Refocused Living

Some productivity gurus suggest you break down tasks into very small chunks. Turn an hour worth of work into 30 minutes. Clean out one messy desk drawer instead of trying to clean your entire office. The idea here is pretty simple – take one obnoxiously large project and turn it into something so mind-numbingly manageable that there’s no way you can fail to do what’s required of you.

Unless, of course, you’re me. For some reason, even on projects I “know” I should be completing, I just can’t get myself to move forward. For example, who really wants to clean out a shelf in their closet? Just looking at the mess makes me want to sprint in the other direction faster than a lion chasing dinner on an African plain. First I’d have to actually go to the closet, then start pulling stuff out… then organizing all of said stuff… then putting everything in new places… ugh, it’s one big mess. And it’s boring, too.

Part of the problem that I (and many other people) have is that when we look at an unpleasant task or project, it shifts into this daunting, irritating mess. We all know that when we look at things in a negative light, it causes us to start labeling those things with negative assumptions. So, it doesn’t matter if the task is “clean out the entire closet” or “clean out two shelves in the closet” or “clean half a shelf in the closet,” the task still looks unpleasant.

How did I get around this problem?

The easiest thing I have found that helps me get around this problem is to do one simple task. One, simple, dirt easy task. Complete one task that’s so simple that it’d be foolish and silly for you to say “No, that’s too much work! I can’t do that.”

One simple task, that’s all it takes!

“One task?” you ask, “that’s all I need to do?” Yep. Here are some examples of doing one task on something that you might procrastinate with:

• Instead of checking all 150 emails in your inbox, check just one.
• Have a blog post you want to write, but you can’t figure out where to start? Type just one sentence – no more, no less.
• Want to start a new book but don’t have time for it? Read the first line of the first chapter, then put the book down.

I like to refer to these simple tasks as “mini-actions” – they’re things that are so obnoxiously simple, they’re like miniature action steps. It’s not quite doing an entire action step, but doing a very small sliver of one.

Write one bar of music. Put one book back on the bookshelf. Place one dish from the dishwasher back where it belongs. Simple simple simple.

Doing one mini-action step overcomes any inertia that might have built up from procrastination or analysis paralysis. Can’t figure out where to start? Do one simple thing that couldn’t possibly be any simpler. Your project looks too large that it scares you? Figure out the easiest task to do that’ll take the least amount of time and complete it.

The great thing about this method is that once you do one thing, you’ll feel compelled to do some more. Since one little task is already done, why not try another? And then another? You break the pattern that was holding you back all along.

What’s going to be your next simple task you’ll complete? Ah, that’s right. You’re going to read the first sentence of another one of my blog posts.

Timeboxing is one of my very favorite time management techniques. In this post, I want to share with you what it is, and then the upsides and downsides of this popular technique.

Timeboxing 101

Timeboxing is a relatively simple thing to learn. First, you take a task that you have, and then you figure out how long it’s going to take you to complete the task. You try your best to finish your task in that amount of time, trying not to go over your time limit by any amount.

For example, say you wanted to write a 500 word blog post on the joys of time management. You decide that this task would take you about 45 minutes to complete (meaning: write the post, edit it, and hit publish). You slot out some time to work on this task (say, from 2 to 2:45 in the afternoon) and off you go!

When you’re timeboxing up tasks, a general rule of thumb is to only use time amounts up to an hour. If you have a large task to complete, break it up into small tasks. Bigger projects can always be sliced up into smaller projects, which can be completed in a smaller amount of time. And always remember, the end result of timeboxing is a completed project.

The Greatness of Timeboxing

Almost all of the main reasons timeboxing is such a fabulous time management tool is that it helps you overcome very simple problems.

• It stops you from being a perfectionist. Limiting yourself to X amount of time to work on a task halts the need to constantly edit a work when it’s completed.
• It forces you to work on the meat of the project. If you only have an hour to complete something, your energy is going to be focused on getting real work done. You won’t succumb as often to distractions. You also won’t be paying attention to the bells and whistles of your work – stuff that really doesn’t matter.
• It forces you to ship a finished product. Perhaps the greatest benefit of timeboxing is the fact that the end goal is the completion of something. This is especially beneficial to creative people – because they would have finished a creative project, they’re able to immediately ship it out the door and into the hands of other people who are hungry for their work. Creative people hate deadlines because they feel like it stifles their creativity – but if they don’t have anything to show for their creativity, what good are their crafts?

The Perils of Timeboxing

Of course, all time management techniques have a few downsides that you may want to consider. Some of these downsides for timeboxing include the following.

• Not adequately estimating the time it’ll take you to finish a task. Timeboxing works best when you can guess how much time you’ll need to complete a task within a reasonable margin of error. Trying to condense a 4 hour project into 1 hour might cripple your end results. Sometimes it’s best to slightly overestimate the time needed to complete something, so you can give yourself a little breathing room.
• Trying to squeeze large creative projects into a small amount of time. Some creative work is going to take you a bit of time to do. Examples of this include cooking a gourmet meal, composing a song, or writing a very large blog post. There are just too many steps to complete before you can ship a final product. Fortunately, this can be remedied by simply breaking up your project into a series of smaller projects, as noted above.

Is timeboxing right for you?

Timeboxing success depends on how you implement the technique and what kind of personality you have. All people can be successful with it, however.

If you’re a naturally creative person, timeboxing might feel like it’s a restrictive constraint that does no good. You may feel as if it stifles your creativity. On the other hand, like I mentioned above, very creative people tend to not produce much real value in the eyes of other people because they’re constantly refining their works to an outrageous standard.  If nothing gets into the hands of other people, how can you share your value? This time management skill fixes that problem by forcing you to accept that a finished product is better than no product at all.

On the flip side of the coin, if you’re a naturally left brained person, timeboxing might feel like it fits extremely well into how you naturally think. Limiting the amount of time you take with a task forces you to complete it well in a short amount of time. That feels like a natural extension of your “no nonsense, let’s finish the task and get it over with” personality.

Like everything in personal development, time management skills are something that you develop over time. These techniques are something you can constantly tweak and experiment with in order to become more productive… and this includes timeboxing.