You may have heard about Elon Musk’s crazy work schedule and how he works more hours
than the average American.
If you ever wondered how he does it, well, heres a simplified answer.
Elon Musk plans his day out in 5 minute increments and has everything pre planned in advance.
This technique is called timeboxing but it is also known as time blocking.
In this video, I will explain what timeboxing is, how to apply it, the limitations and advantages,
and 3 challenges someone might face when trying to master timeboxing.
Timeboxing is when you set a fixed amount of time for each task and integrate those
blocks of time into your schedule.
The easiest way to apply this is to write out your daily plan on a piece of paper or
type it out on your phone.
You estimate the amount of time each task is going to take or give yourself a certain
limitation on a task.
Keep in mind that you can set soft timeboxes and hard timeboxes.
In a soft timebox, you can come up with a conclusion and wrap things up after the allotted
time period is over whereas in a hard timebox, once it is over, you drop everything and finish.
Choose which type of timebox makes more sense for the task at hand but I believe a hard
timebox is more effective.
This implementation of timeboxing works for someone who doesnt have a lot of specific
commitments at certain times.
If you are busier and have more commitments, you should use a calendar app like google
calendar to set specific start and stop times for each activity.
But what if there are interruptions and you cant follow through with the schedule?
Well, if there is an interruption, you can revise the schedule.
Life happens and you cant account for everything but it doesnt mean this technique sucks.
As for the advantages, timeboxing removes your ability to choose what to work on during
a certain time which will make you more productive since it lets you focus on one thing at a
time.
The other advantage is that since you only have a certain amount of time to work on that
project, you will invoke Parkinson's law aka work expands to fill the time allotted for
it to be more productive.
You will be more productive when you set a deadline for say 1 hour if that is your time
block than not having a deadline.
Someone like Musk probably has to timebox because they have a lot of commitments to
handle everyday.
Without pre planning and proper organization, they might miss something important . As for
the limitations, this productivity hack feels very robotic which leaves you with not much
unstructured free time.
Not everyone is open to following a robotic schedule that says you only have a certain
amount of time to do this.
Another limitation is that if you are someone who is very busy, you might not be able to
continue working on a project that you built a lot of momentum on during that time block.
Sometimes when we work, we build a lot of momentum and want to work on the project for
a long time but you cant do that with a busy timeboxed schedule.
The biggest challenge someone will face when timeboxing is estimating how long it takes
to complete something.
If you dont give yourself enough time to work on something, you are not going to get much
work done.
We work faster when there is a deadline but if you only give yourself a hour to do something
that requires 3, you wont get much work done if your goal was to finish the project today.
If you underestimate the amount of time for each time block, you will be less productive
than before.
To overcome this, start tracking how long it takes for you to work on stuff so you can
use that data to get better at timeboxing.
The second biggest challenge is avoiding the temptation to overschedule.
Elon Musk may work for 80 hours a week and function on low hours of sleep but that doesnt
mean you can too.
If you have a mentally taxing task to do like filming or programming, sometimes that is
all you should do for the day.
Dont try to squeeze other things that are mentally taxing into free blocks of time you
have during the rest of the day.
Most importantly, dont try to cut down your hours of sleep by a lot to work on more tasks.
Take advantage of the productivity benefits a timebox gives and give the difficult work
the space it deserves.
Also, remember to take breaks in between tasks to relax and refresh your mind.
The final challenge that someone timeboxing will face is resisting the urge to continue
working when they are in a focused state.
If you have more commitments to deal with, you have to get used to dropping the task
at hand for other tasks.
Breaking your focus is hard and mentally draining.
You might find it hard to regain that level of focus for the upcoming task.
To overcome this, you have to timebox more.
When you first break focus, you might feel less productive but if you timebox often,
you can adapt and learn to be able to control your focus like a on and off switch.
Thanks for watching.
If you enjoyed this video and want more, check out my other videos.