10 Timeboxing Strategies to Achieve More in Less Time!

In this article, you will learn how to time-box your tasks in order to be more productive and get things done.

If you have tried it in the past, but given up on it because it simply wasn’t working out for you, then these 10 effective time-boxing tips will be useful to help you boost your productivity.

I was having a hard time getting things done, but I eventually started using this strategy, which enables me to better manage the ridiculous amount of work I have. 

What is Time-Boxing?

The concept of time boxing refers to the practice of taking your to-do list and all of your tasks, going to your calendar, and really blocking off time to get all of those things done. 

Time boxing is a strategy that has been used by many successful individuals, like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and more.

1. GIVE IT A GO FOR ONE DAY

Many people fail when they attempt to time-box their goals for the week at the beginning of the week. They attempt to go all-in with time-boxing too fast; they want to arrange their whole week around it.

Since it’s such a fresh idea, you aren’t good at it yet and are going to experience a great deal of frustration, which will ultimately lead to your failure.

Make it easy on yourself by just spending one day each week practicing until you reach the point where you can noticeably improve. 

To get started, include your normal morning activities. For instance, from 9 am in the morning to 5 pm in the evening, break your day into one-hour chunks. Start allocating your tasks in those chunks.

Don’t stress out about getting this just right. Since you’re just starting off, you’d want to gain a feel for calculating how much time things will take.

2. BEGIN WITH THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO YOU

Many people make the mistake of beginning with their to-do list, and immediately putting the tasks on their calendar. 

Be more strategic and ask yourself, “What is the one key item that is the most crucial for me to do today?” After that, you may schedule the rest of your activities around that.

You should begin by marking down in your calendar the first thing that you need to do.

For instance, if I have determined that the most important thing for me to do today is to create a new video, then I would allot a block of time equal to two hours to my first assignment to make sure that I provide the greater portion of time to the most important thing.

Next, I’m going to start filling the rest of the day with activities such as reading my email, working on projects for customers, and anything else that has to take place throughout the day.

3. SCHEDULE SPECIFIC AMOUNTS OF TIME FOR EACH OF THE TASKS

Taking their to-do list and entering each individual item on it into their calendar is something that a lot of people do when they are first learning how to use time boxes. This is a common approach.

This is not the way it is going to operate. Instead, you should begin setting out certain amounts of time for the different kinds of work that you do. This will help your workday run more smoothly.

Look through your list of things to do to find tasks that are similar, and then add those tasks to your calendar all at once.

It will make you more efficient throughout the day if you group them together on your calendar and do them all at once.

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4. PICK A PRODUCTIVE TIME OF DAY

Many are sensitive enough to fall into the trap of wanting to pick the thing that is most important to them and just put it first. They believe that to be the most effective course of action. 

On the other hand, if you’re not a morning person, it’s likely that you don’t produce your finest work first thing in the morning.

Pick the times of day when you can do the most. When do you feel you are doing your greatest work? In the same vein, if you are not a morning person but a night person, you should schedule the most essential activity for the late evening.

5. SET UP YOUR BREAKS IN ADVANCE

Many just pack their calendars with all of the items on their to-do lists one after the other. It’s a key mistake that is most likely to be neglected. 

We are not machines, we need some pause in between those tasks in order to get ourselves prepared for the next one. It is a really challenging task to work continuously from nine to five every day.

You need to make sure that you plan pauses, so that you may continually reenergize yourself and be ready to tackle the following task in the most productive manner.

Stand up and give your legs a stretch. Take a little pause to relax your eyes by gazing out the window whenever you feel them starting to become tired. 

When you’re timeboxing your day, allow yourself 10- or 15-minute blocks of time in between the chores you’re doing in batches as a reminder to take a break.

I guarantee that you will be able to attack the next task with greater vigor and attention, which will result in better output from you.

6. PUT SOME EXTRA TIME ASIDE AT THE END OF YOUR DAY TO ACT AS A BUFFER

When you first begin practicing time boxing, you’ll feel a lot of excitement. 

You are going to be successful in completing it most of the time. However, there are occasions when things do not go according to plan. 

If something unexpected happens, it’s possible that some tasks won’t be able to be finished in the time allotted.

It is possible that the time estimate may be revised, in which case you will be behind on some essential tasks at the end of the day. 

Therefore, allowing yourself a little bit of breathing room at the end—an hour or two—and then building the rest of your plans on that gives you the opportunity to process some of these things and finish some unexpected things. 

The goal of buffer time is to finish tasks and make sure that you will be able to do them as planned.

7. SET AN ALARM

Most people fall into the common trap of spending all of their time planning out their daily boxing schedule.

People get engrossed in a certain activity, which, regardless of whether one of the things being done was done unintentionally or not, consumes an excessive amount of time. 

You may begin your day by checking your email, and while you might have allotted an hour for that activity in your schedule, you might find that it soon consumes two or three hours of your time instead.

Setting these alarms is a great way to remind yourself to check on what you’re working on and make sure you’re sticking to your plan.

There is always a chance that the item you are working on right now will turn out to be the most important thing, in which case you will want to keep working on that thing.

You have that buffer time at the end of the day, as I indicated before, so you can either reschedule all of your work into it or simply come back to this item later on throughout the day.

Simple. You can also do this in your Google Calendar or your Apple Calendar by setting a reminder that will go off 15 minutes before the session is scheduled to begin. 

8. REMOVE DISTRACTIONS

It doesn’t matter whether you’re using a timer or not; if you want to maximise your chances of accomplishment, you should follow this helpful piece of advice and steer clear of anything that can divert your attention from the work at hand.

Close your email, switch off your phone, disconnect from social media and the news, and close any other applications that can divert your attention. When you are ready to work, change your status to “busy” or switch to concentrate mode.

9. GIVE IT A GO FOR A WEEK

It’s time to give time-boxing a complete week’s worth of practice now that you’ve been doing it once a week for a few weeks straight. 

Scheduling at a leisurely pace for a whole week is a great way to get started.

Make sure that you get the things that are most essential to you written down in your calendar, and then as the week progresses, either in the morning or the night before, you can fill in the gaps with the other things that you need to get done.

Doing this helps to ensure that you are not overplanning your weekends and maybe setting yourself up for failure. Also, don’t forget any of the tips, especially the one about giving yourself a little extra time at the end of each day. This will help you deal with any surprises that may come up.

You should start the week by scheduling a few of the things that are really important to you. 

10. REVIEW AND IMPROVE

Even after practising effective time management for a few weeks, sometimes you may not have made certain that your schedules are in good standing.

But you will have a lot of incredibly useful data at your disposal to go through and evaluate afterward. 

You need to look around for places where you can make changes for the better.

Find the activities on which you spend the most time; they are the ones that take up the most of your time but may not provide you a good return on the time you put into them.

Remove from your agenda the activities that aren’t contributing to your success, and reallocate that time to activities that will do just that.