Ditch Your To-Do List. Part 1

Have you ever heard of timeboxing?  I hadn't either until I saw this article featuring former monk, current New York Times best-selling author and social media influencer, Jay Shetty. In it, Shetty explains how timeboxing helps him keep his work schedule in order. Which also gives him more time to pursue other interests besides the "fiftyeleven" things required of him professionally.

According to Shetty,

Most successful and productive people don’t even use to-do lists, they have scheduled tasks.

Well la-ti-da.

What is Timeboxing exactly?

According to Asana.com

Timeboxing is one of several time management strategies to help you take back control of your schedule. Instead of losing hours to easy tasks, timeboxing can help you fight procrastination, reclaim lost productivity, and focus on the work that matters. With timeboxing, you’ll practice assigning each task a specific amount of time, so you can spend less time planning work and more time in flow.

And that means?

CNBC writer Natasha Piñon explains:

Timeboxing is when you move your to-do list into a calendar form, giving each task an allotted amount of time. From there, you choose what you want to do and when, blocking out any distractions for the time limit you’ve given that task.

Does Timeboxing Really Work?

Mark Zao Sanders who wrote the article "How Timeboxing Works and Why It Will Make You More Productive" for Harvard Business Review thinks so:

In a recent survey of 100 productivity hacks, timeboxing — migrating to-do lists into calendars — was ranked the most useful. Timeboxing can give you a much greater sense of control over your workday. You decide what to do and when to do it, block out all distractions for that timeboxed period, and get it done. The benefits of calendarized timeboxing are many, varied, and highly impactful. The practice improves how we feel (control), how much we achieve as individuals (personal productivity), and how much we achieve in the teams we work in (enhanced collaboration). This may be the single most important skill or practice you can possibly develop as a modern professional, as it buys you so much time to accomplish anything else. It’s also straightforwardly applied and at no cost. Box some time to implement a version of this that works for you.

What do you think? Is your interest piqued about learning how to ditch your to-do list for timeboxing? Me too.

Stay tuned for part 2 where we learn how to do the timeboxing productivity method.