it is no secret that Elon Musk has an
insane work schedule working more than
double the hours of the average
full-time worker and and you know now
I'm kind of in the 80 to 90 which is
well manageable but but you know that if
you divide that by two it's only like
you know maybe forty five hours per
company which is not not much if there's
a lot of things going on like a slacker
yeah that time is split between many
different projects most of it goes to
his main companies Tesla and SpaceX but
he also spends time on things like the
boring company and open AI and of course
making flamethrowers
add to that the fact that according to
Ashley Vance's biography on him he
spends four days a week with his five
children and you've got what is possibly
one of the busiest and most hectic daily
schedules of anybody on this planet now
in contrast to the video that I did
about Ben Franklin just a few months ago
with Elon Musk we don't have a source
that gives us a super granular look at
his daily schedule even a few tidbits
cities are filled and interviews such as
the fact that he spends about 80 percent
of his time on design and engineering
despite what most people might think I
think a lot of people think I must spend
a lot of time with media or on business
he things but actually almost almost all
my time like 80% of it is spent on
engineering design but what we do know
about is the method that he uses to keep
his schedule organized and to plan out
his day musk actually plans his day in
five minute increments and has
everything pre planned in advance this
is a technique called
time boxing it's actually used by lots
of other people including Bill Gates and
Cal Newport though Cal calls it time of
blocking essentially time boxing or time
blocking if you want to call it that or
hack time block saying I'm not gonna
stop you is the practice of setting a
fixed amount of time for each task that
you have to do and integrating those
blocks of time into your daily schedule
I use this technique a lot with my own
work and because people like musk and
Bill Gates and Cal Newport and many
others find it so useful today I wanted
to break down exactly how you can use
time boxing most effectively in your own
work so let's start with the obvious
question why use this technique why time
box your schedule and I know they're
gonna be critics of this technique right
off the bat who are gonna say scheduling
your entire day in advance basically
makes you a robot dude why would you
want to do that and I gotta say number
one you humans I mean we humans
give robots a bad rap sometimes but
number two this is kind of looking at it
from the wrong perspective yes
scheduling your day in advance does mean
you're gonna be adhering to a
predetermined plan and they're gonna
have less unstructured free time but as
you might know unstructured free time
can sometimes be a bad thing as
Parkinson's law states work tends to
expand to fill the time allotted for it
so essentially time boxing creates a
useful limitation that can actually make
you more productive first and foremost
it takes a lot of the choice out of the
moment of what you're going to work on
because you are hearing to a plan so you
spend less time figuring out what you're
gonna do in the first place and number
two because you have a limited amount of
time you aren't going to waste it you're
gonna be focusing a lot more intently
and in the case of people like musk and
Bill Gates they probably need to use
this technique they've got so many
commitments so many balls in the air
that without pre-planning their schedule
and keeping it really really organized
things are bound to slip through the
cracks okay so if I've got you convinced
let's talk about how to use time boxing
and the simplest way to do it is the way
that I like to do it where I write out
my daily plan either on my whiteboard or
on a piece of notebook paper and I just
estimate the amount of time each task is
going to take so don't actually put it
on a calendar and give it start and stop
times up today I just say this is going
to take me 20 minutes and then I'm gonna
move on to the next thing if you're
somebody like me who doesn't have a
whole lot of scheduled fixed commitments
that start and stop at specific times
then that can work really really well
and it might also work if you're in
school or you're an employee and you
have like a specific block of time when
you already know you're gonna be doing
things and then you have like another
block of time that's kind of freed up
and if this method does work well for
you you don't have to do it on paper
because there is an app called 3030 on
the iPhone that I have used several
times before now I gotta say I really
don't like the design of this app the
font they chose and this app is kind of
terrible but it is one of the few apps
that lets you set a specific time you're
going to work on a task and then kind of
like build a little itinerary of time
two tasks that you can then go through
and I used to use this a lot in college
when I had a lot of homework assignments
to get through now if you are an Android
I don't believe thirty thirty is on the
Android platform but there is an app out
there called do now that seems to have a
similar function now if you are the kind
of person that has a schedule with lots
of predetermined commitments already and
have gaps in between them or
just want to have more structure in your
life and you actually might find it
useful to use a calendar for your time
boxing to set specific start and stop
times for your tasks this is the way the
Cal Newport says he does it in his blog
post on the subject and if you're a
student that has a lot of little gaps of
time in between classes I think this is
the way to go for you either way if
you're going to use this technique
successfully then the number one thing
you're gonna need to learn how to do is
properly estimate how long tasks are
going to take you to complete and the
bad news that you and me both are human
beings we both like ingesting organic
matter we both like using our
respiratory systems to convert oxygen
into carbon dioxide and we are both
naturally bad at estimating how long
things are going to take that I
mentioned I'm not a robot we're all
susceptible to what's called the
planning fallacy which describes how
human beings tend to make over
optimistic predictions for how long
things are going to take there was
actually some research done at the
University of Waterloo in Canada on this
phenomenon students were asked to make
two different types of time predictions
one was a best-case scenario prediction
where literally everything went right
and the other one was for the average
case scenario your average everyday
run-of-the-mill experience and the
researchers found that predictions for
both types of scenarios were virtually
identical which showed them that human
beings tend to picture the best case
scenario where literally nothing goes
wrong when they're trying to predict
what's gonna happen in an average
everyday case so even though you know in
the back of your head that when you try
to get to work on an average day there's
traffic or somebody's driving in front
of you really slow on their phone as a
grandma in front of you when you predict
how long it's gonna take to get to work
you picture the scenario where there's
barely any traffic at all and everything
is just perfect and this cognitive bug
is not very congruent with successful
time boxing because if you tend to make
super over-optimistic predictions for
how long each task is going to take then
you are gonna end up getting less than
half of what you plan to get done
actually done so one way to get better
at estimating how long your tasks are
actually going to take is to track your
time the app that I personally use for
this is called toggle which is available
both on computers and mobile devices and
essentially you just tell it what you're
gonna do you can give it a tag if you
want and then you start it and stop it
once you're done I found that if you
track your time with an app like this
then over time you start to get a record
of how long thing
actually take and you can start to see
what the discrepancy is between your
original estimations and the actual date
from there you can sort of start
calibrating your brain and making better
estimations also when you're sitting
down to plan your day and you're
estimating how long your tasks are gonna
take it's gonna be really helpful if you
split your bigger tasks into smaller
subtasks not only will this make your
task list more action-oriented and clear
but it's also gonna help you with your
estimations because it is always easier
to estimate how long a small
well-defined task is going to take all
right so now we have to deal with what
is possibly the most legitimate
objection to time boxing which is how do
you deal with interruptions how you deal
with things that you couldn't plan for
or things that just pop up and interrupt
your work Tom the Secret Service wants
you again again well as Dwight D
Eisenhower once said planning is
everything plans are nothing so when
your plan gets interrupted revise that
plan County reports time blocking blog
post actually provides a great example
of how to do this he splits his notebook
paper into columns and uses the first
column as his original plan then if
plans change or something gets
interrupted during the course of the day
he just revises the plan in the next
column and then continues on from there
he also advises designating certain
blocks of time as what he calls
reactionary time blocks of time that are
literally set up for dealing with those
things that come up during the course
the day that you didn't plan for now
sometimes things are gonna pop up that
you have to deal with right now and they
might be in a time block that was
planned for something else and in those
cases you're gonna have to roll with the
punches but if something comes up that
you can deal with later than a
reactionary time block is the perfect
time to take care of it
one thing that I would add here is don't
be discouraged if you're unable to
follow your plan to the letter life is
inherently unpredictable sometimes but
that doesn't mean planning out your day
is a flawed tactic no tactic works 100%
of the time just do your best to adapt
and then at the end of the day analyze
your plan and see if what interrupted it
was something that you need to account
for in the future or if it was just a
one-time thing and that brings me to my
last but most crucial piece of advice
for using this technique effectively
avoid the temptation to over schedule
your day yes Elon Musk is putting an 80
to 90 hour work week so juggling a
zillion things at once but number one
that dude is a monster and number two if
you have difficult work on your plate
that requires a lot of a tense
concentration and creativity sometimes
that's all you can do in a given day
don't try to squeeze work like that into
a tiny sliver of time and a day that's
already taken up with errands and admin
work as the authors of the book the four
disciplines of execution point out the
more you try to do the less you actually
accomplish so take advantage of the
productivity benefits that come from the
limitations of time boxing but give that
difficult creative work the space it
deserves and save that mentally easier
work for a concentrated batch day and
while we're talking about that more
cognitively trivial admin work if you do
happen to want to make that more
efficient than one thing that you might
want to try is audible which is the
world's best place to download and
listen to audio books audiobooks are a
big part of my life and they're a great
way to be more efficient with your time
since you can listen to them while
you're at the gym or while you're
commuting to school or work or cooking
while you're doing laundry basically any
time you're doing something that doesn't
require a whole lot of attention in
itself audible has an unmatched library
of audiobooks ranging from the
bestsellers to lots of obscure titles so
you're gonna be able to find and listen
to basically anything that's on your
reading list a membership comes with a
credit for one free audiobook every
single month and unused credits roll
over from a month-to-month also if you
don't like a book you can exchange it
with no questions asked and if you do
happen to cancel all the audiobooks
you've downloaded are yours to keep
forever so if this sounds good to you
you can get a 30-day free trial of their
service along with a free audiobook
download of your choosing by heading
over to audible.com slash Thomas or by
texting Thomas to five hundred five
hundred on your phone this month I'm
gonna recommend one of my absolute
favorite books of all time which is Bill
Bryson's a short history of nearly
everything which I own both in print and
as an audiobook this is the book that
really did the most to rekindle my
interest in science and it also expanded
my appetite for learning in different
areas and beyond that motivational
aspect this is really just one of the
best and most entertaining overviews of
science that I've ever come across and I
think that anyone who wants to be more
well-rounded should definitely
experience it so if you want to start
listening to that book or any other
audio book of your choosing once again
head on over to audible.com slash Thomas
or text Thomas to five hundred five
hundred on your phone to start that free
trial and get your free audio
download big thanks to audible for
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