

Before starting the blog, answer a few other questions too. Do you think that you can manage time effectively? Are you able to complete all of the tasks that you plan every day? Do you have the ability to avoid procrastination at all costs? Are you able to handle all of your responsibilities well? If your answer to all of the questions is yes, then congratulations, you are a productivity geek.

What is Timeboxing, and how does it relate to productivity?

Setting up a specific amount of time in your schedule for a particular job is known as timeboxing. It’s similar to making a meeting appointment on your calendar. You choose the day, the start and end times, the intended goal, and set up time on your calendar. You can also relate it to a to-do list as both connect. Productivity levels are directly proportional to the concept of timeboxing, and it can take productivity levels to new heights. But how will this happen? In this blog, we will discuss the dependence of productivity on timeboxing and other similar topics.

How does timeboxing work?

• Allow yourself a month to become acclimated to the timeboxing procedure.
• After every few days, pick a few new things from your task list, predict how long each will take, and reserve that time on your calendar.
• Consider how far you’ve come at the end of the day and make any necessary adjustments to your timetable.
• Rearrange your objectives if an important meeting or job arises suddenly.

Benefits of timeboxing

Timeboxing provides numerous benefits over typical and traditional lists, and it’s a logical complement to Objectives and Key Results goal planning, which emphasizes goal completion over a shorter period, such as monthly or quarterly. Including a timeboxing factor in the above goal setting helps everyone remain on track and fulfill their objectives on time. Let us discuss some of the advantages of timeboxing below: 

• You may more readily “push yourself” to continue focusing on the things you’ve been putting off or that you know would be difficult for you to complete. In simpler terms, you can avoid procrastination while using timeboxing.

• Timeboxing pushes you to focus and complete just the most necessary and primary tasks. It honed your focus on doing something worthwhile promptly.

• If you make sure that no one interferes or distracts you while you’re working on your assignment in the allotted time, you may considerably increase your productivity and attention. A detailed relation between productivity and timeboxing is present in the later parts of this blog.

• Predictability improves through timeboxing. You will be able to foresee what work you are going to pursue in the upcoming short interval.

• You may avoid delays, inferior quality, and repetitive activities by using a timeboxing technique.

• Timeboxing also allows us to show development on functionalities that require many timeboxes to complete. Completing some work on such features and each cycle guarantees that you are showing valuable and verifiable progress. 

All these were some of the benefits of timeboxing. Let us now understand how it affects productivity.

• With the help of timeboxing, a structured approach supported by a work calendar is there using which teams can communicate and cooperate more effectively when issues and barriers occur. Moreover, workers can give priority to new tasks that concern the projects currently on the list. It will guarantee that deadlines are complete and that no single person or team is overwhelmed with work. If work is uniform, productivity will increase as everyone will focus on their work without any hindrance.

• If you need to do a conference that isn’t creative or engaging, timeboxing can help you establish a firm limit to prevent the discussion from becoming a time-consuming activity. It happens at many places that meetings become excessively topic-less and a sheer waste of time. Timeboxing can save time by giving all invitees strict start and finish hours. It can help by providing the meeting’s key planned results and an agenda which ultimately, increases productivity in some of the other senses.

• Timeboxing allows you to retain a solid record of all your initiatives and successes from each week. It is possible in the form of a timely and specific diary. You may express how you spent your time over the week or month. Your productivity will increase by following the above approach, as you will try to go for only those works which give maximum output.
• With timeboxing, you have planned responsibilities, and the possibilities of making mistakes are little to none. Every day, you may save a lot of energy and use it for more important things. As a result, your productivity will rise, and you will gain new abilities.

• Timeboxing helps you avoid needless perfectionism and the drive to get everything just right. We’ve all spent too much time at one point or another attempting to get something “ideal” even when good enough would suffice. It does not mean that you should not give your complete devotion. It simply means that getting everything perfect is not the right approach, especially when you want more productivity in less time.

Key Takeaways 

Timeboxing is the best strategy if you want immediate results and take your productivity levels to the next level. With timeboxing, everything gets structured, and you have enough time to do any work that you wish, resulting in effective time management

Also published on Medium.