In the modern society there are no borders or limitations between work and life with result many things to left behind letting you in a state of frustration and stress all the time.
This is not your fault. Modern society and economy are too much demanding and ask more of your time in a growing rate. But time is a limited resource and that’s why you need to manage it wisely!
Managing time today is one skill that leads you to fulfil your goals with care, deliberation and ease. Time management skills are very important to aid you in doing whatever it is of demand from you and focus on what’s important to you by omitting the things are no longer work or are obsolete.
In this scenery a time management approach seems to provide the most benefits: time-boxing! Whether you’re a director of a company, managing your own small business, freelancing, or navigating the student life, time boxing offers a structured and coherent approach to enhance productivity and effectiveness.
Time boxing is a time management technique that involves allocating a fixed unit of time, or “box,” to a specific project, activity or task!
Unlike the traditional methods do, time boxing emphasizes the focused work within a specific timeframe (utilising thus the conclusions of Parkison’s Law), providing focus, content and context to your work.
The time allocation described by the time boxing approach can help you to:
- Enhanced Focus and Concentration
- Improved Planning and Prioritization of the things you need to do
- Avoid the traps of perfectionism by providing specific time limits for a task and aiming at its completion, and
- Enhanced Work-Life Balance by creating a structured work schedule, leaving room for personal activities.
These benefits can easily be produces once you start introduce the time boxing approach to your work. To do so, you need to:
- Identify Tasks that are aligned with the core business and life goals and categorize them by likeness, urgency or/and importance (you may group similar tasks within a time box for instance in order to benefit from the efficiency gained by focusing on a single type of activity),
- Set Time Blocks for each task you have identified and mark for completion (allocate more time to tasks that contribute significantly to your goals ad find other ways for the other tasks/activities). You need to make sure that the duration set is realistic for the complexity of the task.
- Eliminate distractions and obstacles can prevent you from complete the tasks at hand and integrate short breaks between time boxes to maintain mental freshness while preventing burnout and fatigue,
- Evaluate your progress and adjust your future time blocks based on the results you have.
These steps over time would help you to maximize your productivity and effectiveness. Adopting the mindset to your work would also help you to think differently about the things you need to do and accomplish and eliminate activities and tasks can prevent you from achieving your goals.
In short, time boxing is a powerful strategy for individuals at every stage of their personal, professional and academic journey. Its ability to foster focus, enhance planning, and instill a healthy work-life balance makes it a valuable tool in the pursuit of peak productivity.
You can get a FREE Time-boxing template to start experience an enhance productivity and a more coherent approach in achieving your personal and professional goals. What do you say?
This article first appeared in Takis Athanassiou Newsletter.