Have you ever made elaborate to-do lists and yet found yourself procrastinating, carrying forward tasks that could have been done before? If you find yourself doing this often, it is time for you to migrate your to-do lists into the calendar.
According to Parkinson’s Law, work seems to expand in order to fill the time available for its completion- for example, if you allocate a week for a 500-word article, no matter whether you can realistically finish it faster, you will subconsciously expand your work and not finish it earlier than a week just because that’s the deadline you set for yourself.
Naturally, to avoid this and increase efficiency, we need to search for a better productivity hack. Now, what better than Timeboxing!
Timeboxing is a term taken from agile project management which simply means to open your calendar and enter a dedicated block of time for a particular task. However, timeboxing is a little different from time-blocking as it involves allocating strict time limits on activities you fear you would take away too much of your time whereas time-blocking involves allocating time periods for everything on your agenda such that you don’t miss anything out and somehow find time for everything.
Timeboxing is like scheduling a meeting in your calendar. You pick a day, set a time limit, and even define the desired outcome. And once you’ve scheduled it, you proactively work on it without distractions. Timeboxing helps you target your tasks such that you can deliver high-quality results on time without overdoing them. There are several reasons why you should try this time management technique. Timeboxing helps you stay focused and fresh. It allows you to take breaks and even boosts your innovativeness and productivity, it also creates a balance in your life and saves you from saturation because of a perfectionist attitude. It saves you from an analysis paralysis zone and helps you have time available for other projects, so you don’t over-commit yourself and risk burnout. Above all, timeboxing helps you make time visible and tangible, time is a very abstract concept to us but when we set and restrict our work to a pre-defined timebox, it helps us track and value it much more.
However, it is important to keep a few things in mind to timebox effectively; it is essential to understand the difference between hard and soft timeboxes with reference to the goal of the task, be calculative in order to see measurable progress, and finally, never forget to set time for regular breaks. A quick karaoke session like Jackie Chan does, a light jog or just some time for fresh air is a must.
Plan Your Day in Your Calendar Timeslots
Timeboxing is an extremely useful philosophy to manage one’s own tasks just as Marc Zao-Sanders mentions it as the number one tool for productivity among 100 tips; however, you can apply the same principles to delegating tasks and organizing your team’s time. Timeboxes are not used as punitive action but rather as a way to better organize and prioritize work.
· Decide Why
Timeboxing is definitely a great time management tool but it is important to align your team’s goals with it. Have your team sit down and discuss, also gather feedback and understand if the timeboxing strategy works for your team.
· Gather visible insights
Use a time-management tool to increase the visibility of the team collaboration such that you can have insights into what everyone is working on and when the work is due.
· Define the timebox
Different types of team-works require different amounts of time, deciding the time together and setting a baseline that can be altered is a positive approach that can help your team target complicated tasks effectively.
· Timebox team breaks
Workload stress can cause burnout. In addition to using timeboxes for work, consider setting timeboxes for breaks too and encouraging your team to declutter and rejuvenate.
Furthermore, timeboxing can help make meetings more effective. Meetings are an integral part and avenue to get tons of work done. But what happens when they lack focus and clear goals? Timeboxing can take meetings to the next level and facilitate your team to stay on track. The simplest way to timebox a meeting starts with setting out a meeting agenda. Not every meeting needs to be timeboxed, some meetings benefit most from a free form of conversation. Although, if you are timeboxing it, you must decide whether you wish to use hard or soft timeboxes after understanding the nature of the meeting. Make sure to also constantly add cues to inform the members of the remaining time while at the same time not interrupting the conversation too many times.
While we know that timeboxing has proven to make life more productive and peaceful, it is possible to fall off track from time to time. This is the time we need to remember that timeboxing is an iterative process. If you’ve started timeboxing but find yourself not being able to adhere to the schedule and feel distracted, it is time to adjust. You don’t need to beat yourself up but instead try to think like a scientist rather than a drill sergeant. You cannot just set your schedule and forget it, always try to make changes and see what is adaptable and works best for you. It is important to find the right tool as well as schedule to really benefit from any time management hack.
Teamcal.Ai for Timeboxing
Teamcal Ai is a Meeting Automation Platform for modern Team Managers. It works with your existing Google or Outlook Calendars and helps automate meeting-related activities, so you can focus on the real work. In addition to providing a seamless meeting experience across teams, calendars, companies, and time zones with one-click meetings and so much more, Teamcal Ai also helps set focus time for your goals with pro-active alerts, productivity rings, and other exciting timeboxing features.
Like Muhammad Ali rightly said, “It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it is the pebble in your shoe”. Take that pebble out of your shoe using timeboxing with Teamcal.Ai and watch your productivity grow two folds.
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